Are Sentences Too Long?

The above title doesn't relate to compositional style. Writing for The Marshall Project, Dana Goldstein asks two provocative questions. Is there any real purpose to be served in keeping elderly men in prison, because decades ago they received a life sentence? Do older prisoners commit additional crimes, if released? She believes the answer to both questions is "rarely." Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

Research by American social scientists shows that all but the most exceptional criminals, even violent ones, mature out of lawbreaking before middle age, meaning that long sentences do little to prevent crime.

And criminal careers do not last very long. Research by the criminologist Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon and colleagues has found that for the eight serious crimes closely tracked by the F.B.I. — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, arson and car theft — five to 10 years is the typical duration that adults commit these crimes, as measured by arrests.

Property criminals, like burglars and car thieves, tend to stop in their 20s, while violent criminals are more likely to continue into their early 30s. Drug-crime careers can be lengthier, stretching into the mid-30s.

Given the enormous cost to incarcerate, and chronically overcrowded prisons, these are thoughts worth pondering. However, since we closed our mental asylums, prisons have become places to warehouse the mad as well as the bad.