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"keeping someone like this away" = harm prevention.

You just state it more concisely :)



It's about preventing someone from becoming a person who harm people.

Prison isn't something we should want in a society, but actively reduce, even if we never realistically achieve it.


There aren't endless resources. Actively reducing would take a lot of effort from a lot of smart people and I'd rather spend those big brains on improving math and reading skills amongst children, or cancer research, or diabetes research, or dementia research.


There aren't endless resources. Actively reducing would take a lot of effort from a lot of smart people and I'd rather spend those big brains on improving math and reading skills amongst children, or cancer research, or diabetes research, or dementia research.

Believe it or not, a society with 300 million plus people can do many things at once.

Human resources aren't really fungible. Big brains spent on improving education of children can't really be reallocated to spend on cancer research or other part of medical science, not without extensive training at least.

So too we can spend on psychological, social services, and welfare which is what we probably need to reduce crime and overall human suffering to a more manageable level. Hopefully, the improvement to societal health means more resources are available that can be then reallocated to tackle the remainder of human caused suffering.


On the surface this appears to say "we don't need to make tradeoffs", or "there are endless resources". Both are obviously wrong, but perhaps the intended message is something different?




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