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Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

Real solution depends on increasing jail and prison capacity. Why are massive, state-run, gulag-style camps are not in the books? With spare capacity so that every would-be criminal knows there's space for everyone, further deterring them? It must also instill fear and terror in every criminal, including those born and raised in most terrible conditions.

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Doesn't the US already have the world biggest prison system and the most people in jail/prison. I think the whole concept of it being a deterrent has been debunked.

I think the comment you replied to was being facetious

Even if it's not a good deterrent, it may solve the problem directly: incarcerate these people and make sure they are too old and sick when they get out, to still be a big problem.

Sure US has an overly large prison population but no other developed country is as diverse, it also doesn't have a wide social safety net that works around the problem at the cost of blocking development with insane taxes.

It's a country where you either win, or you lose, and the system must ensure that those who lost don't get in the way of those still running.

I think we should aim at prison capacity of about 90% of the population. Let's face it. About 1% of society can actually live on their own. Another 10% might be able to sustain themselves with work. That leaves about 90% that will eventually end up in jail because of their economic conditions. It's not a bad thing. 10% can watch them, feed them and cloth them, while 1% pays for everything with their pocket money and finally has peace and quiet. /s

Sarcasm off, i believe that societies are inevitably aiming for something like that, except in a form of rather strict segregation a-la SA Apartheid. I see it as inevitable consequence of infinite scalability of success today. Basically, at some point, top demand in a purely economic sense of those 10% will be safety from remaining 90% with a consequence of government functions of protecting the top 10% being largely privatised.

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