We just look at the countries that have the lowest rates of violent crime, the lowest number of people in prison, and the lowest recidivism rates and copy what they do as much as possible.

We. Maybe that's the problem. We never get around to addressing these issues constructively or creatively as a society because We like to flatter-delude ourselves that we're a nation of hypercompetitive, 'rugged individualist' Me's accidentally stuck here together..

Hindsight's always 20 / 20. And while it's since become fashionable for some of us to deny ever being in support of "tough on crime" legislation, we're just covering our a$$es. America's dirty little secret is the fact that 20 years ago, very few people, elected officials and citizens alike, so much as considered the actual -- and compounding -- costs to be incurred prospectively by locking people up for life after a third offense, or by amending our criminal statutes to convert what had heretofore been misdemeanor offenses into felonies.

Such public grandstanding and d!ickswinging ultimately proved to be very expensive, as we proceeded to turn incarceration into a quasi-industrial complex. We were further compelled to divert funds from other priorities such as public education and health care to pay for it all, because silly creatures of the moment that we were, we were also cutting taxes and thus slashing government revenues at the same time.