I feel a man could steal 1000 wallets and not deserve 10 years in jail, much less life in prison. even if he never, ever, ever, learned his lesson. I personally would not send a person to prison for life for a property crime, and a small one at that.

This phrase is repeated often in this thread, "draw the line," but some people will not conform, some people will commit petty criminal acts, for a lifetime. IMHO that is no justification for locking them up indefinitely.

Think of marijuana legislation, one minute you can be locked up for life, the next minute it is legal. No matter what the crime, there is an element of subjectivity, fashion, culture, in what punishments we apply. Yes, some people may not rehabilitate. But that fact alone doesn't justify life in prison. Or even a severe sentence.

Compassion is real. It is important, even when it is inconvenient, even for people who suck.

At least, that's how I see it.

"I feel a man could steal 1000 wallets and not deserve 10 years in jail"

After, say, 100 wallets stolen how do you prevent the next 900 victims from suffering? The victims have absolute rights for protection and compassion; but a repeat offender has intentionally chosen to throw away whatever ties with society he had. There's a social contract about things we do and don't do to each other; we generally don't take others stuff, don't hurt each others and we show compassion to others in our society - so if you repeatedly choose to break the social contract, by taking others stuff and not showing compassion; then why should others show compassion and refrain from hurting you?

If someone can go to my house and take my stuff, why should I be forcibly prevented by police from going to his house and taking his stuff?

If someone is an unquestionably repeat offender, then preventing future crimes is a mandatory goal; respecting the offender is important but, if we can't do otherwise, it's optional. If there is a more humane way to solve it than permanent isolation from society (life sentence, permanent mental institution, execution or exile), then I'd like to hear that and would greatly support it.

I think the point is that for each wallet stolen we would send a guy to jail for, say, two days. If we think that the guy has stolen approximately 100 wallets we prevent the next 900 from suffering by imprisoning him for the most part of a year, and that's it.

What I haven't seen yet is a comparison of cash, not to the cost of imprisonment, but to the cost of getting a job. That is, if someone is in prison for 200 days, that costs a few tens of thousands of dollars to the US taxpayer, so the arguments being advanced in these threads say "this should be a response only to someone who is stealing $10,000 from us, otherwise the government is taking much more from us in taxes than the guy was taking from us in crime." That makes some amount of sense. It ignores certain problems (like "who do the taxes come from?" and psychological damage from getting mugged and so on), but it does have some core "thrust" to it.

On the other hand, to be an effective deterrent to crime, you'd figure that we'd want to make the crime net-unprofitable; that is, you'd want the 9-to-5 job at $7/hour to be a more profitable way of living than stealing $100 wallets. So this would suggest that for an expected number of 100 wallets stolen you should really incarcerate for, say, 2 years or so, so that the original crime "really doesn't pay", in the sense that you lose job-access for a total sum of more money than you gained. (That punishment might also have to be increased if the chance of catching someone who steals 100 wallets is not 100%.)

You can't ever make crime not net-profitable for people who just cover basic neccessities, and there are a lot of them.

You work for a month? You get a month's rent and food. You're in prison for a month? You get a worse bed but a bit better food - the lack of freedom sucks bigtime, but financially there's no difference.

I don't agree that prevention of future nonviolent crimes is a mandatory goal. Think about a routine drug user. It is a crime, but I am not willing to imprison someone just for repeating that crime. Some crimes just don't have enough social impact. It is unjust to viciously enforce compliance simply because some behavior is illegal.

Nonviolent != victimless. My point is not about 'should X be punished' but 'how do we handle definitely punishable small crimes repeated ad nauseam'.

Think about a routine drug user (say, heroin addict) who regularly (daily/weekly) performs theft to sustain the habit - car radios, shoplifting, maybe an apartment if he gets a chance. It is a very common scenario in many places, if the user can't quit (or always restarts a few months after therapy/quitting) and the needed drugs are all illegal & expensive; as the only real non-crime [here] alternative they have is prostitution and many of them consider theft as the more pleasant option.

Even a small, friendly village community who know everyone and help each other would likely vote [for laws] to imprison him in order to stop the behavior. Rehabilitation is another option, but the idea is that after 3-strikes you have to admit that your rehabilitation (however good or bad it is) doesn't work and you have to do something else.

Or think of a genuine kleptomaniac. Unless it's successfully treated, you still need to take some measures to prevent repeated crimes.