We have a very high incarceration rate and our penalties for convicted felons tend to be quite high in comparison to European countries. When you talk about not adequately punishing violent people are you talking about violent crimes in which police do not make an arrest?
This is an incredibly complex topic, and I apologize for speaking of it so simply in GP.
The justice system in the United States is broken in many, many places. And the issues that spawn from a broken justice system leak into every other facet of life.
I could talk about privately owned prisons that are incentivized to keep bodies in cells (that's how they get compensated). I could talk about the judges that are bribed to ensure these prisons get filled.
We could move on to things like jail-time for minor drug offenses. Is this a DA problem? Or a policing problem? I'm not sure.
Or, conversely, violent criminals who get their jail time commuted. This is a judge and DA problem.
Or, continuing, the definition of "felon" in the United States is a byzantine thing. See [0].
Our laws are too jumbled and onerous. Justice, the ideal, is not sought nor executed in many cases. I don't know how to fix this. A part of me wants to burn two centuries of case law and go back to a bare Constitution, with an emphasis on personal conduct and responsibility (those darn Puritans were on to something). But that's too simple. We're caught in a trap, and I honestly don't see a way out.
There's a quote that comes to mind "representative rule only works when the people are moral". Something like that. Are we moral?
