Uncommon Commentary #504: (My Answer to) Incarceration Consternation

A better idea than what people are calling “criminal justice reform”: greatly increase the number of crimes that are punished by death rather than by imprisonment.  This would lower our incarceration rate (because history has demonstrated that increases in the severity of punishment drive crime rates down, and because an executed person obviously no longer occupies a prison cell, nor has he ever the opportunity to commit another offense), and would also help move criminals to repentance, since nothing’s better than imminent death for making someone think about the destination of his soul.