Sometimes you read that a criminal gets 20 years in prison, but people say “Oh he will be out in 10”. How does that work? Good behavior can not cut 10 years of a sentence, can it?
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The biggest factor is cost. Putting someone in prison is not free. It costs between 37K to 60K per year to do it. https://www.marketplace.org/2017/05/19/how-much-does-it-cost-send-someone-prison/ Sure, it’s relatively cheap to feed people, but having 24/7 guards runs payrolls very high. This is the same money that pays for schools and healthcare. Rather than having a productive member of society who has a job and pays taxes, putting someone in prison means you’re taking a lot of money away from everything else. There is a huge incentive for society to find ways to keep people out of prison. So while the victim who got his car stolen may be happy to have the perp locked up forever, it may not make sense for society as a whole. 20 years may be the maximum or the issued sentence, and if the criminal demonstrates that he can follow rules and behave in prison, it may make sense to put them on parole. When a budget cut occurs to prisons, you will end up with many more people on parole. Most recently, weed is being decriminalized because it simply doesn’t make sense to pay so much money to imprison non-violent offenders. Yes, they broke the law, and it’s ok to change laws.
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