Letter 12

The point of incarceration has never been to reduce crime. Deterrence doesn't work. If criminals were good at foresight, they wouldn't be criminals.

The point of all this punishment is to demonstrate the power of the state. It is not to instill fear in the criminal class; they are long past being frightened by anything but a more ruthless criminal. It is to frighten the desperate and the displaced into believing that if they don't conform by kowtowing as hard as they possibly can and working themselves into an early grave, they will lose the tenuous grip they have on “respectability.”

Fear of falling off the edge of society into the darkness and violence created by a society that chews people up and spits them out only applies to those who have not yet fallen. Those who have already fallen are not subject to that particular fear. The fierceness of our police state is not performed for the benefit of criminals, it is designed to instill fear in those who are not yet criminals.