I agree with the OP that for murder, rape, robbery, and assault the perpetrator has shown that he is a menace to society. But for some of those others mentioned by memphis--burglary, fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, DUI--I'm not so sure that this is the case.
Let's take burglary. Let's imagine a nineteen-year-old down on his luck, driving a hooptie with a broken fuel gauge, because that's all he can afford. He runs out of fuel and his car is stuck on the street in a suburban neighborhood far from the nearest services. He doesn't have a mobile phone. He walks around and notice a car parked on the street and he siphons enough gas from the tank to make it to the gas station. He gets into the car and suddenly a police car comes in behind him, arrests him for Burglary of a Motor Vehicle, so now he has to pay a 2500 dollar fine and spend six months in a penetentiary. Does the sentence seem to fit the crime?
Or what about conspiracy? There's a holiday song that says, "Later on we'll conspire, as we dream by the fire, to face unafraid the plans that we made, walking in a winter wonderland..." Prison for this? Seems again that the sentence doesn't really fit the crime, if indeed there was a crime.
As for drunk driving, it's currently a misdemeanor. At least for the first few offenses. You get a heavy fine as it is, and your insurance premium increases, but does it merit imprisonment?
I'm not excusing any of these crimes. The lad in the first example should have probably walked, however far, to the nearest fuel station and purchased a gas can and a gallon of gas, or if he didn't have any money, he should have found a telephone and phoned someone who does. Still, our prisons are already overcrowded and we're imprisoning a far greater fraction of our population than most other societies. At great expense to the taxpayers, I might add.
The Navajo had a cure ceremony for those afflicted with maladies. If you got drunk and shot up a store and stole something, it meant that something inside you wasn't right, and a wise man would be called to have a sing for you. I'm not sure that stuff works, but I'm quite sure that putting young men in prison only makes them jaded, tough, and wiser in the ways of crime. You don't turn criminals into citizens by treating them the way we do.
You really have no distinction between 'maximum penalty allowed by law' and 'actual penaly usually imposed by the courts, do you?
The maximum penalty allowed by law for a first offense OVI in OH is 6 monhs in jail, 3yrs license suspension, and almost $1100 in fines. "Oh Noes! The prison indusxtrial complex is making a fortune freedomz!!1111..." stop
In reality, the typical first offense ovi, ASSUMING. The case isn't reduced or acquitted--my old office regularly reduced any first offense ovi without aggravating circumstances to a lesser charge)--the typical first offense ovi faced the minimum penalties allowed by law: 6 months suspension from date of arrest, $375 fine plus court costs (total being about $500; higher ins premiums? Sux 2 b u in the free market, huh?) and 3 days in a driver's intervention program (held usually at a motel; no you can't leave, but would you rather spend three days in the county as is the option?).
The other scenarios drawn out indicate even a hanging judge isn't about to impose anywhere near the maximum penalty allowed, or even more than a suspended sentence. Yes, one can always say 'i heard of this mean ol judge somewhere in my state.....' but anecdotal evidence like this is what's needed over actual emperical experience to hold libertard views on sentencing in most cases.
There, I said it.
