One very surprising thing about the US justice system is that most first time inmates do not reoffend. A person released from my state's prisons for the first time doesn't go back 80% of the time in the next 5-10 years (whatever the tracking period is).
So there's two entirely different inmate flows, the one timers, and the all the timers. If you made a magical, pre-trial system that could completely stop reoffending, you'd still have a pretty good flow from just first timers, who keep showing up as long as humans are humans.
At the same time, preventing reoffending would make prison populations drop dramatically, since most people in prison are there for violent crimes and usually repeat offenders.
One very surprising thing about the US justice system is that most first time inmates do not reoffend. A person released from my state's prisons for the first time doesn't go back 80% of the time in the next 5-10 years (whatever the tracking period is).
So there's two entirely different inmate flows, the one timers, and the all the timers. If you made a magical, pre-trial system that could completely stop reoffending, you'd still have a pretty good flow from just first timers, who keep showing up as long as humans are humans.
At the same time, preventing reoffending would make prison populations drop dramatically, since most people in prison are there for violent crimes and usually repeat offenders.