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Managing “crimes”: I'm not sure what the context of this is, so I'll make a presumption that you are asking about how to manage convicted criminals (the other possibility being to manage criminal procedure law and penal law, which would be well out of my depth of knowledge on the subject).Incarceration has both a punitive and a detention/public safety aspect to to it. For truly dangerous and unrepentant and otherwise evil or insane individuals, keeping them away from society is just and reasonable. Keeping them under humane and compassionate conditions - reasonable, this need not be a pampered suite at the Four Seasons, but not a dog kennel either.In terms of detaining individuals, I am primarily referring to the pre-trial procedure of detaining an arrestee until their arraignment and release or bail/bonding is transacted. The bar to be set here is: can these individuals be leveraged to house arrest, or report to a minimal security housing facility overnight and on weekends while keeping their day jobs while making their way through the court system if so deemed to be of a moderate flight risk? Or similarly, pre-trial release probation which avoids having to house and feed otherwise productive defendants?In short, there is no way to absolutely avoid incarceration as a feature of the criminal justice system. What can be done is to readjust how the corrections system impacts convicts and society at large.I believe that many crimes of misdemeanor and minor felonies can be adjudicated without a prison sentence. The stigma alone of the felony would act as a brake on not acting out further in ways that would create job loss. The creation of an automatic expungement or sealing of these sorts of crimes after a completion of a period of time without reoffending along with treatment programs and voluntary participation in restorative public works to remove the official legal stigma could go a long way toward reintegration of these misdemeanor and non-violent minor felons.Major felonies, serious crimes of breach of the public trust, and violent felonies, sex offenses, and crimes against children demand a certain and sure judgment and punishment against the offender.That would be the difference between the guy with a couple of ounces of methamphetamine or a pound or two of marijuana (still a federal offense) versus an operator withing a drug trafficking ring.Mind you, I think that the drug war is itself lost and is at the backbone of our national embarrassment of nearly 7% of our population either being or having been incarcerated and having been under some form of community supervision (parole/probation). But for the sake of our discussion, let's consider our first time non-violent B felony possession with constructive intent to sell against an A2 felony drug distribution convict.While conventionally, the difference between these two charges in essence has to do with the weight of the drugs found and admitted as evidence and the presumptive construction of “intent to sell” as an additional radius of criminal impact of our B felon: there's enough to presume that what he had in the bag was not just for personal use. The punitive aspect of sentencing is “on behalf” of all those harmed by the B-felon's presumed drug sales.Maybe he sold, and maybe he didn't.Except that he probably did, and under NY State law (PEN §220.00 series) “intent to sell" constructs sales as inclusive of sharing, giving away, trading, and even having the potential for such exchanges, even if an exchange never happened.Except that there is no substantial proof other than the luck of the arresting officers finding the half ounce of meth one night that he was stupid enough to have been traveling with that much on him: the day before he would have had a full kilogram in his pack possibly elevating him all the way up to A1 felony status as a major trafficker, and the next he might have just had his usual 1.0 - 2.0g of personal stash (Misdemeanor to Class E felony)Different Day, Same Shit: the day he would get caught with the gram bag would only net him the misdemeanor offense - and while that is still significant, there is no presumed radius of additional harm against society imputed to him. Yet, he's still the same guy who's been slinging meth to cover his buys.The point of all of this is: the B felon (or below) is essentially getting the additional punishment out of dumb poor luck and sloppiness. He needs treatment for his addiction for certain, and maybe he needs to pay a debt to society, or perhaps restore trust that he will not break laws in the future after paying his fines, fees, and performs service and completes a supervised period of addiction treatment. That is, assuming that's the only crime that he has been convicted of - having his reputation dredged through the local blotter papers and the financial consequences of his crimes come back upon him is sufficient punishment.As to the radius of harm - the presumption of harm is a bad thing: being punished for crimes presumed to have been committed (and which probably were on some unknown levels) is unfair. This gets skewed further with the dirty practice of plea bargaining, which can become a highly subjective business that gets hashed out between defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges and certain other players in the courts - which the defendant often is not going to get a substantially more favorable outcome for.As the case sample B-Felon described above, I was told by a defense attorney that I might have a chance at a judical diversion to drug treatment court with a possible reduction in my charge to a C or D felony (which would have no impact if I failed to complete the drug treatment program or pissed dirty … I'd still violate what would essentially be terms of a probation and then get kicked over to the state prison to serve the minimal sentence on the B-felony.But I would have definitely slowed my roll, and in fact rolled back and squared up. Being free to keep my job, or to have sought a new position prior to the conviction landing… and not getting whatever PTSD and anxiety issues I have today where I now habitually read people for whether or not they might stab me in the back or fuck me over would have been nice.In terms of my actual radius of harm - I bought very large amounts of a controlled substance - of which one quarter to a third of any buy went into my veins or the veins of those partying with me, and the rest being sold to cover my nut plus a little extra for purchases outside my usual job income range. There was also the one-time transport of the bad stuff to a particular location until needed by the small, deeply trusted, regular handful of buyers who bought in big slices to minimize my need to be always hustling small moves to shady people (there were a few of those who even to this day try to reconnect with me. Sorry boys, but I'm forever out of that game).My one true regret in that extended radius was one asshole who bought from me, who I had to cut off and threaten dire and certain physical harm upon if he ever contacted me again: he was using the product he bought from me to get underage boys high with to do things with. Fucking slimeball.My friends who know of him had suggested the possibility that he informed on me, but we can't prove that for certain, and it's not my job to pay back his evil karma.Moving along…Corporal punishment (and by extension, capital punishment) are by definition purely punitive. That is, there is no other motive but state sponsored vengeance. Caning, spanking, flogging… nothing more than state endorsed violence that will only generate further violence and a baser, more degenerate public culture.In the context of capital punishment in the American states… IF (and that's a HEE-YUGE if) there was a way of moving certain offenders through the appellate court system –– I'm talking no-remorse, mad-dog killers, heinous sex offenders (sorry but not sorry - child sex predators need to be released from this life to end that disease that in many cases was imparted to them by other predators) and other persons who have been proven beyond a doubt guilty should not be able to play the appeal game to create a life without parole sentence.Either end these sorts of irredeemable criminals, or commit to an LWOP sentence that basically puts them on a concrete island for the remainder of their natural life. Humanely so. There should be a window of no more than one year to bring an appeal, one appeal only, and no more than five years should elapse between sentencing and the execution of the sentence. If there is any uncertainty in the minds of a sentencing jury, or a trial jury that has the power to convict with the possibility of a capital sentence, then that jury has a duty to deliver a different sentence or move for a retrial on the basis of a hung jury.THAT SAID, I'm not a fan of taking human life: which becomes the greater cruelty? And is there a radius of additional harm created in life-without-parole sentences that are an effective death sentence, plus the cost to society of housing, feeding, and securing the criminal away from that society, versus all that incarceration plus decades of court proceedings until the criminal is finally executed?Other alternative forms of judgments and sentencing include:Restorative/Restitutionary payments that allow the employed minor felony convict to keep his job - with the payments going to a crimes victim fund or towards drug treatment programs or two other such programs that benefit society.Compulsory Servitude, with pay on a monitored EBT card going toward halfway housing or publicly assisted rent and food benefits. And also toward job and skills training with tracking toward permanent employment or union membership.Encumbrance (limitations on freedoms of movement, association, and activities: think probation conditions)Social Credit/Reputation Derogation and the Repair thereofExile (not a very practical solution in the 21st century… but just putting that out there. Maybe into space exploration? Ha.)Finally one way that we can minimize our footprint in terms of the prison population will be to decriminalize many of the things that people are catching minor felony charges on.Repealing most of the drug possession laws, disbanding most of the DEA as a law enforcement body and placing them under the FDA to ensure the purity of federally regulated recreational drugs would go a very long way toward being able to reapportion the budget to helpful programs which can take the new tax income from legal sales of recreational drugs into increasing harm Reduction programs.Demilitarization of our police and training them on their Constitutional duties and limitations on their powers, and remphasizing “protect and serve” far and away above the “let's see if we can narcoseize a shit ton of houses, cars, and cash” as has become the goal of police forces at all levels of government.Rebuilding our communities so that our young brothers and sisters and children of all colors, nationalities, genders, and sexuality can have a good hope beyond what the street gangs and the hustle have to offer.Teaching those who have been marginalized because of past crimes that there is a way to get things right, and not have to sweat being on paper.Give them a way to see that acting out in anger or getting caught up in some stupidity is not the right way, NOT because of the police or the PO, but because they can have a way to reflect on the possibilities they have from acting responsibly.