Why should repeat offenders be punished more harshly for any given crime than those who are first offenders?
Why shouldn't they? The purpose of imprisonment is not only restorative or rehabilitative, but also to keep the offender from doing further harm to society. If, by reoffending, someone shows beyond doubt that they can't learn from their mistakes, why should they receive the same punishment for their nth crime that someone else receives for their first? Failure to punish repeat offenders more harshly amounts to sanctioning sociopathy.
Anyone who has been injured by a four-time DUI offender would probably have a strong opinion on this. At some point, it is indeed necessary and appropriate to write offenders off as hopeless.
3 strikes laws are the extreme of what you're talking about. They created a situation where a man could be sentenced to life for a moment of stupidity and a pair of socks.
Fundamentally, in the US, the issue is that prison is not for rehabilitation, it is for containment and retribution. We don't provide for their mental health. We don't provide for their safety. We force non-violent criminals into association with violent criminals. There are people who can't be rehabilitated, but we never really try so we have no way of distinguishing the repeat offenders who learned but had a moment of stupidity from those who simply didn't learn.
True, you're not wrong about the idiocy of '3 strikes' laws, but the problem with them is specifically that they remove discretion from the court, rather than the general concept of escalating punishment for serial offenses. If someone steals a pair of socks, a head of lettuce, and a blanket, they should not be automatically treated the same as someone who steals a Chevrolet, a Lexus, and a Porsche.
Sentencing laws in general are a really terrible idea IMHO.
Sentencing guidelines do serve a legitimate purpose, though. The problem with giving judges very wide discretion is the sentence you get doesn't depend so much on whether you were the socks vs Chevy guy as much as to which judge your case was assigned. If car thief A gets three months and car thief B gets three years for exactly the same crime that's fundamentally unfair.
Why shouldn't they? The purpose of imprisonment is not only restorative or rehabilitative, but also to keep the offender from doing further harm to society. If, by reoffending, someone shows beyond doubt that they can't learn from their mistakes, why should they receive the same punishment for their nth crime that someone else receives for their first? Failure to punish repeat offenders more harshly amounts to sanctioning sociopathy.
Anyone who has been injured by a four-time DUI offender would probably have a strong opinion on this. At some point, it is indeed necessary and appropriate to write offenders off as hopeless.