Vas, could you fix the quote close? It's messing up your post.
Anyways:
Historically that has not happened. IIRC it's probably unconstitutional to deny benefits to someone who has not committed welfare fraud - see drug users.
It's not denying them when you're making the entire system more stingy/frugal with it's benefits.
Like many others, you assume the fallacy that the only crime that individual is going to commit is the theft of one car. There is a concept known as "theft days". It's the number of days per time period that a person is engaged in any criminal activity. Back 15 or so years ago the national average was 295 crime days per year. Look up the number of cars stolen before the average car thief gets caught. You have to account for all of those as well as the one they were caught and convicted of, plus all the other criminal behaviour they engage in.
Actually, you only assumed that I fell for that fallacy. I don't. I'm certainly not assuming 100% catch rates. I'm fully aware that an active criminal on the loose is much more expensive than one that's locked up, even if they only commit relatively 'petty' crimes.
Like I said earlier, I have no problems with putting an active criminal into prison/jail. The difference is that I believe that we can do a heck of a lot more to prevent creating new criminals, hardening the ones we have, as well as rehabilitating them.
And I will use the word 'rehabilitate' because they're like a dog that's learned to *expletive deleted*it in the house - they were habilitated wrong, so we gotta go in and fix the initial training.
It has been shown to be the most effective answer.
Not really. Or perhaps it'd be better to say that we should keep seeking better answers.
I've seen examples of all sorts of successful reform programs. Perhaps the answer isn't a 'one size fits all' solution, but a series of them, tailored to what's wrong with the individual.
Oh, and dirty little secret about the Norwegians and their limited sentences: If you're determined to still be a threat after your sentence is up, it's straight into a psych facility for 'further treatment'. It's a life sentence in all but name. You need not even have been found guilty of a crime 'worthy' of life in prison in the USA. A group of people simply have to sign off that they have valid reason to believe you're a threat to others requiring continued restriction of freedom.
Finding rehab success studies will require some work I can't do at the moment, sorry. I don't have links handy.