Problem: Reply to this student: Central to reducing our prison population without endangering the community is a shift away from Retribution and toward Restorative Justice & Evidence-Based Risk Assessment. Prison has too frequently been used as a catch-all punishment for crime and has done little to deter crime - prison can be a "school for crime." (Cullen & Jonson, 2016) I believe we should eliminate mandatory minimums for drug crimes and allow judges to use their own discretion while creating avenues for community-based treatment/rehabilitation. Utilitarianism is the ethical framework that promotes doing whatever will produce the most good for the most amount of people. Lengthy sentences for property crimes/low-level offenders pull funds from police and community services that could provide more direct relief to safety concerns ($30,000-$60,000 per inmate/year) (Clear, 2007). I would advocate for restorative justice victim-offender mediation to replace prison sentences for property and moderate offenses. Restorative Justice centers around the idea of "repairing the harm" that crime causes instead of simply punishing the offender. (Zehr, 2015) Not only does Restorative Justice result in higher satisfaction rates for victims and lower recidivism rates when compared to court punishments, but also allowing offenders to literally see the consequence of their crimes and make amends serves a very Just purpose. This can be tied to Virtue Ethics because we are teaching the offenders to have. Need Assignment Help?