Blame it on plea bargaining. Prosecutors offer plea bargains to keep the conveyor belt running.
It’s simply a RACIAL THING in the cities. As long as you have judges that continue to equate jail with ‘slavery’, the youths simply will not get punished. It got SO BAD in New Orleans, that Jindal had to use state judges to take over cases.
That is the reason that there are MANDATORY sentencing laws in many jurisdictions and why this FReeper supports those laws, unlike many others on this site.