23 year old gets 23 years. Go figure.

What do you say to a 23 year old client who gets sentenced to 23 years in prison?
It could have been worse. or You'll still be younger than me when you get out. or Maybe they'll change the 85% rule to 65% and instead of 19.5 years you'll only serve 15 years.
How do we justify a 23 sentence for a 23 year old?
This sentence will deter others. or This shows that we don't tolerate killing. or Next time, I bet you'll think before getting a gun?

All too frequent murder case. Bouncer kicks client out for something client didn't do, disrespects client, client gets gun and kills bouncer, another gunslinger shoots client in the balls.
Bouncer has wife, family, friends -- absolutely no sense in killing.
Client has strong family, many friends -- absolutely not in character to kill.
Sister of victim asks for forgiveness. Client apologizes (genuinely) to victim's family.
Plea agreement to a range of 10 to 23 years and Judge Youngs gives 23 years. (Might have to rethink pleading to a lid in Division 6.)

We spend a bazillion dollars on locking people up, but no one asks (and certainly doesn't attempt to answer) a pretty important question: How much time should we make someone spend in prison?
You would think that an informed answer to this question would be somewhat important. Each year we lock someone up, we taxpayers chip in about $25,000.00. As of June 2008, there were 2,310,984 people in prisons and jails. That comes to about $57,774,600,000.00 per year. $57 Billion dollars still seems like a lot to me.
Back in the day, people were interested in important things like recidivism (the liklihood that someone would re-offend), rehabilitation (hey-most are getting out some day), deterrence (how much punishment deters others), and other such things.
No more. Lock 'em up.
But for how long?
If, for example, we lock people up for a year more than is "necessary" then we've made a multi-billion dollar boo boo. Of course, maybe we should lock them up longer, but this lock-em-up-and throw-away-the-key approach doesn't seem to have been very effective over the past 30-40 years.