Shooting people you've thrown out on the street, making them destitute and well more likely to commit crimes? I don't know, seems like the ol' Catch-22.
It's not actually that complicated. While I do advocate ending welfare, I do not advocate enforced labor. You give them the choice of doing for themselves and if they cannot or choose not to, then they have a place to go where their basic needs are provided for. No one forces them to go, if they choose to starve on the street, then I guess we will need to hire people to remove their bodies. Oh well, their choice. You don't actually force them into anything, you give them choices and let them choose. Of course, most people would choose working on a farm or other project to starving to death on the street.
As to controlling crime, that is not very difficult, it is a binary set really. If you do x then you will receive y, if y is undesirable enough, then you won't do x. Look at total crime statistics (
Total crimes statistics - countries compared - NationMaster Crime) you'll notice that the countries with the harshest penalties trend towards the bottom while those that are more lenient trend towards the top, it is not really unpredictable or suprising that the US is at the top of that list. Rober A. Heinlein in Starship Troopers pretty much predicted it back in 1959.
"I do not understand objections to 'cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment--and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism?...As for 'unusual,' punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose...Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense...We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind...What is 'moral sense'? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. This truth is mathematically demonstrable, everywhere verifiable; it is the single eternal imperative controlling everthing we do." -- Robert A. Heinlein, excerpted from Starship Troopers.
Maybe you don't think his theory is right, but I do. So instead of being lenient on these individuals at the cost to society and mankind as a whole, I believe they should be given choices directly related to their survival instincts, if they make the wrong choice, oh well, society and mankind as a whole benefits from not carrying on that individuals traits and allowing them to infect greater numbers of people. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"--Spock from Star Trek II, the Wrath of Kahn. So when you consider if something is humane, is it humane to the individual at the cost of society? Mankind will continue and survive, probably, but all individuals die eventually, society and the future of mankind are the many, it's needs must outweigh the needs of the individual.