2 ms·

3. Never levy a punishment greater than the harm of the offense. Incentivise hard-to-prove offenses that benefit the offender as much as they harm the victim (

• logfromblammo 10y ago
  Punishment is distinct from restitution. If a thief takes your MacGuffin, and gets caught, he must return it to you to make you whole, and then might also be required to forfeit an amount up to its value as punishment for thievery. At the point when the cops nab him, it may appear that he stands to lose double what he stole, but that's only because what he stole never belonged to him in the first place. This is why "treble damages" are a big deal, as 3 times the provable harm goes beyond what Lex Talionis normally allows. If you steal a loaf of bread and get sentenced to 20 years in the galleys (like Jean Valjean in Les Miserables), that is quite clearly an unethical punishment. Simple restitution would mandate that the thief produce no more than one loaf to make the baker whole, and Lex Talionis would mandate that if the punishment were not to produce another loaf of bread, it should still need to be a tenth the magnitude of the punishment for someone caught stealing ten loaves of bread, and that in turn would be a thousandth the magnitude of the punishment for someone caught stealing a car.