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I recognise that what I'm going to say next will be very unpopular on HN. Harsh punishments work exceedingly well as a deterrent. Harsh punishments make other p

by whack 10y ago

I recognise that what I'm going to say next will be very unpopular on HN. Harsh punishments work exceedingly well as a deterrent. Harsh punishments make other prospective law breakers think twice before harming innocent people. I can agree with the notion that petty criminals deserve second chances, but what this guy did isn't petty at all. If even one innocent person is spared the ordeal of victimization, then harsh punishments are well worth the costs.

watwut 10y ago
Most criminals don't do calculated risks and inability to integrate back to society (e.g. find job) makes one more likely to commit crime again. USA does not have lower criminality rates then other western countries.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Not really, especially when they're not applied consistently. "Harsh punishments" are disproportionately applied to the poor, which in turn increases recidivism when they feel they have no other option.
maxerickson 10y ago
The United States Department of Justice disagrees with you: https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx (NIJ is research arm of the DOJ)
freehunter 10y ago
Our overcrowded prisons and high prisoner-per-capita rate stands as one piece of evidence against that. We keep throwing people in jail for long periods of time, but people keep committing crimes and former criminals keep committing crimes again at a higher rate than other countries whose criminal justice programs focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment. In fact, the ability for ex-convicts to get jobs after they're released is associated with lower rates of recidivism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Employment_and_recidivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Employment_and_reci...) You say that your comment will be very unpopular with HN, but it seems to me that it's actually very unpopular with facts and statistics.
dzdt 10y ago
Evidence please? All the research I have seen suggests harsh punishments do little to deter crime. See e.g. this National Institute of Justice page as a jumping-off point: https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx
abakker 10y ago
People who commit crimes rarely believe they will be caught, and as a result weight that conditional probability differently than an ideal reasoner might expect them to. If you believe your chance of being caught is 0% then the punishment is not a deterrent. Alternatively, if you are desperate, even if that chance is not 0% and you know it, it might still be worth it (say you're desperate because you have a previous felony conviction and now can't support yourself). Now, one of the hard things to measure, is whether the sentences does deter everybody who doesn't commit crimes. I assume that there are crimes you and I have had the opportunity to commit, but weighed the odds of being caught and decided that the outcomes from committing the crimes were not worth it. It's difficult to measure that, but it's also not very useful, because it is hard to say whether the deterrent came from the punishment, or from the fact that it was lawbreaking in the first place, or that the label of "felon" is risky enough given the known outcomes. In the place I'd argue we want the most deterrence - violent crime - our harshest punishment seems to have no real deterrent value. (I would be interested to see a review of this using more modern statistical / ML techniques to examine the data, though). https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/JLpaper.pdf https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articl...
ajmarsh 10y ago
I'd almost be on board with harsher punishments except for the fact that almost everything is a felony these days. In the US anyway.
emidln 10y ago
Do harsh punishments do anything other than slightly affect the expected value calculation for a sociopath? For the majority of people, the reason they don't commit arbitrary crimes is a feeling that it would be wrong. I don't kill people because I might get 25 to life. I don't kill people because killing is wrong. When I look at crimes of passion or necessity, these cannot be stopped by harsh penalties. A fit of jealous rage doesn't consider the prison term. Hunger won't stop theft. The only place harsh punishments could stand to be effective are crimes which have no moral component. For such crimes ALL persons make an expected value calculation, like a sociopath makes for crimes than an ordinary person would consider immoral.
libertymcateer 10y ago
> Harsh punishments work exceedingly well as a deterrent. That is an enormous claim and there are reams of research on this topic - your assertion is not supported. It doesn't even stand up to the most cursory scrutiny - if it were true, then societies and states with harsh punishment would have lower crime - and this is very, very, very obviously not the case. https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-in-question/201509/harsh-justice https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-in-question/2015... http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Deterrence-in-Criminal-Justice.pdf http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/... https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduce-crime/ https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduc... tl;dr Social norms, accepted membership in 'legal' society and education are the best ways to deter crime, followed by certainty of punishment - not its severity. The reason people commit crimes is, in rough order, usually out of desperation, social norms that lead them to believe the prohibited act should be acceptable or ignorance of the knowledge that the prohibited act is illegal, for greed, and, lastly, then for the sheer thrill of it. Severity of punishment doesn't act as a good deterrent for any of those categories - certainty of punishment acts as a deterrent for the latter two, but for the first two, desperation and ignorance, are fairly well inoculated against rational counsel. Before you start arguing the philosophy regarding merits of punishment v. deterrence, I am going to put it bluntly: the claim at issue - that severity of punishment is a deterrent for crime - is an evidentiary claim and it cannot be proven from first principle. It must be supported evidence, and as far as I can tell, the numbers are in, and they do not appear to be on your side. Unless you have studies that support your conclusion, the philosophy is totally irrelevant.
- whack 10y ago
  You've clearly spent some time looking up links to support your cause, so it's unfortunate that you've cherry picked only the ones that support your beliefs. Here are some others that say the opposite. "Sentence Enhancements Reduce Crime" http://www.nber.org/digest/oct98/w6484.html http://www.nber.org/digest/oct98/w6484.html "Longer prison sentences deter re-offending, study shows" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8504923/Longer-prison-sentences-deter-re-offending-study-shows.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8504923... Longer sentences deter crime up to a point http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2016/03/criminal-justice http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2016/03/criminal... "Longer prison terms really do cut crime, study shows" https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/07/longer-prison-sentences-cut-crime https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/07/longer-prison-se... "the average add-on gun law results in a roughly 5 percent decline in gun robberies within the first three years" https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/dabrams/workingpapers/Deterrence12312011.pdf https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/dabrams/workingpapers/D... Note also that 2 of the 4 links you provided are comparing certainty-of-punishment vs harshness-of-punishment. This is a false dichotomy. There's no reason you can't have both. Having harsh punishment doesn't reduce the certainty of punishment in any way. Is there a lot of contentious debate on this topic, and a lack of consensus on this topic? Of course. But given the lack of clear answers, I'd much rather err on the side of preventing victimization.
ska 10y ago
Harsh punishments work exceedingly well as a deterrent. Assumes facts not in evidence.

by whack 10y ago

watwut 10y ago

Most criminals don't do calculated risks and inability to integrate back to society (e.g. find job) makes one more likely to commit crime again. USA does not have lower criminality rates then other western countries.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

Not really, especially when they're not applied consistently. "Harsh punishments" are disproportionately applied to the poor, which in turn increases recidivism when they feel they have no other option.

maxerickson 10y ago

The United States Department of Justice disagrees with you: https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx (NIJ is research arm of the DOJ)

freehunter 10y ago

Our overcrowded prisons and high prisoner-per-capita rate stands as one piece of evidence against that. We keep throwing people in jail for long periods of time, but people keep committing crimes and former criminals keep committing crimes again at a higher rate than other countries whose criminal justice programs focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment. In fact, the ability for ex-convicts to get jobs after they're released is associated with lower rates of recidivism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Employment_and_recidivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism#Employment_and_reci...) You say that your comment will be very unpopular with HN, but it seems to me that it's actually very unpopular with facts and statistics.

dzdt 10y ago

Evidence please? All the research I have seen suggests harsh punishments do little to deter crime. See e.g. this National Institute of Justice page as a jumping-off point: https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx

abakker 10y ago

People who commit crimes rarely believe they will be caught, and as a result weight that conditional probability differently than an ideal reasoner might expect them to. If you believe your chance of being caught is 0% then the punishment is not a deterrent. Alternatively, if you are desperate, even if that chance is not 0% and you know it, it might still be worth it (say you're desperate because you have a previous felony conviction and now can't support yourself). Now, one of the hard things to measure, is whether the sentences does deter everybody who doesn't commit crimes. I assume that there are crimes you and I have had the opportunity to commit, but weighed the odds of being caught and decided that the outcomes from committing the crimes were not worth it. It's difficult to measure that, but it's also not very useful, because it is hard to say whether the deterrent came from the punishment, or from the fact that it was lawbreaking in the first place, or that the label of "felon" is risky enough given the known outcomes. In the place I'd argue we want the most deterrence - violent crime - our harshest punishment seems to have no real deterrent value. (I would be interested to see a review of this using more modern statistical / ML techniques to examine the data, though). https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/JLpaper.pdf https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articl...

ajmarsh 10y ago

I'd almost be on board with harsher punishments except for the fact that almost everything is a felony these days. In the US anyway.

emidln 10y ago

Do harsh punishments do anything other than slightly affect the expected value calculation for a sociopath? For the majority of people, the reason they don't commit arbitrary crimes is a feeling that it would be wrong. I don't kill people because I might get 25 to life. I don't kill people because killing is wrong. When I look at crimes of passion or necessity, these cannot be stopped by harsh penalties. A fit of jealous rage doesn't consider the prison term. Hunger won't stop theft. The only place harsh punishments could stand to be effective are crimes which have no moral component. For such crimes ALL persons make an expected value calculation, like a sociopath makes for crimes than an ordinary person would consider immoral.

libertymcateer 10y ago

> Harsh punishments work exceedingly well as a deterrent. That is an enormous claim and there are reams of research on this topic - your assertion is not supported. It doesn't even stand up to the most cursory scrutiny - if it were true, then societies and states with harsh punishment would have lower crime - and this is very, very, very obviously not the case. https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-in-question/201509/harsh-justice https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-in-question/2015... http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Deterrence-in-Criminal-Justice.pdf http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/... https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduce-crime/ https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduc... tl;dr Social norms, accepted membership in 'legal' society and education are the best ways to deter crime, followed by certainty of punishment - not its severity. The reason people commit crimes is, in rough order, usually out of desperation, social norms that lead them to believe the prohibited act should be acceptable or ignorance of the knowledge that the prohibited act is illegal, for greed, and, lastly, then for the sheer thrill of it. Severity of punishment doesn't act as a good deterrent for any of those categories - certainty of punishment acts as a deterrent for the latter two, but for the first two, desperation and ignorance, are fairly well inoculated against rational counsel. Before you start arguing the philosophy regarding merits of punishment v. deterrence, I am going to put it bluntly: the claim at issue - that severity of punishment is a deterrent for crime - is an evidentiary claim and it cannot be proven from first principle. It must be supported evidence, and as far as I can tell, the numbers are in, and they do not appear to be on your side. Unless you have studies that support your conclusion, the philosophy is totally irrelevant.

whack 10y ago
You've clearly spent some time looking up links to support your cause, so it's unfortunate that you've cherry picked only the ones that support your beliefs. Here are some others that say the opposite. "Sentence Enhancements Reduce Crime" http://www.nber.org/digest/oct98/w6484.html http://www.nber.org/digest/oct98/w6484.html "Longer prison sentences deter re-offending, study shows" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8504923/Longer-prison-sentences-deter-re-offending-study-shows.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8504923... Longer sentences deter crime up to a point http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2016/03/criminal-justice http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2016/03/criminal... "Longer prison terms really do cut crime, study shows" https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/07/longer-prison-sentences-cut-crime https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/07/longer-prison-se... "the average add-on gun law results in a roughly 5 percent decline in gun robberies within the first three years" https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/dabrams/workingpapers/Deterrence12312011.pdf https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/dabrams/workingpapers/D... Note also that 2 of the 4 links you provided are comparing certainty-of-punishment vs harshness-of-punishment. This is a false dichotomy. There's no reason you can't have both. Having harsh punishment doesn't reduce the certainty of punishment in any way. Is there a lot of contentious debate on this topic, and a lack of consensus on this topic? Of course. But given the lack of clear answers, I'd much rather err on the side of preventing victimization.

ska 10y ago

Harsh punishments work exceedingly well as a deterrent. Assumes facts not in evidence.