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> 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 suppo

> 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.
- libertymcateer 10y ago
  > But given the lack of clear answers, I'd much rather err on the side of preventing victimization. In America, we have historically low crime rates and historically low violent crime rates. Simultaneously, we have an insane crisis of prison overpopulation that leads into multi-generational cycles of poverty. I too would rather err on the side of preventing victimization. Right now, from where I sit, over-criminalization is a bigger problem than violent crime.

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.

libertymcateer 10y ago
> But given the lack of clear answers, I'd much rather err on the side of preventing victimization. In America, we have historically low crime rates and historically low violent crime rates. Simultaneously, we have an insane crisis of prison overpopulation that leads into multi-generational cycles of poverty. I too would rather err on the side of preventing victimization. Right now, from where I sit, over-criminalization is a bigger problem than violent crime.