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Tautology - People who are effectively deterred from committing crimes do not commit crimes. The system may be very effective at deterring many would-be crimin
by singlow 9y ago
Tautology - People who are effectively deterred from committing crimes do not commit crimes.
The system may be very effective at deterring many would-be criminals. Any system will be ineffective against some subset and so this statement would still apply.
Under any system, most crime will be committed by those whom that system does not effectively deter.
- splitrocket 9y agoYes, true. So, in order to improve the system and reduce crime, you need to understand those who are currently not effectively deterred. More of the same is not going to work if you hope to improve outcomes.
- Anon1096 9y agoBut you don't want people who currently aren't committing crimes to begin doing so. Who's to say that the current deterred subset of the population won't begin to commit crimes if our style of punishment is changed?
- anigbrowl 9y agoThat seems to start from the assumption that everyone would commit crime if they could.
- oddlyaromatic 9y agoThey specifically referred to the "deterred subset" ... which is much smaller then "everyone". In any case, the parent's point seemed pretty empty. > Who's to say that the current deterred subset of the population won't begin to commit crimes if our style of punishment is changed? This is what research is for. We may never know what is optimal in an absolute sense, but we can figure out some relative costs/benefits of different approaches to problems and choose our tradeoffs appropriately.
- WhitneyLand 9y agoBeautifully parsed and simplified.
- enraged_camel 9y agoBut this only applies to premeditated crimes, where the system is a factor that goes into deciding whether to commit the crime. Crimes of passion (i.e. many violent crimes, especially) don't take the system and its deterrents into account.