4 ms·

The main question isn't "Is the prospect of jail a deterrent", but "Is the prospect of 10 yrs in jail more of a deterrent than the prospect of 1 year in jail".

• mr_toad 9y ago
  That was not the question I was responding to, which made no reference to the length of sentences. It argued that prisons were not an effective deterrent (i.e.: at all), moreover there seems to be a school of thought that we should never punish crime, at all. I said nothing about adding ten years to sentence lengths. I don’t know, and don’t claim to know what the optimal length of sentence (or other punishment) is, except that it is not zero.