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> If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the

> If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder. I agree with the direction of your analysis, but I don't think this part is true. Recidivism is really high, especially in more 'punishment' oriented criminal justice systems. I think if you took your argument to its conclusion, you would probably look at systemic causes of murder, since agent-oriented approaches are so demonstrably ineffective.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
I think this is a consequence of living in a society with a mostly effective justice system. If you have a law against larceny which is vigoriously enforced with proportionate penalties, it's going to deter a lot of thefts. But none of the thieves it does deter can show in your recidivism stats, because none of those people commit any thefts. It's only the people who are desperate or irrational who steal when it means going to jail for it. And if you put that set of people in jail for a while and let them back out into a situation where they're exactly as desperate or irrational as they were before, it's no surprise you see a high recidivism rate in that population, and the only way to prevent those thefts is to remove the desperation or address whatever e.g. mental illness or drug addiction is causing the irrationality. This is also why disproportionate penalties don't really reduce crime. Because anyone doing the math even remotely accurately will be deterred by proportionate penalties, and anyone not doing the math at all won't be deterred by any penalties, and that doesn't leave a lot of people who can only be deterred by disproportionate penalties. But that's a different thing than saying there shouldn't be a law against murder or theft at all because punishment is totally ineffective. It's only ineffective against the people it was ineffective against to begin with, who are only a small percentage of the population.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I like your argument, but I think it's specious. Unless you can show some evidence that in the absence of deterrence, ordinarily law-abiding citizens commit crimes massively more frequently (for instance, when it's very unlikely they get caught), then you're just chalking up every non-crime-committing citizen up to 'deterrence' without demonstrating any causal relationship. I think the relevant data would be crimes that were at one point very common, and are now not. Some things, like forgery, became prohibitively technically difficult. Others, like corruption in public offices, are basically inversely related to pay and pensions for public servants. I could see how vigorous enforcement would make crime more unattractive, since it's a given crime is likely to work out, but I don't think this would always be more economical than simply providing stuff like pensions and benefits so people have social investment they don't want to lose.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    That's going to depend a lot on what the offense is. If you pass a law against suicide, the impact that has on the suicide rate is likely to be negligible, because most people don't have any interest in suicide to begin with and the people who do are not likely to be deterred by the prospect of criminal penalties. But you can certainly find a lot of instances of things that a lot of people did before there was a law against it (e.g. polluting rivers) which now far fewer people do precisely because there is now a law against it.
    - pasabagi 7y ago
      I think pollution is a bit of a strange case, since it isn't typically directed at individuals, but rather firms, and in cases where such laws are not enforced they're typically universally ignored. Firms are funny because they're both highly invested in society, generally very rational (in a narrow sense), and generally not particularly interested in ethics. I think that's pretty much the opposite profile to your typical criminal. I'm not in any case saying that such causal relationships don't exist: just that they only exist in a subset of crimes, and probably aren't major drivers in the really interesting ones (theft, violent crime, organized crime, etc).

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

I think this is a consequence of living in a society with a mostly effective justice system. If you have a law against larceny which is vigoriously enforced with proportionate penalties, it's going to deter a lot of thefts. But none of the thieves it does deter can show in your recidivism stats, because none of those people commit any thefts. It's only the people who are desperate or irrational who steal when it means going to jail for it. And if you put that set of people in jail for a while and let them back out into a situation where they're exactly as desperate or irrational as they were before, it's no surprise you see a high recidivism rate in that population, and the only way to prevent those thefts is to remove the desperation or address whatever e.g. mental illness or drug addiction is causing the irrationality. This is also why disproportionate penalties don't really reduce crime. Because anyone doing the math even remotely accurately will be deterred by proportionate penalties, and anyone not doing the math at all won't be deterred by any penalties, and that doesn't leave a lot of people who can only be deterred by disproportionate penalties. But that's a different thing than saying there shouldn't be a law against murder or theft at all because punishment is totally ineffective. It's only ineffective against the people it was ineffective against to begin with, who are only a small percentage of the population.

pasabagi 7y ago
I like your argument, but I think it's specious. Unless you can show some evidence that in the absence of deterrence, ordinarily law-abiding citizens commit crimes massively more frequently (for instance, when it's very unlikely they get caught), then you're just chalking up every non-crime-committing citizen up to 'deterrence' without demonstrating any causal relationship. I think the relevant data would be crimes that were at one point very common, and are now not. Some things, like forgery, became prohibitively technically difficult. Others, like corruption in public offices, are basically inversely related to pay and pensions for public servants. I could see how vigorous enforcement would make crime more unattractive, since it's a given crime is likely to work out, but I don't think this would always be more economical than simply providing stuff like pensions and benefits so people have social investment they don't want to lose.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  That's going to depend a lot on what the offense is. If you pass a law against suicide, the impact that has on the suicide rate is likely to be negligible, because most people don't have any interest in suicide to begin with and the people who do are not likely to be deterred by the prospect of criminal penalties. But you can certainly find a lot of instances of things that a lot of people did before there was a law against it (e.g. polluting rivers) which now far fewer people do precisely because there is now a law against it.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    I think pollution is a bit of a strange case, since it isn't typically directed at individuals, but rather firms, and in cases where such laws are not enforced they're typically universally ignored. Firms are funny because they're both highly invested in society, generally very rational (in a narrow sense), and generally not particularly interested in ethics. I think that's pretty much the opposite profile to your typical criminal. I'm not in any case saying that such causal relationships don't exist: just that they only exist in a subset of crimes, and probably aren't major drivers in the really interesting ones (theft, violent crime, organized crime, etc).