Perhaps it would be as simple as making punishment scale with the number or recurrences? Maybe not even linearly. Not necessarily in a "received 4 counts of xy

Perhaps it would be as simple as making punishment scale with the number or recurrences? Maybe not even linearly. Not necessarily in a "received 4 counts of xyz" situation, but maybe increasing punishment nonlinearly in situations like "received a 4th count of xyz in the past 10 years". Chronologically/temporally separate incident #4 should carry more weight than #1, since the offender probably should've learned their lesson after #2.