3 ms·

Do you think punishment is an ineffective deterrent?

tombert 3y ago
I do not think punishment is a good deterrent, no; I think the data more or less says that as well. If you look at Scandinavia, where they generally have a much higher emphasis on reform instead of "punishment for punishment's sake", and they also have a substantially lower recidivism rate compared to the US. Now obviously, I'll fully acknowledge that it's not completely apples to apples; there almost certainly a million differences between the US and Scandinavia that contribute to differences in crime statistics, but I think it does demonstrate that reducing emphasis on punishment doesn't turn the world into this post apocalyptic dystopia.
- throttlebody 3y ago
  You better have another look a the Swedish gang murder rate, it's staggering (in Swedish terms). The world is changing.....
  - InitialLastName 3y ago
    From [0]: > More than 60 people died in shootings last year in Sweden, the highest figure on record. This may be a lot of people for Sweden (~0.5 death per ~100K people); it's not a lot of people in the general sense. Per [1], 19,000 people died from gun homicides in the US in the same year (5 per 100K people). Not exactly a sign that Sweden's system is failing relative to the US. [0] https://apnews.com/article/sweden-shooting-explosion-deadliest-9fd423ed2aaec4ecff2c885f8c48ed55 https://apnews.com/article/sweden-shooting-explosion-deadlie... [1] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/cdc-provisional-data-gun-suicides-reach-all-time-high-in-2022-gun-homicides-down-slightly-from-2021 https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/cdc-provisional-data-gun-s...
    - Kiro 3y ago
      I can assure you that every single Swede agrees that it's failing. People are horrified at what's happening. Anyway, bringing up Scandinavia as one unit doesn't work anymore when there's such a big difference between Sweden and for example Norway where restorative justice is still successful.
    - jjtheblunt 3y ago
      probably have to look at the first derivative or second derivative of murders wrt time to get a sense for how people perceive the change?
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > they also have a substantially lower recidivism rate compared to the US. How sure are you of that? It's easy to get lost in the weeds, but looking at similar timelines and similar definitions of what constitutes recidivism, the US compares favorably to Sweden [0]. Worth noting is that the data is very noisy. You'd expect that recidivism would be monotonically increasing with years post-conviction, but it varies quite a bit year by year so this is not what the statistics show. This noise also makes it pretty easy to cherry pick numbers to suit your argument. [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivism-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivis...
- Kiro 3y ago
  This is from today: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nio-av-tio-gangkriminella-aterfaller-i-brott https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nio-av-tio-gangkriminella... 90% recidivism rate. Scandinavia is not a success story anymore.

I do not think punishment is a good deterrent, no; I think the data more or less says that as well. If you look at Scandinavia, where they generally have a much higher emphasis on reform instead of "punishment for punishment's sake", and they also have a substantially lower recidivism rate compared to the US. Now obviously, I'll fully acknowledge that it's not completely apples to apples; there almost certainly a million differences between the US and Scandinavia that contribute to differences in crime statistics, but I think it does demonstrate that reducing emphasis on punishment doesn't turn the world into this post apocalyptic dystopia.

throttlebody 3y ago
You better have another look a the Swedish gang murder rate, it's staggering (in Swedish terms). The world is changing.....
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  From [0]: > More than 60 people died in shootings last year in Sweden, the highest figure on record. This may be a lot of people for Sweden (~0.5 death per ~100K people); it's not a lot of people in the general sense. Per [1], 19,000 people died from gun homicides in the US in the same year (5 per 100K people). Not exactly a sign that Sweden's system is failing relative to the US. [0] https://apnews.com/article/sweden-shooting-explosion-deadliest-9fd423ed2aaec4ecff2c885f8c48ed55 https://apnews.com/article/sweden-shooting-explosion-deadlie... [1] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/cdc-provisional-data-gun-suicides-reach-all-time-high-in-2022-gun-homicides-down-slightly-from-2021 https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/cdc-provisional-data-gun-s...
  - Kiro 3y ago
    I can assure you that every single Swede agrees that it's failing. People are horrified at what's happening. Anyway, bringing up Scandinavia as one unit doesn't work anymore when there's such a big difference between Sweden and for example Norway where restorative justice is still successful.
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    probably have to look at the first derivative or second derivative of murders wrt time to get a sense for how people perceive the change?
rootusrootus 3y ago
> they also have a substantially lower recidivism rate compared to the US. How sure are you of that? It's easy to get lost in the weeds, but looking at similar timelines and similar definitions of what constitutes recidivism, the US compares favorably to Sweden [0]. Worth noting is that the data is very noisy. You'd expect that recidivism would be monotonically increasing with years post-conviction, but it varies quite a bit year by year so this is not what the statistics show. This noise also makes it pretty easy to cherry pick numbers to suit your argument. [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivism-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivis...
Kiro 3y ago
This is from today: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nio-av-tio-gangkriminella-aterfaller-i-brott https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nio-av-tio-gangkriminella... 90% recidivism rate. Scandinavia is not a success story anymore.