Per the National Institute of Justice, "The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment." As a dramatic overgeneralizatio

Per the National Institute of Justice, "The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment." As a dramatic overgeneralization of the principle, you'll have fewer thefts if every thief is forced to pay for their stolen goods than if 1% of thieves are tortured to death on live television. It suggests that lowering expenditures on prisons, by reducing sentences, and retargeting that money toward enforcement would yield positive effects. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...