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Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

In Britain under the Bloody Code, you could (and would) be hanged, or deported for the most trivial offences. The prevailing view was very much of the pour encourager les autres mould.

Steal items worth 12 pence? Hanged. Lesser amount? Cut a hand off. If lucky, commuted and deported for indentured servitude in the colonies. Treason? Hanged, drawn and quartered.

As we remember from history classes, stealing, murder and other crime ceased to exist by the 17th century. Oh, hang on a minute. It was so ineffective that juries started nullifying and deliberately under-valuing property to avoid the incessant death penalties. It was just yet another means to oppress the lower orders. Unsurprisingly much of the 18th century consisted of successive legal reforms.

What works? Not prisons, not punishment, but rehabilitation. proven time and time and time again. Not very popular with the hang 'em and flog 'em types on the right though.

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> Not very popular with the hang 'em and flog 'em types on the right though.

And the left. Tough on crime gets any politician elected.

> What works? Not prisons, not punishment, but rehabilitation.

Prisons & harsh punishment seems to work quite well in Singapore; they have one of the lowest crime rate in the world.

Punishment (discipline) works as long as their is a chance to reform. A child or anyone for that matter, will think twice before putting his hand to the flame, but only if they have the option not to. Society in the U.S. does not offer many options for the ex-criminal to live an honest life, which I suppose, is where your idea of rehabilitation fits. Let's not pretend that nature, the ultimate punisher, fails to teach. Sticks and carrots are both effective ways of driving a horse.

The US and the UK (or even Australia) are more appropriate comparisons of countries than the US and Norway as a result of legal systems based on common law.

It makes a difference when comparing justice systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Legal_systems_...

Your “if lucky” was, iirc, the much more frequent outcome. Now in the US if you come to the attention of a prosecutor, you get threatened with decades of prison in order to be plea-bargained down to something less horrendous. Formally these codes are very different, but the substance in both is people kept in line by dire threats that are mostly just held in reserve.

Actually it mostly wasn't. It eventually became the more frequent outcome at the end of the 17th century, as the profession - like juries - signalled their dissatisfaction with the laws. There were something ridiculous like 200 capital offences.

It was laws falling into disrepute with both the profession and juries, and transportation becoming the majority that led to much of the 18th century legal reforms that removed nearly all the capital offences.

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