Fugitive on run for seventeen years found living in cave by a drone

> So if there was no threat of punishment you would become a murderous, thieving, drug user?

Many years ago I worked in a startup, as it turns out the primary owner of the business is what a typical person would likely consider a con-man. I have a rolodex filled with people who were harmed by this man's lies.

Good luck seeking justice if you don't have a bank-roll to fund a strong lawsuit.

I've long since let it go, but for a solid year or so I was consumed by hatred for this man and very much would've loved to take a tire-iron to this man's knees. Some of the other people hurt are close personal friends, I can say with certainty that I'm not the only one who wanted retribution. These people also have family / relationships, some amount of wealth, opportunity, etc.

As it turns out, the risking non-trivial amounts of time in prison serves a deterrent for certain classes of individual. People with something to lose. That, statistically, it doesn't quite appear to serve the purpose should make you question the circumstances, the incentives at play as relates to the people committing those crimes.

Do be cautions when drawing black-and-white conclusions from statistics.

The GP is talking about a bartender refusing to allow drinks to be taken outside. I think it’s fair to say that if there was no threat of the bartender getting in trouble, the GP could have walked outside with the drink, no problem.

This argument can be extended to cover murder, theft, drug use and any other crimes you might think of by examining people’s value systems. I think we can all agree that murder is against most people’s values but you can’t say it’s universal. Some people are okay with murder in different circumstances but they may not necessarily be psychopaths who crave murder to the detriment of all else. It’s these people that I think may be deterred by the threat of punishment for murder.

Furthermore, to complicate matters a little bit, there is the principle of marginal deterrence. If the punishment for murder is much more severe than for burglary, for example, you can expect a burglar to think twice before deciding to murder the home owner during a break-in. If, on the other hand, you punish stealing with the same severe penalty as murder (say, death penalty for either crime) then you risk incentivizing the burglar to murder anyone who might be a witness to the burglary.

Ultimately, I think the soundness of the principle of punishment as a deterrent derives not from the assumption that everyone has the same values (we don’t) but from the differences in everyone’s values. This helps society produce an outcome that would not otherwise be achievable if we required 100% consensus on every individual value.

No, but I'd happily bring a bottle of beer along with me while I walk the dogs through a park.

I have my personal set of ethics/morals. Murder and theft are not allowed by those. The laws in Canada line up pretty close to these ethics, but not perfectly. The threat of punishment is what stops me from doing stuff in the "does no harm to anyone" category where the laws and my ethics disagree.

Most people probably wouldn't choose that just because the option would now be available. They might also fear the now legal extra-judicial punishment available to friends/families of victims.

I know a lot more people would park in handicap spaces if the fines were made optional. Speeding is another good example where people literally slow down when they see someone capable of punishing them.

If you need an engineering analogy, think of it as defence in depth. Punishment is part of a package of measures that seek to reduce criminality. Doesn’t stop everybody, and it’s not the only thing that stops anybody.

The main flaw in your argument is that not all repercussions are legal.

Would I try heroin if there were no negative consequences? I'd certainly be less averse.

black and white is not usually an effective model for the world. I don't think I would become a "murderous, thieving, drug user", but I would probably take parking rules a lot less seriously. I might fly my drone places where it's not allowed. I'd probably get a really loud exhaust for my car too.

This is absurd. Something can work in some cases for some people and yet not in all cases. It's not a matter of always working or never working.

There's a line of thought I keep seeing in this thread: a purpose of imprisonment is deterrence by punishment. people still commit crimes. therefore deterrence by punishment doesn't work. therefore prisons should be replaced with free-range daycare for adults.

You don't have to like the idea of restricting someone's freedom. But would you rather that a violent offender be in prison and unable to cause further harm? I would.

And by your ridiculous standards, crime in Sweden should be going down, yet it is booming. The rate of sex crimes alone has tripled since 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden

The reason we use "deterrent" instead of "prevention" is that we understand that punishment cannot prevent all the crime. Some people will not be deterred by a threat of punishment.

If you entertain such a possibility then it is easy to see that the system with ideal deterrence (i.e. it detters everyone who could possibly be deterred) will also have 100% recidivism as the only people who get punished are the ones who cannot be deterred and will keep committing crimes no matter what.

"Deterrence in relation to criminal offending is the idea or theory that the threat of punishment will deter people from committing crime and reduce the probability and/or level of offending in society." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(penology)

So, punishment as a deterrent is currently a theory.

While I generally agree with your broader point, I doubt this relationship is causal.

A confounding factor in this statistic is that even if you were a rational actor, weighing the deterrence value of the death penalty, the actual application of the death penalty is far from certain, so you'd appropriately assign it low probability. The distance from the present in time, and absolute probability are likely key contributors to this not being a good stat. A good look at deterrence would be Singapore, where probability of swift punishment seems to materially reduce crime.

Deterrent is, I think traditionally at least, considered “negative reinforcement.” So, “I don’t want to end up like that person, so I won’t do what they did to end up in their situation.”

There is a huge difference between having something applied to you, and having to determine the correct course of action (independently) to apply with someone else and then deal with the consequences/fallout.

In my experience, you have to pick something - and nothing is perfect or works all the time. It is usually worse not picking something (inaction) or being inconsistent in what you pick (wildly varying expectations/results).

How this applies to the current thread is up to the reader.