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People carry out muggings with the threat of harming and killing people. A mugging isn’t a mugging unless the person is willing to back up and sometimes follow through with their threats. The punishment for them is high because sometimes people die.

Muggings without violence or threats are called pickpocketing. Penalties are far less severe. If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

> If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

Do you really believe that? I honestly think there's a fundamental difference in character between willingness to commit non-violent crime, and willingness to commit violent crime. One's just selfish, while the other is likely to be negative-sum in utility in a way that makes most people write it off as a fundamentally unsound strategy unless they're true sociopaths.

There are countries where law enforcement is weak to virtually nonexistent. They’re not desirable living locations by any means.

Deterrence is one of the main pillars of law enforcement. There are plenty of people who reach the end of their rope and act out of desperation. Deterrence is something that limits that. There is a point where that effect plateaus and people will take the risk regardless of penalty, but lowering penalties to the point of being worthless does let crime breed.

Just look at countries where corruption laws are ignored or unwritten. They’re corrupt. Countries that don’t protect women have more crimes against women. It’s how it goes.

A lot of claims without any evidence... care to provide any?

Otherwise you just sound like a person who likes to lock up people as much as possible with hope that everything will be magically allright then. Well, as history shows, crime reduction unfortunately doesn't work like that.

> If penalties for mugging/robberies were lowered to pick pocketing levels, Paris would have muggers in every train and far fewer pickpockets.

This is a good point!

But I think this effect is less about the "incapacitation" issue discussed above (i.e. we would have muggers on every train because we wouldn't have detained the muggers for long enough), and more about deterrence (i.e. we would have muggers on every train because pickpockets would lose a disincentive from mugging).

There are multiple dimensions to picking how societies respond to crimes:

- denunciation: we publicly send the signal that your behavior was bad

- retribution: we want you to suffer

- rehabilitation: we want to help you become a better citizen

- incapacitation: we want to stop you from committing crime

- deterrence: we want other people to be afraid to commit crimes

- ...

And all of these carry different associated values. My suspicion is that when people attempt to justify the prison system based purely on the incapacitation effect, they're trying to don some faultless, sterile, harmless guise. "I'm not a bad guy for wanting people to be in prison; I just want my neighborhood to be safe!" But I think often a desire for denunciation, or retribution, or even angst about deterrence is at play.

I wasn't trying to justify the prison system based on anything. We use incapacitation, but that doesn't justify anything.

I wasn't trying to don some faultless, sterile, harmless guise. To eliminate your suspicion: my preference is for a combination of retribution, deterrence, and restitution. I'm in no way ashamed to say that I prefer those over incapacitation. Sadly, the USA mainly uses incapacitation, probably because it causes the least outrage.

BTW, you left some items off your list:

- restitution: the criminal must pay back the victim or the society for the harm caused (with money, organs, etc.)

- religion: we must do something (crucifixion, stoning, amputation, etc.) demanded by God

Perhaps it is useful to separate means from ends. Of course, we both agree that we want less crime (as an end), but I might favor rehabilitation as an end - I want prisoners to find their way back to productive society because I care - but not as a means - I might not think rehabilitating inmates reduces crime.

Do you favor retribution as a end, or a means?

When the very natural human desire for retribution is not satisfied by the law, people will obtain retribution outside of the law. This is how you get people torn apart and burned by angry mobs. Civilization thus requires that the law act to satisfy that desire for retribution.

Because the desire for retribution is nearly universal, we can tell that it is in our DNA. It clearly offers a selective advantage. It works.

Retribution is the desire, but notice how it very effectively creates both deterrence (don't want to be torn apart by a mob) and incapacitation (can't commit crime after being torn apart by a mob). This is why it has the selective advantage.

So, unless you want brutal violence as a system of justice, don't oppose making the criminals suffer. People need to see criminals punished, and they will take matters into their own hands as needed to ensure it happens.

The harm of a mugging is far in excess of the money taken.

Start with PTSD. The victim might never feel safe again. The victim might have many years of waking up in a panic from a recurring nightmare.

Muggings cause violence. The mugger threatens it. The victim doesn't know if payment will appease the mugger. Both the mugger and the victim may initiate actual violence. They and the bystanders can end up maimed or dead.

Muggings cause people to prefer commuting all alone in SUVs. You could say that this has a cost in smog, road repair, road widening, and the price placed on safe commuting. Safety becomes something you have to pay for, and not everybody can afford it.

Walkable neighborhoods can not exist if muggers are free to operate.

You're really fixated on your hypothetical habitual mugger. By appealing to some unquantifiable suffering on the part of the victim, you seem to want readers to accept an implicit claim that any cost to imprison a person, for any duration, under any conditions must be acceptable and justified.

Prisoners also are victims, and suffer trauma. It seems roughly 1/5 male inmates are assaulted by guards, and roughly the same number are assaulted by other prisoners. And then there's sexual assault, which has glaring gaps in reporting.

I think there's an obvious question we should be asking here -- when does incarceration cause more violence than it prevents?

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/attacks-and-ass...

To clarify, how would you suggest we factor in the non-monetary harm caused to a mugging victim?

It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other. There is no pleasing everybody, and some people can't ever be pleased.

> It shouldn't even be physically possible for a prisoner to assault another prisoner. I'd even give the prisoners privacy so that they can't see or hear each other. Oddly, people argue that it is somehow cruel to protect the prisoners from each other.

Solitary confinement is cruel. It isn't protecting one prisoner from another.

Solitary confinement increases the chance of heart attack, hypertension and stroke by 30% [0]. That's because it is a stressful environment that people are not meant to function in.

[0] https://massivesci.com/notes/cardiovascular-health-compariso...

Dude have you been every been mugged? I almost have been (ran away before they could corner me), and the damage being done is not about the possessions. It is a scary and even traumatic experience when a group of people follows you and tries to surround you at night when you are alone.

It damages your feeling of safety when outside (and I live in a very safe country). It cost me a year to lose my anxiety to go out when darkness sets in, even when just getting groceries. And I sometimes still am paranoid.

> suppose one mugging gets you $100 ... cost of keeping someone in prison ... around ~$630 per week

These aren't useful numbers to compare. Even if the criminal gained zero material value from his crime (say he just enjoys setting cars on fire) the rest of society may be willing to spend a small fortune to stop him from doing so. Even a completely cold-blooded insurance company would be willing to spend money on that.

The relevant value isn't what the criminal gains -- it's what society loses (e.g. the cost of the property damage from burning the car). Yes, the rest of society does seem to want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. But is that a wise choice? And is it really to prevent harm (crime)? If the goal is crime prevention, aren't there less extravagant ways of achieving the same impact or better?

As the earlier poster said, half of the point of prison is that it keeps people out of the general public and thereby temporarily unable to commit crimes against them. Now, we'd certainly like to reform them in prison, but the idea that we can simply, e.g., lift everyone out of poverty and eliminate crime is unrealistic. Certainly, it might remove some portion of crime, but it's not going to stop, say, the serial killers who are primarily motivated by sexual gratification.

Dahmer, for example, killed because it gave him a sexual high and he didn't like having anal sex performed on him, so his gay boyfriends didn't work out and he sought to create a zombie who would never leave him via a crude lobotomy technique. I suppose there's some argument that even he reformed in prison--he converted to Christianity and later helped those studying serial killers--but I wonder how many people would have been willing to let him move in next door to test the extent of his reformation had he not died in prison?

None of this is to say that prison is good or even desirable. One of the worst things it has done is to create a culture for criminals and criminal gangs and thereby facilitate the growth of criminal organizations.

I don't have any grand solutions to any of this, unfortunately, but neither do I believe some of those offered by others.

No, society does not want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated.

About half of society strongly opposes letting criminals run free, out causing mayhem and destroying our civilization.

About half of society strongly opposes letting a judge order a bailiff to fix the issue with a $0.25 bullet as soon as the verdict is in.

That leaves us with the option nobody likes, which is that we spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. Most of society grudgingly accepts this.

Have you ever been mugged?

I have. I escaped without losing anything - I can cross "jumped out of a moving cab at gunpoint in Panama City traffic" off my bucket list - but it left an emotional scar. Nothing lifechanging, but there's a little bit of anger that wasn't there before.

I'd love to explore evidence-based alternatives to incarceration. I'd also consider caning - but only if it really hurt.

> it's what society loses

That's incalculable. You can't reduce the effects of crime to basic capitalist mechanics. Crime doesn't only impact the fair market economy - there's a wealth of second order effects both on people and at a macro level.

You're right that there's other levers we can use to reduce crime that don't involve simply bolting a door shut on them, but it seems an odd way to argue the point to me.

> society does seem to want to spend an absurd amount of money keeping people incarcerated. But is that a wise choice?

If I told my right wing, tough-on-crime uncle that keeping people in prison was expensive, he'd say we should just shoot them as bullets are cheap, or possibly that we should cut 'luxuries' like gym equipment and free education, charge prisoners rent and force them to do hard labour.

I think people who would advocate for a more Scandinavian system are unlikely to convince my uncle on cost grounds.

I like your uncle.

Bullets don't need to be cheap. China solved the cost issue: simply charge the family for the cost of the bullet.

Have they tried paying them directly to not perform muggings? Or better still in programs that reduce the desire/necessity to mug. The current system does not appear to work, probably worth trying something else...

The harm from having your life threatened and losing $10 is much more than $10. I’d vote for a political system where muggers are executed, and so would many others — you won’t find much support for catch and release.