[tacostakohashi]

The idea that "if you make the penalty harsh enough eventually people see its not worth it" has been fundamentally disproven by people still committing offenses punishable by the death penalty or life sentences, surely?

[smallnamespace]

Not if you view the process as being stochastic and imperfect.

You can't determine whether we've succeeded unless you compare crime rates with and without particular laws, and that process is fraught with compounding factors since not only crime laws change.

Even if you just see that states with harsher laws also have higher crime rates, that may be because those states are dealing with other factors that cause crime, not because the laws aren't working.