[somebodythere]

> punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others.

I strongly disagree. This would make sense if humans were all rational actors who only took an action after performing the risk calculus of expected reward vs. potential punishment. But that's not how humans work, and thinking this way only results in a justice system that is unnecessarily cruel, ignores rehabilitation, and doesn't actually work that well at preventing crime.

Relevant sources:

Sentence Severity and Crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis "Most reviews conclude that there is little or no consistent evidence that harsher sanctions reduce crime rates in Western populations[1]."

Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? "Inmates housed in higher security levels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed in minimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime.[2]"

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/652230

[2] http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/Chen_Shapiro_2007.pdf

[TeMPOraL]

I spent past 30 minutes skimming the first paper (available here[0]). Fine, so severity itself doesn't really work as a deterrent - with the caveat made by study, that it applies to "variation within the limits that are plausible in Western countries". I.e. changing the punishment of some crime from 2 years to 3 years does not create meaningful extra deterrence; changing it from 2 years to 25 years or capital punishment just might. I'd argue that changing the punishment from "a fine" to "prison sentence" may just do the trick too.

> This would make sense if humans were all rational actors who only took an action after performing the risk calculus of expected reward vs. potential punishment. But that's not how humans work

This is indeed how humans work sometimes. Not in the heat of the moment, but when coldly calculating how to make more money with less effort. Fraud is not a crime of passion, it's premeditated, evaluated in advance. More certainty of consequences, and perhaps the severity of them, may be what's needed to further reduce it.

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[0] - http://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1086/652230