[libertine]

Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime?

Because you seem to be focusing on the outcome/consequences of someone that committed a crime and got caught.

It's not like the punishment is the result of "bad luck" or "unexpected circumstances", it was a deliberate conscious action, right?

Also some of these actions aren't a burst of irrationality and poor thought process - they are planned and recurrent, done through stretches of time in a consistent manner.

So on one hand, it seems severe punishment, on the other hand, people severely push boundaries while knowing it's wrong and with severe punishment - what would they do if it was less severe?

Edit: just to make it clear, I'M NOT SUPPORTING HEAVY SENTENCES.

[cptskippy]

> Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime?

Harsh punishment fosters resentment.

Isolation is a form of torture.

Cutting off prisoners from society makes reintegration and rehabilitation difficult.

A person who is incapable of participating in society is going to be pushed to the fringes and will more than likely become a drain on society rather than a contributor.

Severity is a huge factor. We don't really have a gradient of consequences, and much of what we do have is limited to privileged individuals. When was the last time you heard of a nonviolent drug offender being given the option to serve his sentence over weekends or in a minimum security facility?

Unless you're a wealthy elite with a very expensive team of lawyers, you're going to "Pound me in the ass Prison". We even make jokes about how extreme the conditions are in our prisons and use those poor conditions as deterrent.

On top of that, we've privatized our prisons so the operators are constantly looking for opportunities to profit. In the post the author talks about per minute charges for email. Some prisons no longer allow face-to-face visitation and instead require the use of video conferencing technology that costs money. Beyond nickle and diming inmates, they're reducing staffing and quality of everything to save as much money as possible. That in itself is punishing torture.

[jmcqk6]

When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions.

Harsh punishments do not seem to actually function as a determent in real life. From my perspective, harsh punishments is more about revenge than anything else. They're a simple way to feel like you're doing the right thing, as long as you don't examine it too closely. And most people don't want to examine it too closely.

[the_af]

> When I've looked into people who commits crimes and why, they rarely are considering the judicial system and the possible consequences of their actions.

Agreed. I'm not saying their approach was exactly unbiased or scientific, but Penn & Teller in their "Bullshit!" show put forward the following considerations:

- If a violent crime is "spur of the moment", by definition it never takes the judicial system into consideration. People who violently murder their loved ones in a fit of rage don't think of the consequences. People who shoot strangers over a car accident don't, either.

- If the crime is planned with anticipation, such as in many white collar crimes but also planned robberies, kidnappings, etc: the perpetrators always think they are smarter than the law and won't get caught. The possible consequences are irrelevant to them, because they simply don't think they'll get caught.

[ThrowawayR2]

That might be true for first time offenders but what about repeat offenders? They can't be said to not be familiar with the possible judicial consequences of their actions.

[dragonwriter]

You are conflating “aware of” with “considering in their decision making” (that is, you are assuming rationality-but-for-limited-information).

That's a nice idealized model of human decision-making except for that it's not even approximately how people actually make decisions.

[the_af]

That's possibly a third category to add to "spur of the moment crime" and "I don't think I'll get caught": "I don't care what happens to me". A lot of crime done out of desperation, by people with nothing to lose, is precisely that: they are so desperate they don't value their life or the lives of others [1]. In that case, prison and even the death penalty is a poor deterrent; if you expect to live hard and die young, what can they threaten you with anyway?

[1] A journalism/essay book from my country (not the US), depicting the lives of youngsters in shanty towns, interviewed many of them. A surprising number of them claimed they didn't expect to live past 30, and didn't make any plans because plans were meaningless to them. If they died for whatever reason, "so be it". (By the way, in my mind this isn't an indictment of these people, but rather of the society which makes them believe they have no choice and no future).

[the_af]

> Isn't the punishment a way to stop people from trying to commit a crime?

There are different opinions on what the main purpose of incarceration is (punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, protecting society), but let's for a minute assume it's deterrence, aka "stop people from trying to commit a crime".

How well would you say incarceration as deterrence is working so far? Regarding shootings, muggings, robbery, murder, rape, even "white collar" crimes. Would you say prison (and even the death penalty) as deterrence has significantly helped reduce or stop crime in the US?