[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).