Penalty length has very little effect on crime motivation. The most important factor is the likelihood of getting caught. You want to see crime rates drop? Shift a large percentage of the prison budget to the police.
It's not "likelihood of getting caught" because even if you have a 1 in 5 shot at getting away with a crime, desperate folks (or folks with a shaky understanding of probability) will still take the risk. It has to be "certainty of getting caught" which requires more than just more police, but also public messaging, education, etc. See: https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf
Well of course I read the things I link. To clarify, my points are:
1. "Likelihood" ≠ "Certainty" - I might think there's a high chance of getting caught, but unless I'm overwhelmingly certain that I'll get busted, I'll still take a risk. This is an important distinction, because it's not as though there's a linear correlation between likelihood of getting caught and crime rate.
2. This perception can be increased in ways other than just investing in police. A city could invest in cameras and signs that say "you're on camera." They could take out advertisements showing the conviction rate for particular crimes. They could hire rehabilitated offenders to share their stories with kids. The list goes on, there are plenty of ways to spend that money that might be more effective than giving it to police departments.
More police doesn’t change what crimes the county prosecutor decides to pursue and enforce. Unfortunately what should be an unbiased role has been politicized in recent years. Its not a great idea to have someone involved in the justice system running overtly on party line politics but thats our political environment today.
wrong!
if criminals are released the same day without bail, if they get small punishment - they keep scaling up their crime because they effectively cap their downside - so the correct math is try to maximize upside while downside is limited
Only wrong because I oversimplified. Being released the same day is effectively the same as not being caught at all. The research shows that the length of the punishment doesn't have a strong effect. 1 year in jail with a 100% chance of being caught and convicted is a far stronger deterrence than 10 years in jail with a 10% chance of being caught and convicted.