[mr_toad]

There’s a lot of research of people for whom punishment obviously didn’t act as a deterrent, and unsurprisingly this research concludes that the prospect of punishment doesn’t act as a deterrent.

There is no research I’m aware of on people for whom the prospect of punishment did act as a deterrent (i.e. people who decided not to commit the crime).

So I argue that there is a very big selection bias in literature surrounding the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent .

[f1shy]

AFAIK, this is a (dangerous and misleading) simplification.

Punishment absolutely works as deterrent. Boy I know people that would absolutely forge the tax declaration, if it wasn't a terrible fine if they do!

The key point is the probability of the punishment being enforced. There is a trade off calculation going on, like "I could get 5 years prison and 10 grand fine... IF they catch me!". Studies suggest, that if you have 100% probability of being caught, then the punishment is extremely good deterrent.

[Closi]

> There is no research I’m aware of on people for whom the prospect of punishment did act as a deterrent (i.e. people who decided not to commit the crime).

Surely this can’t be true - as a trivial example I would be surprised if removing parking fines wouldn’t increase parking violations, or if Singapore stopped punishing littering that it wouldn’t affect the amount of littering etc

Maybe the difference between a 10 year or 20 year sentence for murder doesn’t make much difference, but if murder had no punishment at all I would be very surprised if that wouldn’t raise the murder rate!

[Throaway198712]

What he's trying to say is that most people crimes under the assumption that they won't get caught, not that, if they get caught, they can withstand the punishment.

[Closi]

In the 'purely rational' crimes, it's going to be some sort of function of both right? The expected benefit, the risk that you get caught, and the severity of the punishment.

While I agree that people conducting corporate fraud think they will get away with it - I don't agree that the long sentences won't act as a deterrence. If you set the sentence for these sorts of crimes to 1 year rather than 15+, that completely changes the risk profile for people who think there is a 90% chance they will get away with it.

[Throaway198712]

It's simpler than that. You just don't think about getting caught, it's not part of the plan.

Sentence length has a small effect on crime rates, but what really matters is enforcement levels. If you have a 99% chance of getting caught & punished, you don't bother.

[rcxdude]

A lot of research on this topic tends to look at correlations between crime rates and harshness of punishments, which would tend to include this effect.

[unparagoned]

Think of it this way if the sentence for speeding was life in prison, do you really think that wouldn’t have any effect on people speeding.

I think this just highlights how stupid the idea is that punishment doesn’t act as a deterrent

[salawat]

I think if the punishment for speeding was life in prison, the entire system would be in such a shambles what would make sense is burning the entire country down.

Your assertion is not the slam dunk you think it is.