Deterrence / Let's play these videos in school!

[Enoch the Red]

Then you're welcome to visit any Psychology course on this topic. They will make the exact same arguments. It's one of those nice ideas which make sense on the surface but which also turn out to be quite useless in reality. You could compare the concept of deterrence to communism: Nice idea, would solve several problems but is completely at odds with how humans actually work.

You seem to think that because I disagree with a fundamentally broken argument and a straw man of another poster's position that you put forth, I am also somehow arguing against the content of comic. The two are in no way related. I have not yet voiced any opinion on the comic.

[Aimless]

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[Lewkowski]

And if only 1% can be deterred then you'd stop 0.2% of crimes. So? I mean, we can throw around random numbers all day.

What do you actually think the number is? It seems like a strange argument that you think the majority of crimes are committed without any thought of the consequences and at the same time you trust the prison system to rehabilitate people. While those two ideas aren't mutually contradictory they are awfully close. Either most people are rational or they are not. I uphold the position almost everyone reacts rationally - they just have differing levels of knowledge, impulse control and morality. This is why I've posted several links that showcase that crimes are deterred by increased police presence and/or an armed populace.

[Lewkowski]

Why should I? If you had followed the series of comics he linked to or, I dunno, read his posts, you'd have realised by now that Khen doesn't deny the existence of deterrence. He simply believes that it doesn't work they way you believe it works.



If you really subscribed to this way of thinking even you would believe in anthropogenic climate change and support any measures necessary to curb it. You'd also support a far more expansive and generous welfare state.



What you are is missing the point, as usual. If faced with direct and mutually exclusive choices, sure, child comes before old person. But does that mean that we should spit on and torture old people? No. If we can save both, do we still save only the child? No. The "value" of the old person's life is only relevant when we have to make a life-or-death decision based on that value and it is entirely irrelevant to the inherent wrongness of cruel and inhumane treatment.

If I have to choose between saving my dear old mother's life and saving your sorry ass from drowning, I'd obviously choose to save my mother in a heartbeat. Not only is she my mother, she's also a kind and loving person who'll do more good for people in her remaining years of life than you would do if you had ten times as many years. In that scenario, your life may as well be worthless. However, if you were to come into my ER close to death, I'd try to save even you.

Similarly, if I had to choose between saving a rapist and saving a drowning baby, I'd choose to save the baby. But that doesn't mean I'm going to go out looking for rapists to kill. Why? Because I'm not fucked up.



Give it a rest you fucking hypocrite. Don't come here yapping about how much you care about babies and rape-victims. You actively support policies that contribute to the suffering and death of innocent babies and women. And, as for rape, you barely even believe rape exists and you spend a considerable amount of energy contributing to the culture that excuses rape and harrasses rape-victims. So don't pretend that you care in any meaningful way about innocent babies and women, that you value them infinitely highly, that you'd go to any lengths to save them.

If you place any value on anyone other than yourself, it is a finite and small value. This isn't about how much you care about innocent people. It's about how hard your dick gets at the thought of criminals getting killed. Which, frankly, is creepy and disgusting and a total failure on the part of whoever it was that tried to raise you to be a decent human being.



Jesus Christ. I knew you hadn't read the paper but it seems you didn't read your own posts either.

The study doesn't support the bullshit in the OP in any meaningful sense. It's like you're saying, "2+2 = 8! As proof of this claim, please see this summary of a paper that shows the square root of 8 to be 3.1 which, like 2, is also an integer."



Except that it's not at all clear-cut what is or is not in society's best interest to do. It may be in society's best interest to not have too many people locked up. It may be in society's interest to free up some of that money and those resources for other purposes. It may be in society's best interest to rehabilitate 9 out of 10 (like in your example) or even to rehabilitate 3 out of 10. It may be in society's best interest to rehabilitate a few people that can return to their families and do a better job of raising their kids rather than forcing those kids to grow up in single-parent households with no support from society. It may be in society's interest to do things that will reduce crime in the future, by guiding would-be criminals to more productive paths.

Just because your life is governed by fear and hatred doesn't mean that it's in society's best interest to do what you want. It may be in society's best interest to take risks. You're free to live a life free from personal risk if you like, but I suspect that life would be kinda shitty.



He should be in prison for however long may be appropriate as punishment. While in prison he should be made to go through a rehabilitation process. As time progresses, he should be prepared to re-enter society. If there is any great concern that he hasn't been rehabilitated, he should stay locked up until that changes. When released, measures should be taken to reduce the likelihood of recidivism.

Now, let me ask you this. A black guy claims he was raped by a 20-y-o man. There is no doubt they had sex (semen was found on him etc). There's an 80% chance it was rape. If there's no conviction, there's a 100% chance of him raping some other black guy in the next 5 years. The alleged rapist is white. Do you lock him up even though there's a 20% chance he didn't rape anyone? What if there was a 30% chance he was innocent? Do you let him go even though there's an 80% chance he did it and is certain to do it again? Do you lock him up in order to deter all the other (as yet undiscovered) rapists watching the trial? Or do you, I dunno, badmouth the alleged victim publicly and explain that it was just some gay black dude with buyer's remorse trying to make a buck off of some poor innocent white kid?

I figure if you really want to deter rapists, the best way to do it is to make sure more rapists get caught and convicted. If deterring rape is what you really want. I'm pretty sure it's not what you want.

I feel like we are talking past at each other. Climate change is completely off topic and you may have had a relevant point if the sole reason for locking people up was to 'be on the safe side.' That is A reason and like many things society should weight costs and benefits. The life and happiness of a a criminal is something I'm OK with sacrificing if it saves innocent people from being killed and raped. You are clearly OK with more people being killed and raped because you value the lives of criminals to a greater degree than I do.

Now what part of my statement do you specifically disagree with? Do you think criminals aren't going to continue their reign of terror upon release? If that's your argument speak it clearly so I can rebut it with evidence. If its something else let me know.

The drowning scenario's entire point was to get you to agree that not all life is equal. I've clearly placed a limited value on the life of proven criminals. You hold that to a greater level - the next step is to define how many criminals lives should be balanced against the lives of the law abiding folks. This isn't a game of gotcha this is a discussion on what society should do with criminals. I've laid out my case that criminals sentenced harshly make society a better place because people do not have to worry about being horrifically raped and murdered. This occurs by the simple fact they can't reach their victims in prison AND the deterrence effect.

Lets talk about rehabilitation. At what point would you declare a policy a failure? If 10% of the criminals do more crimes after prison? 5%? 20%? 33%? Without looking it up let me know what you think is the failure rate where we say... "Hey maybe we just need to get them locked up so innocent people don't have to suffer?"

[Lewkowski]

No, they don't, Lewk. What do you think a "crime of passion" is?

Hint: It does not involve rational thought in any way.

Then again, you yourself are a great example of how people can live on without any kind of active thought all their lives.



I never said that it does not work. I always said that it doesn't work the way you think it works and also that it is part of a trifecta of factors which need to be considered carefully for deterrence to have any effect.

However I expect that distinction to fully fly over your head.

So how do you suppose we test the effectiveness of deterrence? Should we take a look at a community before and after a massive police surge took place and examine crime rates? Should we take a look at crime rates before and after mandatory sentencing. In other words how would you go about falsifying your own argument? I admit there are A LOT of variables to consider (police effectiveness, economy, culture, guns, knowledge of sentences, corruption, etc) but I've seen examples where harsh sentencing has reduced crime. Of course the trick is figuring out what % of it was due to criminals being behind bars and what % was due to fear.

[Lewkowski]

I'm curious how people view the anti-smoking campaign's effectiveness. It blasts TV/radio with the dangers of smoking with the hopes of creating fear in the would be smoking population. Smoking rates have declined - it seems that fear of consequences can be an effective deterrent to behavior. Why is it that you don't see that possibility for crime?

[Khendraja'aro]

You seem to think that because I disagree with a fundamentally broken argument and a straw man of another poster's position that you put forth, I am also somehow arguing against the content of comic. The two are in no way related. I have not yet voiced any opinion on the comic.

I've yet to see you bring something substantial to the table.

So how do you suppose we test the effectiveness of deterrence? Should we take a look at a community before and after a massive police surge took place and examine crime rates? Should we take a look at crime rates before and after mandatory sentencing. In other words how would you go about falsifying your own argument? I admit there are A LOT of variables to consider (police effectiveness, economy, culture, guns, knowledge of sentences, corruption, etc) but I've seen examples where harsh sentencing has reduced crime. Of course the trick is figuring out what % of it was due to criminals being behind bars and what % was due to fear.

There have been several studies already which did just that. They largely found that deterrence has only little effect on crime rates. In fact:

Existing evidence does not support any significant public safety benefit of the practice of increasing the severity of sentences by imposing longer prison terms. In fact, research findings imply that increasingly lengthy prison terms are counterproductive. Overall, the evidence indicates that the deterrent effect of lengthy prison sentences would not be substantially diminished if punishments were reduced from their current levels. Thus, policies such as California’s Three Strikes law or mandatory minimums that increase imprisonment not only burden state budgets, but also fail to enhance public safety. As a result, such policies are not justifiable based on their ability to deter.
Based upon the existing evidence, both crime and imprisonment can be simultaneously reduced if policy-makers reconsider their overreliance on severitybased policies such as long prison sentences. Instead, an evidence-based approach would entail increasing the certainty of punishment by improving the likelihood that criminal behavior would be detected. Such an approach would also free up resources devoted to incarceration and allow for increased initiatives of prevention and treatment.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc...riefing%20.pdf

You can easily find several other studies with similar conclusions.

[Lewkowski]

Wait you linked me to a study published by an ADVOCACY group? That's like asking PETA to commission a study on the importance of not eating meat or the tobacco industry to commission a study on the safety of smoking!

"But since most crimes, including serious ones, do not result in an arrest and
conviction, the overall deterrent effect of the certainty of punishment is substantially
reduced. Clearly, enhancing the severity of punishment will have little impact on
people who do not believe they will be apprehended for their actions. "

The article has a point here, if the person doesn't think they can get caught they aren't going to worry about punishment. This is why it is important to convince children through emotionally riveting video of criminals being sentenced. This reinforces the idea that people do get caught and when they do it is bad. Making an argument that appeals to someones logical side can be effective but children are highly impressionable and the emotional event could have a significant impact in their belief in the likelihood of being caught.

Now lets talk about real data.

https://wallethub.com/edu/strictest-.../#key-findings

"There is good news, though. Since the 1980s when states first began to crack down on drunk driving, the rate of impaired driving and the number of accidents caused by drunk drivers has dropped considerably. This has meant many saved lives, as drunk driving fatalities declined 52 percent from 1982 to 2013."

Clear proof that harsher sentencing and efforts to crack down on drunk driving has had an impact.

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/...nces-cut-crime

"The researchers concluded that prison was particularly effective in reducing property crime when targeted at serious and repeat offenders. They concluded that an increase of just one month in the average sentence length for burglaries – from 15.4 to 16.4 months – would reduce burglaries in the following year by 4,800, out of an annual total of 962,700."

Again we look at a situation where it is hard to tell if we are safer because the criminal feared an increase d sentence or if we were safer because the criminal was in prison and couldn't harm others. In either case though society is safer.

[Enoch the Red]

I've yet to see you bring something substantial to the table.

I was seeking to understand what you were trying to say, because it wasn't and isn't clear how it relates to what was actually being discussed. If you are dropping that argument and line of reasoning then there really isn't anything for me to bring to the table.

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I don't think I have the experience, education, or depth of knowledge to confirm or contradict what was presented. It would be great to see some supporting sources and studies beyond a web comic, especially given the source, (a defense lawyer) and how some of the assertions may be beyond his area of expertise.

[Khendraja'aro]

I don't think I have the experience, education, or depth of knowledge to confirm or contradict what was presented. It would be great to see some supporting sources and studies beyond a web comic, especially given the source, (a defense lawyer) and how some of the assertions may be beyond his area of expertise.

Did you actually bother to look at the 2nd link I posted? Obviously not.

[Enoch the Red]

Did you actually bother to look at the 2nd link I posted? Obviously not.

No, I have not. Did I give you the impression I had?

[Khendraja'aro]

Oh, fine. Back to ignore you go.