Brontoforumus

Actually, there's significant evidence that deterrence doesn't work at all. Essentially the argument goes that if the law is enough to deter you from committing a crime, it's likely you wouldn't have anyway. Not to mention all the incidents where deterrence has no bearing at all. Crimes of passion, accidents that are deemed criminal due to the surrounding circumstances, etc. But again, that's all we've got.

Friday wrote:You can't apply deterrence to "people fucking up." Deterrence works against premeditated crimes. Leaving your baby, texting while driving, that kind of shit is literally empty brain behavior. There's no thought involved at all. I won't say it's entirely ineffective, but I seriously doubt a sudden influx of dead babies in cars if we lightened the prison term for it.

Exactly. This isn't even the "knowing" sort of negligence either, where say, safety standards at the factory are lax because we all know everyone's smart enough not to fall in the peanut butter machine and railings cost money, right boss? Dead-babies-in-cars has, apart from maybe one or two weird and ugly exceptions, been a case of total forgetfulness and overworked brains. It's really difficult for me to say this is something that needs to be punishable by incarceration as if that will provide any sort of benefit to society.

The only angle I can even buy as an argument is the retributive one "Well we as a society can't let that go unpunished because that would mean we as a society have Bad Values and Tolerate Bad Behaviour.", I don't agree with that argument, but I can at least see it as a valid one and I'm sure I'm okay with at least some form of real punishment - community service, etc.

But for fear? Deterrent? No. In the vast majority of cases an at-risk (i.e. overworked and overstressed) parent who worries about leaving their baby in a hot car, they're not going to be deterred by fear of going to jail, they're deterred by the utterly terrifying thought of their child dying horribly in a fiery furnace.

Deterrence also only works against people who expect to get caught.

This is almost certainly the best letter to a governor you will read today.

(PDF link)

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of deterrence when the horrors of american prisons are such a part of popular consciousness that "don't drop the soap" has gone beyond a crass joke, past the realm of cliche, and into "workin hard or hardly workin" territory. We could have a Doctor Doom-esque "the punishment for every infraction is instant death" and I don't think it'd affect crime statistics much (other than recidivism, obvs.) It's the sort of doctrine that assumes rational actors while also being damn near impossible to empirically test.

Though the best comparisons we have seem to indicate that length of sentencing doesn't change a single goddamn thing.

I can assure you that most of the rest of the world thinks the "298 years" stuff is ridiculous, at least.

I mean, most countries have some form of indefinite detainment, but it's actually treated seriously.

Yeah, there really shouldn't be many situations where that sort of thing applies. A repeat offender that's proven impossible to rehabilitate? Keep them in and reconsider if/when that situation changes. A repeat offender that has proven impossible to rehabilitate or contain? Congratulations, you caught the fucking Joker. We can reopen the capital punishment debate when that happens.

That 293 years stuff is just an artifact of people who are effectively receiving life sentences in the form of multiple terms to be served consecutively for multiple crimes.

I think we all know that, bal.

Mongrel wrote:This is almost certainly the best letter to a governor you will read today.

(PDF link)

I'm sure that would be rad if there weren't ellipses in the middle of that url mang.

Fuck!

Fixed link

(and fixed above)

Haha wow, that went to an unexpectedly awesome place. It's still pretty doubtful whether anything will come of it, though.

That is possibly the single most satisfying thing I've read all year.

Brentai wrote:Just tell me how many bad things you haven't done in your life because you didn't want to be arrested. It's probably a lot!

I honestly can't think of many. Maybe I'd eat the occasional pot brownie on a Saturday night if it were legal?

I break laws all the time. I exceed the speed limit, I download copyrighted material -- earlier tonight I violated the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause when I ripped a legally-purchased DVD to my hard drive. The illegal things I don't do are mostly down to a lack of interest or a fear of consequences that has more to do with safety than law.

I guess maybe I'm a little likelier to stop on a yellow light if there's a camera?

Bal wrote:Actually, there's significant evidence that deterrence doesn't work at all. Essentially the argument goes that if the law is enough to deter you from committing a crime, it's likely you wouldn't have anyway. Not to mention all the incidents where deterrence has no bearing at all. Crimes of passion, accidents that are deemed criminal due to the surrounding circumstances, etc.

Right, exactly. The threat of prison is a piss-poor way of teaching impulse control.

Brent, let me turn your question around on you: tell me how many bad things you have done in your life, despite having a full intellectual understanding of the consequences, because you were too pissed off to care? Or had had a couple drinks and weren't in complete control?

Bal wrote:But again, that's all we've got.

Well, I mean, it's what our legal system is structured around, if that's what you mean by "that's all we've got." In terms of actual human psychology, well no, it's not remotely all we've got. Discipline and impulse control are skills; they can be taught.

TA wrote:Deterrence also only works against people who expect to get caught.

That's another good point. There's a bit in Rule 34 that talks about the criminal mindset. It says (paraphrasing) that most crimes are the result of poor impulse control, of people not considering the consequences of their actions. Then there's a second category: poor risk assessment. That is, people who consider the consequences of their actions but miscalculate their odds of getting caught.

Then there's a third type: people who assess their risks accurately. These people, by definition, are almost never caught, because they never commit a crime unless it's unlikely they'll be caught.

Type 3 is a challenge, but it's also the least common. The first two types can be prevented from committing crimes in the first place through adequate education.

Obviously that's what I mean by "that's all we've got" because in every practical sense it's all we've got. The conversation wasn't about theoretical shit we might be doing better.

Mongrel wrote:Fuck!

Fixed link

(and fixed above)

That is beautiful.

No more federal private prisons.

It's a good start, but most private prisons are state prisons.

No more federal private prisons overseen by the Department of Justice, you mean. So that's 13 prisons across the country. The massive DHS and ICE private prison networks remain untouched.

Maybe this is a step towards shutting those down too, but it's not there yet.

Thanks for the correction. Yes, that's what I meant.

Hey, did you know there's a nationwide prison strike going on in the US?

(via WBUR.org)

Considering how many private prisons will be looking to quash this on the cheap, things might get... "interesting".