I don't really buy the deterrence theory, i am pretty sure that criminals aren't making +EV calculations prior to carrying out whatever crimes they are carrying out. Many probably don't believe that they will be caught. Maybe increasing the likelihood of getting caught has the best chance of reducing the rate.

It isn't the severity of punishment that is the most important part. It is the frequency with which it is administered. Someone who has a 1% chance of doing 90 years in prison is more likely to steal then someone who has a 90% chance of doing 1 year. The mind just can't process severe unlikely punishments very well, but can process light consistent ones.

I wrote "kind of clear". We still have crime and repeat offenders. Not only that, prisons are often a breeding ground of corruption and even more criminality. I admit to probably being a little bias by the trouble in my current State, with systemic and serious human rights violations being alleged in almost every prison facility.

Would be interested to see an experiment on this.

This is true - not sure about the numbers or whether the consistently enforced punishments should be light, but frequency of punishment is definitely an important factor.

I don't really understand. 'Kind of clear' still suggests there is evidence that's fairly easy to see. I guess if you're going by a standard of 'has this system completely got rid of crime' then yeah, it hasn't been successful, but in any conversation where you're comparing it to an alternative or even just looking at the progression of results, our current system of punishment seems to be working pretty damn well.

Although, thinking about it, it probably won't make any further improvements. Punishments aren't going to keep getting harsher (on average) so the rest of crime-deterrence will have to be done through other avenues i.e moral progression, more widespread civility etc.

Surely there have been some psychology experiment on this concept in general.

Also, I think this was discussed in 'Better Angels of Our Nature' with some statistical evidence given. It's not exactly a niche book suggestion but if you haven't read it and you're interested in the general decline of violence I'd very highly recommend it. Very long/dry though

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. I have no illusions about violent or property crime disappearing overnight or in a century, but I do believe we can do more to help it along by thinking outside the box and not settling for a faulty, if effective status quo by justifying it as good enough.

Torture isn't really needed. Humans are pretty sensitive to public censure.

You should know better. Taking something away (in this case, freedom) is a much better deterrent than punishment.

Knowing that you are missing out on getting a blow job that you expected is FAR worse than being yelled at.

The time between behavior and reward/punishment has the strongest effect.

It is an excellent book.

They do tho, although obviously not expressly. All humans do cost/benefit analysis for every decision they make.

And of course they are factoring in things like how likely they are to be caught. That's why gas stations get robbed way more often than banks.

Not an experiment, but here is a PDF of a literature review that concludes that there is little evidence that increasing the severity of punishment is a deterrent to crime and better evidence that increasing the certainty of punishment is a deterrent to crime.

How do you increase the certainty of punishment tho?

One recommendation is increasing police presence to create a perception of increased risk of apprehension. Something data-driven such as hot spot policing seems to work much better than something random such as stop-and-frisk.

I also think we should be more forgiving about police use of technology.

canofworms.jpg

You don't think that increased police presence in certain areas will simply cause the crime to move to other areas?

There was a report that recently came out in The Netherlands, where right wing politicians have urged for years for more police presence in the streets, that revealed crimes weren't getting solved. Basically the limited resources were used to create the illusion of safety, but when an actual crime occurred, it wasn't getting investigated.

Increased resources maybe? One thing that would help for some serious crimes is improving the confidence in the system so crimes like rape and abuse are reported more. Technology is a difficult issue but it's still has a huge part to play.

One thing though. Even if getting detection rates up is hard , that's no reason to do something that doesn't work, like treating prisoners badly, just because it's easy.

Oh I don't know. Pretty sure we cold reduce shoplifting very significantly by having half-dead flayed shoplifters strung up outside shops.

Just putting them in stocks for the day would be pretty effective imo

Better than whatever we do now.

Also, wrt to punishment in the US, isn't it extremely hard to get a job in the US with a criminal record? So robbing that liquor store for a couple thousand at most seems to have a pretty negative EV even if you barely had to spend much time in prison for it in a fairly comfortable prison.

The literature review I linked to mentions that some studies have show that hot spot policing does not appear to displace crime to nearby areas and that crime is sometimes reduced in the surrounding area.

I was not able to find that Netherlands report that you refer to.

It's in Dutch unfortunately.

Did hot spot policing result in prevention of crime or also in actual arrests?

The human ability to over-estimate their chance to avoid consequences,as well as, the tendency to act on impulse with zero thought of consequences should not be overlooked. Neither deterrence or harsher punishment solves those elements of criminality.

This is likely trivially true if you're generous enough with your definition of "cost/benefit analysis". What's in dispute is whether or not the analysis employed by your typical criminal is sophisticated enough to include a fair approximation of their chances of being caught.

And I mean, OK, boo hoo if they don't, true enough. But it's less about pitying them for being dumb than it is about questioning the rationale behind certain policies.

I don't think that's true, unless 'the likelihood of on-site armed resistance' is a subset of 'the likelihood of getting caught'. I suppose being shot does constitute a form of capture, but I don't agree that the above represents a full-blooded reasoning process about the likelihood of capture.

And obviously there's variability. The crew that inspired Heat, sure, they probably had a fine understanding of their chances. I very much doubt they're a representative example.

Lol, of course not.

The answer to this is in the link he gave.

I agree with AsianNits studies (because I haven't read any better). Upping the punishment is not doing anything for general deterement. But even if it did, there is still the moral question left of using individuals you know did nothing wrong or did act in a way they could not have avoided and punish them just for the greater good.