No. At least not for financial crimes. As I have written many times before, the penalty needs to take into account the chances of getting caught. Otherwise many people will commit positive EV crimes.

I'd be interested to see how to calculate chances to be caught, what data are you using?

Practically speaking, I'm not prepared to support 97.5% of rapists for the rest of their natural lives just on the <3% chance they'll rape again. Not happening. Get out and get a job.

Also, I think you underestimate the amount that people change over the course of their lives. A person convicted of a truly heinous crime at the age of 21 may be a completely different person at 42 or 63.

Also, while I don't agree that retribution is heinous, ideally we should really be focusing as a society on rehabilitating people, not punishing them or warehousing them for the rest of their lives. Everyone wins under a system where criminals reform: society most of all.

And, forgive me, as there are few people who get angrier about rape than I do, but it can't be equated with murder. Rape victims suffer horribly, but they CAN heal. They CAN continue their lives. Some of them even manage to forgive their rapists. A rapist has terribly changed someone's life, but hasn't ended it. Effectively ending the rapist's life is a consequence all out of proportion to the crime.

Still an accurate statement?

If so I'll go through the bother of breaking down just how little this financial cost is to you personally.

Leslie Van Houten is a pretty terrible example to use to support your argument. My guess is that she would be a minimal risk to commit more violent crimes. Very few woman in their 60s are chronically violent, and as far as I know she has no history of violence in prison. But for the notoriety of Manson, she would have been released twenty years ago.

DIB you cant make justice reform by just using your emotions to make decisions.

She was a model prisoner and committed her crimes at age 19. Not to mention that she probably wasn't in her right mind. Its probably bad luck for her that the governor is old enough to remember the day it happened.

Agree strongly. It is very unlikely that she has much in common at all with her younger self other than her name.

Given her past and her current age of 68, she is somewhat less of a risk to society than your average 55-year-old woman.

I think this fundamentally misunderstands most instances of rape (and most instances of murder, fwiw).

Obviously correct. It's ridiculous to think that rapists make decisions about whether to murder their victims based on the respective punishments for rape and murder.

Women's rape support groups, who work with the victims of rape and who I hope know more about the subject than either of you, disagree with you and (here in the UK at least) have been strongly against equal sentences for rape and murder.

It's not hard to imagine a situation where immediately after raping a woman, the rapist decides to remove the possibility of being visually identified because there's no extra punishment.

Plus your arguments suggest that we might as well forget about sentencing as a deterrent altogether.

My understanding of the research out there is that certainty of punishment is exponentially more important than severity of punishment when studying deterrence. In general I think the criminal justice system is too fond of handing out long sentences. There are 0 people in the world who would murder someone if they knew they'd get 25 years in prison for doing so, but not if they'd get life.

Along those same lines, I don't think anyone who would be even slightly inclined to kill someone after a sexual assault is going to be deterred by the fact that murder has a harsher sentence, since their focus is on not getting caught in the first place.

Presumably you take the view that armed robbers wouldn't be more inclined to kill in some circumstances, if the sentence for armed robbery were increased to that of murder/manslaughter.

I think you're wrong.

When you refine set "women" down to "women who've been in cults and who've stabbed people to death", how might that change your perception of likelihood to commit future violent crime? Because it's group B we're talking about here, and it's only those who've shown a capability to commit the most heinous crimes that my sentencing increases would affect.

The main reason why most criminals avoid murder when committing serious crimes is that police try harder to find murderers. Kidnapping and child rape are exceptions which is why they are often murdered.

lol. nah. thanks for playing though.

Most criminals of the violent type are not doing anything that resembles cost-benefit analysis or game theory.

I agree, in principle with your take on white collar crimes, fwiw

Of course they are. Maybe not in the spur of the moment and maybe not the most violent, but the average armed robber avoids murder to lessen the chances of being caught. Or did you think it was mainly for moral reasons?

yup

most violent crimes ime are either heat-of-passion or sick-**** control freaks, neither of which undergo any consideration of cost/benefit until after-the-fact when it comes to figuring out how to get away with it

what's your sample size?

Bigger than you think

No, the main reason why most criminals avoid murder when committing serious crimes is that most people aren't capable of murdering another human being, even if they're capable of other serious crimes.

Having had the opportunity as a prosecutor to deal with countless violent felons I can state with some certainty that it is in fact for "moral reasons." Just because somebody is capable of committing robbery, or burglary, or assault (the first two often based on underlying substance abuse and or mental shortcomings) does not mean they are capable, in the moral sense, of killing another human being. Anyone who thinks otherwise is watching too many movies.

I think you should switch the word capable with inclined. Obviously robbers freak out and kill people in a state of panic or whatever.

Fair. Also this seems like a good time to point out that most murderers know their victims as the majority of murders aren't rando robberies gone wrong, they're crimes of passion, whether its domestic violence, or a beef that has gone wrong.

Edit: Actually, I will say that incline is the better word, but the scenario you just layed out, the random robber who freaks out and kills his victim so as not to get caught is really really rare. It happens a lot in TV and in the movies, and when it does happen it gets a lot of press, but it is still very rare.

DS seems to be addressing more towards the organised crime end of the spectrum than crimes of passion (I doubt he thinks it applies to crimes of passion at all)

Do you not think career criminals consider what brings on the heat?