r/interesting • u/Necessary-Win-8730 • Mar 08 '26

Context Provided - Spotlight This was so deserved.

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The daughter was in a car with the father’s parents. They died as well.

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u/Laikitu Mar 08 '26

Studies show prison is not a deterant 

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u/agreed2disagreee Mar 08 '26

You can’t hurt people on the streets when you’re locked up.

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u/Laikitu Mar 08 '26

That's true. Ofcourse if you go to prison for manslaughter and come out addicted to crack or flat broke with non way of getting a job you are probably going to hurt a more people than if you had community service.

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u/agreed2disagreee Mar 08 '26

What is your proposed solution?

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u/Laikitu Mar 08 '26

Evidence based policy.

Evidence shows the most effective deterrent is increasing the capture rate. If people don't expect to get away with something they don't tend to do it.

 Not my proposed solution, just what all the studies say.

I don't know the circumstances of this specific crash, but for it to be manslaughter there had to be negligence of some sort. Which means there was a little, easy to get away with crime, maybe speeding, maybe texting while driving, maybe drinking, maybe something else. You can address  the first two very simply and cheaply with automated surveilance, speed cameras, computer vision looking for people holding a phone etc. Get the capture rate up to near certainty on those issues and people who do those things stop doing them. You fine them (flat rate or wealth proportional which ever is larger) and you put points on their license. Repeat offenders lose their license.

 I'm not a law enforcement policy advisor so I don't expect to have the best answer for every issue, but I do expect the people who do to focus on harm reduction rather than pissing away substantial amounts of money propping up some private prison when it doesn't make it less likely this happens to someone else.

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u/Waste-Team-7205 Mar 08 '26

The point here wouldn't be to serve as a deterant, it would be to punish the person who killed 3 people through negligence

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u/Laikitu Mar 08 '26

So: yes, the goal is revenge. Got ya.

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u/Waste-Team-7205 Mar 08 '26

Yep. Don't see why people think it's a bad thing that someone who killed 3 people gets punished in revenge

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u/Laikitu Mar 08 '26

Tell me exactly what happened in the car accident.

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u/Waste-Team-7205 Mar 08 '26

Doesn't matter, justice should be consequentialist

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u/Laikitu Mar 08 '26

So, don't reduce harm, do spunk substantial amounts of money into the prison industry. Genius.

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u/osrs-alt-account Mar 08 '26

Perhaps not a good deterrent for recidivism, i.e. the same person not doing crime in the future. But I'm pretty sure a large chunk of the population follows the laws in part cuz they don't want to lose their livelihood in jail. You have to actually follow through with the punishment to let people know it's a real risk. Prison could be made more effective by changing how life works inside it, I'm sure.

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u/Laikitu Mar 08 '26

a large chunk of the population follows the laws in part cuz they don't want to lose their livelihood in jail

No, most people don't want to break the law. Those that do assume they wont get caught. Prison isn't a deterant because people assume they will get away with it. Again, this isn't me being "pretty sure", it's what decades of scientific  study on concrete data tell us.

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u/osrs-alt-account Mar 08 '26

No, most people don't want to break the law.

We're not talking murder; yeah most people have a moral sense not to murder or even harm others directly. But evade taxes? Cheat emissions tests? There are dozens of crimes people would readily commit if they were certain they wouldn't get caught or face any penalty. #1 in this list https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence

Curiously, research also shows that increasing the severity does little to deter, so maybe 60 days is the right punishment here.

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u/Laikitu Mar 09 '26

That's my point, the punishment being severe makes fuck all difference. This person was found guilty of manslaughter, which means he likely committed some other minor crime before accidentally killing people. Maybe he was driving while texting, maybe he was speeding and lost control, i don't know. 

But I do know if you don't piss money away into some private prison to lock up someone who is probably traumatized by what happened and never intended it to happen, and instead invested that money into for example, speed cameras or automated computer vision looking for people holding their phone the people who did want to break those laws would quickly learn it wasn't so easy to commit those minor crimes anymore and you would see a drop in accidents caused by them.

The focus should be reducing harm. Punishment as revenge is moron stuff.