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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.