Does the punishment a crime carries stop people comitting crime?

Question

For instant let say that the punishment for stealling cars was the death penallty, would it stop cars being stolen? If so, why don't we just have really nasty punishments?

Answer 1

Punishment doesn't always solve the problem, whether it's crime or any aspect of life. Most children are punished in some way by their parents, the crimnal system just punishes those that have become adults. This unfortunately is changing as more and more parents are not punishing their children, thus putting more of a burden on the state when those children get older and don't realize the consequences for their actions.

If all crimes required life sentances (vs your death penalty solution) we would become a prison nation. There are soo many crimes that are not harmful to others, like drug possession for personal use, that end up with a punishment from the state. Other more servere crimes require time in jail, other times it just supervision. It might make the individual think about their actions, but if they were raised in a society or home that did not enforce punishment, they would probably not understand, and therefore not learn, why they were punished and continue with the same path in life.

The same holds true for those that serve more than a year in a prison (jails are usually county institutions and limited to less than 1 year), they either learn from their mistake by losing outside contact and general priveledges we take for advantage or they continue to progress by learning from other prisoners ways to "not getting caught". When they do get our of prison they will attempt to get back into society or will (more than likely) be rejected by society and return back to a life of crime. Some may never get caught, others will and have to continue another longer sentence, or with some states and the 3rd strike rule, receive life.

Punishment always does not fit the crime, but it does attempt to teach a lesson to an individual, and in turn this shows other individuals that there is a penalty for criminal offenses. But as stated earlier, it starts with the family. If the parents did not discipline, the child learns no discipline and will continue to do what they want regardless of the punishment.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

For starters, the Supreme Court has ruled that punishments must be proportional to the crimes for which they're given, so the death penalty is only an option for murder or treason.

But the death penalty doesn't deter crime anyway. It might deter you from committing murder or treason, in theory anyway, but would you commit either in the first place? If not, that's not really "deterring crime" because the crime would never happen anyway. Most murders are committed in the heat of passion, without premeditation or thought to consequences, so there is no possibility of deterrence there either.

And if you look at crime rates from before Furman v. Georgia, which abolished the death penalty in the United States for a while, after Gregg v. Georgia, which reinstituted it, and in between, once you control for all other factors, the death penalty had no effect on crime rates. If it had any deterrent effect at all, you'd expect crime rates to drop when the death penalty went into effect and you'd expect them to rise when it was banned.

That said, it's clear that some punishments have deterrent effects on some crimes.

Answer 4

Punishment is only part of the problem...a punishment strong enough to stop the crime is important but the chance of being caught is also important. Did you know that less than 50% of murderers are convicted? With those odds some people will roll the dice even if the penalty is to watch their entire family be killed...we need to make sure police have the resources to improve the catch rate and prosecuters the resources to improve the conviction rate.

Answer 5

It does to an extent, but not completely. Some people are just more willing to take chances, and even get "high" off of taking extreme risks. Ted Bundy is a great example of this. We don't have really nasty punishments for everything for several reasons:
1. Abuse of power.
2. It's extremely expensive to clean up the mess.
3. Fear often brings mayhem, and here it would be widespread, causing something akin to the French Revolution.

Those are only a few.

Answer 6

Unconstitutional. There is the 8th amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. So that would unconstitutional.

Answer 7

we are running out of prison room. Criminals know they have an easy out.

Answer 8

Sometimes.