I think the value of deterrent largely depends on the type of crime (to which you allude). Its value will be slim to none in the case of crimes of passion, crimes of the desperate, or crimes of the very stupid and/or irrational, none of which most (not all) war crimes are. In the case of a rational crime committed with careful weighing of the options and cost-benefit analysis (such as organized and/or professional crime or much white-collar crime), I think it almost certainly does work.
--- On Thu, 5/28/09, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> From: ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Punish a Pinochet: Cui Bono?
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 3:29 PM
> On May 28, 2009, at 3:02 PM, Chris
> Doss wrote:
> >
> > Sure. Pinochet would have been in prison. That whole
> justice thing.
> >
>
> Forget justice (on which I suspect you and I think
> differently) for a moment, and let's talk about deterrence.
> Punishment as a deterrent doesn't work for garden variety
> crime because (among other reasons, one of them being that
> most such crime is not, as per moral reasoning, wrong), in
> the majority case, garden variety criminals have not many
> options. It's not like you can choose between stealing
> something or instead, get in on a hot social networking Web
> 2.0 startup with a $3 billion valuation -- such crime is a
> symptom (IMHO) of the breakdown of the social/welfare
> system/contract. Dictators and strongmen on the other hand,
> it seems to me, are opportunistic parasites who feed on a
> co-operative. Giving them an idea of what their fate would
> be, should they *choose* not to participate, seems like a
> jolly good idea to me. Plus, going back to justice as
> retribution, there is the whole emotive/inspirational aspect
> of it -- we are not, after all, completely logical
> creatures.
>
> --ravi
>
>
> > --- On Thu, 5/28/09, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> From: Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com>
> >> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Ace nails it
> >> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> >> Date: Thursday, May 28, 2009, 1:11 PM
> >> Well, do you think that a conviction
> >> of Pinochet by Spain would have brought
> >> any actual positive results?
> >>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>