But it probably does work a lot of the time. maybe most of the time.
You'd have to ask the people who don't commit crime. Who don't generally exceed the speed limit, who don't steal. Or political leaders don't start criminal wars and torture others. Ask them why they didn't, was it the fear of getting caught and punished? Or was it just that the benefits didn't stack up against the risk? Even if its just the risk of hating yourself for the rest of your life.
I'd like to ask that New Zealand couple who are in the news at the moment. The ones who skipped the country with $10 million that the bank accidently deposited into their account.
Presumably they wouldn't have bothered to skip the country if it had been $10,000? But $10 million is another kettle of fish. They must know that they'll eventually get caught, but you can have a great adventure being on the run with $10 million, so maybe they decided it would be worth the price?
Likewise, I've known people who cash dodgy cheques for $20, or steal cars for a short joy-ride, knowing they will get caught, knowing they will go back to jail when they do get caught. But to some people, jail is home. They are just as much at home in jail as out in the real world, perhaps more. It doesn't bother them in the least. The benefit outweighs the risk.
Plus, as you say, we just aren't that logical a species. perhaps the least logical of all the animal kingdom.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 3:29 PM -0400 28/5/09, ravi wrote:
>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.