I’ll need to find these studies and review them. Intuitively, the little I know about psychology suggests that that an extreme enough negative punishment will almost certainly cause a trauma deterring the afflicted individual from repeating the targeted behavior. This is, obviously, an unethical practice that no licensed practitioner of any form would employ and certainly qualifies as Cruel and Unusual Punishment. I am not promoting it’s use by any means, but suggesting that to the best of my inadequate knowledge that it’s supposedly effective. Then again, some may argue that capital punishment was meant to be an effective deterrent, which was proven false.
Any studies you care to share? No worries if not, just thought I should ask before I go venturing. Appreciate the discourse!
It’s been many years since I read them, so I don’t know them off the top of my head. That said, as I recall the explanation was that:
- most violent crimes are crimes of passion, and since they tend to occur in the heat of the moment people aren’t thinking about consequences
- a significant amount of property crimes are acts of economic desperation and/or crimes of opportunity, where the consequences of being caught are either unimportant compared to the more immediate survival needs of the perpetrator, or not fully considered when presented with a tempting opportunity for quick gain
and as such, most of what people think of when they think of criminal activity isn’t well controlled by draconian punishment, and is instead better addressed by improving the general welfare of the most at-risk populations, and focusing incarceration on rehabilitating offenders so as to be able to safely reintegrate into society.
If I recall correctly, white collar crime is one of the few exceptions, since it tends to require quite a lot of planning and forethought to carry out… and if I’m perfectly honest, I’m fine with a billionaire CEO being sentenced to one hour in the Torment Nexus for every hour of stolen wages his company profited from, but alas, that’s not the world we live in.
