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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Another side of this is that the harsher you make the punishments for small crimes, the less you discourage moving up to bigger crimes.

If you're robbing a place and your punishment for being caught is effectively life in prison, what reason do you have not to murder all the potential witnesses to improve your odds of getting away with the crime? All you have is morality, and I don't want to rely on the morality of criminals.

I know that the deterrent effect of prison on criminals is highly debatable, but if somebody is robbing me, I don't want all of the incentives given to him to point towards murdering me too.

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If you're robbing a place and your punishment for being caught is effectively life in prison, what reason do you have not to murder all the potential witnesses to improve your odds of getting away with the crime? All you have is morality, and I don't want to rely on the morality of criminals.

In Heat, Al Pacino's character summarizes this attitude in a quick line (paraphrase): "Once it escalated to a murder-one for all of them, why not pop guard number two because ... what difference does it make?"

The scene is an armored truck holdup and a loose-cannon member of the robbers' crew shoots one of the two guards (By accident? Or is he a psychopath?). After this, the second guard needs to die, as a living witness, because the entire crew is already exposed to first-degree murder charges. Simple risk management.

Right. In that scene, the criminals (aside from the nutjob who shoots the first guard) are somewhat moral, but once the first guard dies, the cold calculations outweigh their somewhat loose morality.

(Great movie, too. If anyone else is reading this and wonders wtf it's all about, go check it out.)

The movie stands out for the actoring duel between Pacino and DeNiro, as well as (IIRC) sound.

> Another side of this is that the harsher you make the punishments for small crimes, the less you discourage moving up to bigger crimes.

Actually it makes it easier ... there is upper limit on how much you could punish a person. And if the penalties for stealing pack of gum and high treason are the same - well ... why bother with only the first.

That's what I said: harsh punishment for minor crimes reduces the deterrent effect of harsh punishment for major crimes.

Read that sentence/post again, because the two of you agree.

Too many monsters too little sleep :(

> there is upper limit on how much you could punish a person

I would not be so sure about that. We, humans, are extremely creative when it comes to hurt each other.

> Another side of this is that the harsher you make the punishments for small crimes, the less you discourage moving up to bigger crimes.

Maybe everybody should go to prison for a while to stop crime before it even starts.

Disproportionate penalties may be as likely to harden them as reform them. What you get out isn't a repentant model citizen. Unless your goal is to let these people rot and die and just release corpses.

This is a reasonable comment, but what does it have to do with the comment you replied to?

I think he misread it. I had to absorb the sentiment of the rest of the post and re-read your first line a few times to properly parse it.

For me, "the less you discourage" reads less clearly than "the more you encourage". I realise that the two aren't identical in meaning, but I would have chosen the latter because a compounded minimization ("the less you don't do x") is generally less immediately clear than a maximization ("the more you do x").

This is compounded by your opening of "Another side of this". This can mean "another aspect of the problem you describe which agrees with your point" but it can also mean "another aspect of how sentencing should work that comes to a different conclusion". For many, the latter is more intuitive ("two sides to every story" etc etc).

Not passing judgement on how you worded your post, just explaining why someone might misread it.

Fair. Looks like he's not alone, too. I'll keep that in mind!

You know -- I think we're on the same page wrt how the punishment really ought to fit the crime; I misread what you were saying :)

Maybe I should take it down -- initially I thought you were talking about discouraging crime w/ a big punishment, but in fact you were talking about discouraging a criminals restraint because they're already going to get nailed in a big way...

I think I'll take mine down and let your original post stand.

Edit: or I'll just leave it so the flow is preserved -- there's a thread here now that explains everything. Let the downvotes fit the crime though, please ;)

Leaving it is good by me. Like I said, it's a reasonable comment, just seemed out of place since it sounded like disagreement but said the same thing. Now that everyone knows what's up, it fits fine.

The main function of prisons is to keep the criminals away from law-abiding society. Note that the guy's accomplice continued his criminal behavior inside prison.

That said, 10-15 is more than enough for this kind of crime.

> That said, 10-15 is more than enough for this kind of crime.

Indeed. When he gets two-three murders worth of time without murdering anyone, you really have to question the proportionality of the whole thing.

They both definitely deserved jail time. I'm certain the crimes had an impact on the people they robbed and threatened.

And I agree, 10-15, MAYBE up to 20 is proportionate. 90 years is not.

20 years for two armed robberies is not remotely appropriate. It only seems appropriate in a system where people routinely get sentences longer than a standard lifespan.

And it's not only from a moral standpoint - the economics of it are ridiculous, too. The social harm done from two robberies is not worth the cost of locking someone up until they die.

The main function of prisons is to keep the criminals away from law-abiding society

Really? I thought it was about correcting/reforming.

Depends on the country maybe? Here in Brazil no one believes criminals can be fixed, here we want them away, locked up or dead.

They should change name from correctional facilities to something else then.

Joking aside, I think that using prisons just for isolation is a waste of tax payer money.

Just think about at the case at hand, we are wasting the money needed to keep this guy in jail for another 8 decades with no actual reasons.

edit: fix grammar

What's the alternative, in your mind?

Where, here in Brasil they are not called Correctional Facility!

In fact the only place where I saw "Correctional Facility" was in US-movies and series, I thought it was some fictional name or something like that.

It's not a matter of belief, it is a matter of demonstrable fact that some criminals are capable of completely reforming. To deny this is simply to deny reality.

(It is also clearly apparent that some criminals are unreformable - telling the difference a priori remains the hard part).

So an 18 year old kid gets busted for a drug offense. He gets thrown in jail for several years along with hardened and violent criminals. His "rehabilitation" consists of an immersion in a world of criminality, and when he is finally released, he has a record that will stay with him for the rest of his life and severely limit his choices moving forward.

Yes, he's been reformed. Just not in a good way. Not in a way that does anything to try to fit him back into society.

The four recognized purposes of punishment are: deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retribution. Which is primary, or even whether they are all legitimate is a matter of fierce debate.

I may be misremembering the story or context, since I can't find it with an internet search at the moment.

There was an ancient Chinese general, who lost a battle. The punishment for failure was death. The punishment for mutiny was also death. The general learned of this, and lead his soldiers in a revolt.

I recall a similar one where a work party for the Great Wall was delayed, and delay was punishable by death, so the leader of the work party led them on a successful revolt instead, and became emperor.

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