Fear of prison does deter allot of crime, but not everyone fears it. Decent people fear it, the turds on the street dont. Prison is supposed to be a punishment.
If the death penalty deters crime, then super! There again, it is a punishment.
Don't discount rehabilitation. It actually does work -- certainly not in all cases, and maybe not even in most cases, but it works better than not even trying.
First, I need to disabuse you of the notion that punishment and deterrence are unconnected ideas. The more effective a punishment is, the more fearsome, the more effective it is as a deterrent.
The problem is that many career criminals actually feel just as much, or even more, at home in prison than outside. They never learned adult coping skills, never learned to manage their own lives.
It may sound strange to you and me, but the folks who are constantly in and out of prison throughout their lives are most comfortable when they have someone telling them what to do every minute of every day. When you have no decisions to make, it takes the pressure off.
My dad, who's nearing his 40th year working in corrections, used to run a halfway house that offered counseling, including substance abuse counseling; vocational training and supervised work-release; and the kind of basic life lessons (dress respectably, show up on time, don't mouth off to the boss) that most of us got in childhood.
It worked. Two out of three felons who went through that program weren't back in prison within five years. For prisoners who were released without that kind of transition program, the number is one in three.
There are two ways to make prison more of a deterrent -- make prison worse, or make the prospect of life outside better. We need to be doing both. The issue is getting smart rather than getting "tough."
Rehabilitation isn't just the purview of crunchy-granola liberals. Ask Chuck Colson, who's studied the issue from both sides of the bars, and Sam Brownback, who spent the night at Louisiana's infamous Angola state prison to draw attention to the issue of prison reform.
I thought prison is where we put people who are a danger to society.
Obviously, prison is a "deterrent" to the prisoner, whose only victims while he is incarcerated are other criminals.
I thought prison is where we put people who are a danger to society.
Obviously, prison is a "deterrent" to the prisoner, whose only victims while he is incarcerated are other criminals.