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Scott’s essay made clear to me how much of this is really a cost issue. Or to put it another way, the reason we have crime and a raft of other problems is because of cost-insensitive idealists. Although it could solve the crime problem, incarceration simply costs too much. So we should look into physical punishment, maiming, the stocks.
But I’d like to propose the fairest and cheapest solution: randomized death sentences. When you’re convicted of a serious crime, they hand you a pair of dice, and if you roll snake eyes, you get two in the back of the head. If not, you’re freed. Incapacitation-wise, it’s the equivalent of a long prison sentence for all who roll for a fraction of the cost. And you avoid negative after-effects for being institutionalized with criminals. "Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot."
Who put Two-face in charge of the criminal justice system - let's kill everyone who commits a serious crime.
I don't want the lucky 35/36 of the El Salvedoran 'Drug, Murder and Satanism 5000' gang back on the street.
Yeah, we're setting some sort of record for bad takes here.
This dice rolling system would make crime downright cool. That alone would increase the crime rate. But since we're also releasing the other 97% of criminals, it would cause crime rates to absolutely soar.
Say it with me: The best way to reduce crime is to keep criminals in prison where they can't commit crime.
This is a solved problem. We don't need "one weird trick". Anything you think of while stone is probably a bad idea. Also, the Purge was just a movie.
I don’t see any evidence that you can influence criminals by making their punishment “less cool”. If there was, we should spank them in public or something.
We’re dealing with total morons here. They don’t really understand cause and effect. They basically have no awareness outside of the next ten minutes, if that.
I admire the endless optimism of people who try to whisper in the ear of criminals : ‘Hey…. Man…. We fiddled with the judicial reform knobs again, and now instead of a low chance of getting caught and a heavy sentence, you get a high chance of getting caught and a light sentence, so can you please do less crime, please?’
“Sir, that is a similar expected sentence per crime. As a rational man, I cannot change my behaviour on that basis.”
Actually, he’s not going to say that, because he did not understand the previous sentence. Incapacitation is the only one who really works because it does not require criminals to understand anything, unlike deterrence and aftereffects.
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We've been offered the false choice of "rehabilitation vs. punishment" for so long that it needed Bukele to break the spell and bring "containment" back into the Overton Window.
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The best way to reduce crime is to hang criminals, which is no only much cheaper than prison (or at least it would be if progressives hadn't deliberately made the process as expensive as possible) but also prevents a future administration from releasing the criminals.
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