Re: [Fwd: Death driver jail term criticised]

Tony Raven wrote:
Alan Braggins wrote on 30/06/2007 16:50 +0100:
In article <kYCdnapFtpQm-BvbnZ2dnUVZ8tWnnZ2d@xxxxxxxxx>, Tony Raven wrote:
Simon Brooke wrote on 30/06/2007 14:44 +0100:
Prison is only
justified in so far as it either rehabilitates the offender, or protects
the public.
You forgot prison "pour encourager les autres.

Arguably that's protecting the public from those who would have committed
the crime if they weren't deterred by the thought of the prison sentence.
At least that's the intention, and if it doesn't work, I don't think
"pour encourager les autres" does justify prison.

Hypothetical. If crossing a red light carried an automatic prison sentence instead of an FPN would you be more, the same or less likely to cross a red light?


People consider the punishment when crossing a red light because they figure there is a reasonable chance of getting caught and hence a severe punishment has a strong deterrent effect. The same is true to a certain extent of drink driving.

However people do not expect to kill someone when they drink drive and hence are much less deterred by even a very severe punishment.

There was an Open University program that illustrated a similar point by stating that capital punishment would have a huge deterrent effect on illegal parking but the deterrent effect on murder was much less clear mainly because murders do not expect to be caught.
.

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