What you are about to read below is Snaar’s philosophical question of the day…<\/p>\n
| \nQuote: Snaars<\/b> \nThere was some heated discussion in my philosophy of law class today regarding the relative merits or lack thereof of punishment within our criminal justice system.<\/p>\n Turns out that all the evidence gathered through two hundred years of social science have shown that the threat of punishment does not deter crime.<\/p>\n One student asked how we could possibly know that the threat of punishment does not deter crime, since if it did the only evidence would be the lack of a crime being committed, which is something we can’t measure. No one had the facts and statistics at their disposal, but the student was assured that the question has been studied thoroughly and it is the belief of social scientists that threat of punishment does not deter crime.<\/p>\n Another student claimed that violent crime seems to be committed only by irrational people, so it made sense that punishment would not deter that kind of person – to which it was replied that perhaps the student thought we should put in jail anyone who could not pass a critical thinking test? It was also replied that white collar crime actually harms the most people – not violent crime – and yet the focus of our criminal justice system is and has always been violent crime.<\/p>\n Someone else piped up and said that of course punishment deters crime, since people in jail can’t commit a crime. But this missed the point, since we were talking about recitivism rates – assuming that these people are not in jail for life but will be released at some point. It was assumed that the purpose of jailing criminals is to ‘reform’ them (although there is good reason to think that this seldom or never happens – and when it does, it’s probably a fluke). Also, it was asserted, prison produces criminals – it hardens people, puts them in the center of a criminal culture, etc.<\/p>\n All in all it seems our punishment system is in desperate need of reform. We have a higher percentage of people in our prison system than any other culture throughout history has ever had.<\/p>\n One thing I heard in the discussion that I had never heard before. It turns out that punishment is the least effective method of behavior modification. Just a little more effective is reward. The very best system involves intermittent rewards. People will work the hardest if there is a chance – not an assurance, just a chance – of being rewarded for it.<\/p>\n I was thinking of a (very informal) thought experiment. The experiment is just a kind of survey, to see whether or not people would intuitively agree that this kind of reward system could be effective.Here’s the experiment:<\/p>\n Traffic is becoming increasingly problematic in America’s cities and on our highways. Drivers who speed or are negligent in obeying ordinary traffic laws are both annoying and dangerous. The technology now exists to put in place a monitoring system by which the government can know if a person has violated traffic laws and regulations – and the police do not even have to be involved. For instance, a camera can take a photo of a car as it runs illegally through a red light, and the offender can get a traffic ticket through the mail. It doesn’t seem fair though, to punish people for every single instance in which they make a mistake, as though we were robots and should never make one. So, instead of having a system of punishments for violators – why not have a system of intermittent rewards? People who commit infractions could receive warnings. (Maybe if they are chronic offendors, they should pay some sort of fine. In this case we would be subscribing to a system of intermittent rewards combined with intermittent punishments.) Those who commit no offenses would be entered into a lottery, with winners drawn monthly. Winners would receive a reward, say $1000.<\/p>\n So, the question is … do you think you would be effectively motivated to drive safely if you knew there was a chance you could win a monetary award for doing so? Notice that the question is about you personally, not about whether you think the system would work on other people or the population in general. <\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What you are about to read below is Snaar’s philosophical question of the day… Quote: Snaars There was some heated discussion in my philosophy of law class today regarding the relative merits or lack thereof of punishment within our criminal justice system. 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