USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010820.2224 (On Screen): Iain rants about how an Illinois legislator tried to pass a bill to make carrying out executions in the state easier, even as the state is finding that a huge number of the people on death row were put there as a result of questionable trials. The law would have made certain gang-related crimes punishable by death. Iain wonders why the legislator would do such a stupid thing. Actually, there's a completely reasonable explanation for it. The politician is posturing. (Naturally.) But there's more to it than that.

Ultimately, the reason for criminal law is to try to keep the populace safe from crime. It is intended to do this in two ways: by deterring people from committing crimes and by getting people who have committed crimes out of circulation, since they're the ones most likely to commit more crimes. But the "habitual offender" model only applies to certain categories of crimes, such as burglary or prostitution. For many kinds of crimes, almost all offenders are first-timers. For them, the only possibility is deterrence. Now studies have shown that the probability of being punished is much more important as a deterrent than the severity of the punishment. A 90% chance of 1 year in prison is much more of a deterrent than a 1% chance of life imprisonment. And if you think about it, most criminals are gamblers anyway; they might actually be harmed or killed during the crime itself. A 1% chance of punishment is just another part of the calculation of risk, and not really that much of one. So it makes sense that a high probability of punishment will loom larger in someone's mind.

Of course, when crime gets out of control or is perceived to be doing so by the voters then they want their elected representatives to "do something about it." The problem is that there isn't actually a great deal that legislators can do about substantially increasing the probability of capture and punishment. Any substantial gain there is going to be exceedingly expensive. You could probably do it by quadrupling the number of police, raising their pay, giving them better equipment and more support, creating more courts with more judges to expedite trials -- figure about a tenfold increase in the cost of law enforcement. Even for a lawnorder conservative, that's a pretty big stone to swallow. And in any case there are all those pesky constitutional issues getting in the way. It's pretty much hopeless. Or you can try to address the things which cause people to resort to crime in the first place, like poverty and hopelessness and lack of opportunity; that's gonna be even more expensive and will take longer to have any effect. It does no politician any good to solve a problem if the solution process takes fifty years.

But the voters are demanding action, and if you (a politician) don't come up with something then they'll express their displeasure during the next election. Making the penalties for crimes more severe is relatively painless, in the short run. It does increase expenditures in the long run (for more prisons) but that cost isn't going to be blamed on the guy who introduced the legislation increasing penalties. So he gets to go back to his voters and say "See? I'm tough on crime!" (or in this case, "See? I'm tough on gangs!") It makes little practical difference in the crime rate, but it satisfies the voters. In fact, it will satisfy the voters even if it fails to pass, or gets vetoed. (discuss)