system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does increasing the severity of punishment deter crime? Why?
gpt
Your question grows out of the emergent theory of criminal deterrence, in which the (perceived) certainty, celerity (speed), and severity of punishment are part of a rational calculation by potential criminals about their behavioral decisions.

Decades of research have failed to produce consistent evidence in favor of this theory (Paternoster, 2010; Doob & Webster, 2003). At best, the situation is more complicated. The US criminal justice system, for example, is essentially incapable of delivering adequate celerity. Other research approaches suggest that while deterrence issues are a factor in decision-making, so are others, such as the maintenance of social ties and norms.

In other words, it's complicated. But more severe punishments do not deliver straight-up results on the crime rate. (EDIT: Do not deliver *consistent,* straight-up results on the crime rate across crimes. Work on this, and rational theories of crime is an ongoing area of research, mostly because rationality is like heroin to economists. As a another poster mentioned, everyone recognizes that there are subtleties and measurement issues that are likely disguising effects; however, though this theory is appealingly straightforward, it has failed to deliver a knockout blow to the explanation and prediction of crime.) 


EDIT:

Dolling, et al 2009: It is supposed that threats of punishment deter potential criminals from committing crimes. The correctness of this theory is, however, questionable. Numerous empirical investigations have come to different results. In this article a meta-analysis is described which tries to find out the reasons for the different findings. First evaluations indicate that the methods of research have an influence on the results and that a possible deterring effect of the penal law can only be covered reasonably with a very differentiating model. Not all criminal acts can be influenced by deterrence. It appears that the most significant deterrent effects can be achieved in cases of minor crime, administrative offences and infringements of informal social norms. In cases of homicide, on the other hand, the meta-analysis does not indicate that the death penalty has a deterrent effect. According to the results, the validity of the deterrence hypothesis must be looked at in a differenciated manner.

Pratt & Cullen, 2005: The macro-level approach reemerged as a salient criminological paradigm in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Prompted by new theories and reformulations of existing ones, over 200 empirical studies explored ecological correlates of crime. Few efforts have been made, however, to "make sense" of this literature. A "meta-analysis" was undertaken to determine the relative effects of macro-level predictors of crime. Indicators of "concentrated disadvantage" (e.g., racial heterogeneity, poverty, and family disruption) are among the strongest and most stable predictors. Except for incarceration, variables indicating increased use of the criminal justice system (e.g., policing and get-tough policy effects) are among the weakest. Across all studies, social disorganization and resource/economic deprivation theories receive strong empirical support; anomie/strain, social support/social altruism, and routine activity theories receive moderate support; and deterrence/rational choice and subcultural theories receive weak support.

Paternoster, 2010: This Article discusses the deterrence of crime through sanctions. It begins with a brief intellectual history of deterrence theory in the work of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, two Enlightenment philosophers who created the conceptual foundation for later deterrence and rational choice theory. Although a prominent intellectual current by the end of the 1700s, interest in deterrence and rational choice based theories of criminal offending was later eclipsed by more biologically and psychologically based explanations. Interest in deterrence theory and the deterrent effect of legal sanctions was not rekindled until the mid-1960s. This Article discusses the particular and important role of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology in publishing the works of both those who were highly critical of deterrence theory and those who wished to keep it alive, though vividly aware of the lack of any empirical support for it. This Article discusses the theoretical connections that are presumed by the deterrence process and briefly reviews some important empirical studies pertaining to each of those presumed causal connections. The empirical evidence leads to the conclusion that there is a marginal deterrent effect for legal sanctions, but this conclusion must be swallowed with a hefty dose of caution and skepticism; it is very difficult to state with any precision how strong a deterrent effect the criminal justice system provides. At the very least, there is a great asymmetry between what is expected of the legal system through deterrence and what the system delivers. There is greater confidence that non-legal factors are more effective in securing compliance than legal threats. It is argued that the empirical evidence does support the belief that criminal offenders are rational actors, in that they are responsive to the incentives and disincentives associated with their actions, but that the criminal justice system, because of its delayed imposition of punishment, is not well constructed to exploit this rationality.

Doob & Webster, 2003: The literature on the effects of sentence severity on crime levels has been reviewed numerous times in the past twenty-five years. Most reviews conclude that there is little or no consistent evidence that harsher sanctions reduce crime rates in Western populations. Nevertheless, most reviewers have been reluctant to conclude that variation in the severity of sentence does not have differential deterrent impacts. A reasonable assessment of the research to date-with a particular focus on studies conducted in the past decade-is that sentence severity has no effect on the level of crime in society. It is time to accept the null hypothesis.