When we (Dutch) ask in school why our sentences are so low, it is explained that if the punishment does not fit the crime, you will be incentivized to add more crime because you are already facing prison time, so why would you care about a few years more or less. Aka if the crime for rape is almost the same as murder you might as well kill the victim to have less chance of being caught. We have not a lot of crime and people who commit crimes like this come out of it as long term productive citizens: if you go to jail, what exactly are you doing/deterring? He will never have a normal life because of some stupid thing he did? Do like (i think) scandinavia and swiss; make fines fit the economical status of the perpetrator.
Edit; me and my friends did dumb things when young, not quite this dumb, but enough, if tried as adult, for prison time in the US possibly and caning+prison in for instance Singapore ; what exactly would that have done? We are all highly successful tax payers and it was foolishness that occured once or twice, 30 years ago.
here's an example that disputes your assumption: Japan has much less criminality than NL, and has one of the harshest prison systems in the world.
you can leave your expensive bicycle unlocked on a crowded tokyo street and no-one's going to touch it. you can leave your expensive apartment completely unsecured and no-one's going to get it.
they even still have the baggage lockers all across their subway.
a lot of this is due to how scared people are of their police/imprisonment, and the subsequent social downgrade.
Apart from being one of the most ethnically and culturally homogeneous countries in the developed world, Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack (twice!). This fact makes Japan an essentially unique society, not entirely comparable to others. The mindset of Japanese people today is completely different from that of the Japanese for centuries prior to the Second World War.
Actually there is theft, for example, I watched a TV program about shoplifting and they caught several people, like a company of school girls or an old woman.
The bicyles must be registered in Tokyo if I remember correctly.
Also, they have unmanned selling stalls, usually in the countryside, where farmers sell fruits and vegetables [1]
Perverse incentives at work. If the jail cells in Japan were anything like Rikers, this wouldn't be a thing. Conversely, societal institutions for the elderly could also work.
Seems that depends on where you look but it's at least on par or below, so point taken.
In Singapore it seems to work well as well. But I always assumed because it is so tiny they will always get you and you will get punished.
It is interesting to learn more and it is a difficult issue which probably is partly unsolvable, I show one perspective, but that might not work elsewhere. I just do not see the damaging a young person from taking part in society forever is a good plan, at all, for small infractions without bodily harm.
> and the subsequent social downgrade.
By no means I claim to know much about Japan but from what I know from reading/watching a lot about it I would wager it's more this than the punishment... But it would need research I guess to figure out why the differences.
Yeah, Europe has never heard of hazing or bullying.
If you care to check, the U.S. is not an outlier when it comes to general crime rates. Your entire rant is based on ideological phobia and invented premises.
So what's the point then? Apparently the way it works now is not working and yes, that sounds awful, but what is being done about it if harsher punishment does not work? Even harsher punishment is what I am hearing 'on the other side of the pond'. When I had a restaurant in my village I got Americans all the time crying about what a pussy Obama was being soft on crime; most we got in were for the dead penalty and long prison time for even small infractions, against drugs wholesale (but not alcohol, one of the most dangerous and addictive drugs ofcourse!). Apparently they felt your pain as well, but the resolution seems akward; you would think better educatoin/rehabilitation instead of harsher punishment would be a more productive way of trying?
Ofcourse the issue is very difficult ; there are just really bad people out there and I do not think anyone has a solution for those. I am sorry to hear you seem to have 'many of them'; yet again, that makes me think there is something wrong that can be fixed if this is not the same in other places (other side of the pond...).
Now imagine, you being one of the kids you are talking about, and someone with your current attitude talking to you. Would this make you stop doing things that you do? Would it make you reconsider your actions? I bet it would only make you feel more angry.
What my kids thought me is that you must be patient. Always. You cant tell something once, and expect it to work instantly. It's easier to just slap annoying kid if he misbehaves, but he will just start to fear you, and it will not add to his understanding on the right way to behave.
For you it might look that it have worked because he will try to avoid you, but in his head there will be totally different understanding compared to what could have been if you talked to him constantly about "the tight way" of behaving.
The GP is making a thinly-veiled racial argument--the U.S. is supposed to be uniquely bad because of its minority population. You can see similar rhetoric employed on neo-Nazi websites regularly.
I’ll add that deterrence breaks down into two different prongs: (1) deterring this particular guy from doing the same thing again and (2) deterring others from copying what this guy did. It might seem unfair to punish this guy harshly when a lesser punishment would deter him from ever trying the same thing again, but that is ignoring prong (2), the value of punishing him as a warning to others.
The deterrence is probably mostly for the group in (2) but because that group already knows what the punishment is because of the deterrence in said region, but find themselves (by whatever peer pressure, stupidity, drugs&alcohol) find themselves in this position, they may find the deterrent a guideline to add on more crimes because it does not matter. In this case, if he knew about the punishment, he probably would have fled the country the next day. Making a crime go unpunished; if he just is flagged and cannot leave the country and has to pay 100k in fines, he might be a good citizen and pay taxes in the US the rest of his life. I cannot see these harsh punishments work well (and seems they do not as people keep doing crime more than elsewhere) but it is probably needed to get elected (soft on crime!!!).
> if he just is flagged and cannot leave the country and has to pay 100k in fines, he might be a good citizen and pay taxes in the US the rest of his life
Yes, he might; or he might go through life wantonly destroying other people's property whenever he feels he has a grievance, as there don't seem to be any serious consequences for doing so.
It's a hard question, and individuals vary so much (circumstances, motivations, character, ...) that generalised answers will often be wrong. But a justice system needs rules and standards of some kind.
> But a justice system needs rules and standards of some kind.
Sure, but having to get a job (he has an MBA so he was planning to) and having the tax office take 70% of his wages until paid off (or allow him to pay off faster if he can) is not a light punishment while it does bring back some productivity. Jail time or over the top crazy punishments doesn't seem to help either and only costs society money. And then more money because the individual will most likely never recover after having spent some of his most productive years behind bars.
The sore point here is ofcourse that he is on a student Visa in which case I think the punishment of giving him a criminal record and sending him back to India is harsh punishment in itself.
That is not really a problem because there is usually a lot of flexibility given to the judge in sentencing. The judge can determine an appropriate sentence within the maximums (and sometimes minimums) set by the law.
I see the point, but the amounts described in the article are going to deter 99% of society already, so I find focusing on the 1% implausible. Is there anything I can read about such deterrence?
Question is; does it deter well? What are the crime stats on vandalism/destroying propery crimes in the US vs other countries. If it is like other crimes, the over the top punishments do not seem to deter vs the lightweight punishments in some other countries.
If the damages included the cost of the investigation, the impact of being without computers for months, etc. then the school wouldn't mind the incident happening again and again.
