The longer one is a believer the less they think like an unbeliever. Not being criminals limits our understanding of how criminals think. We might want to give it a try when it comes to our justice system.
Given the rarity with which executions are carried out in the is country and the long delays in doing so, no reasonable criminal is deterred by the threat of execution. Even though capital punishment quadrupled within a decade there were only 478 executions in the entire United States during the 1990s. Any parent knows the difference between deterrent and empty threat, "Okay, I'm going to count to ten and this time I'm really going to punish you." Among prisoners on death row, the annual execution rate is 2 percent---compared with the 7 percent annual chance of dying faced by a member of a typical gang that distributes crack. If life on death row is safer than life on the streets its hard to believe the fear of execution is a driving force in a criminal's calculus.
Sometime I will have to explain how legalizing abortions in the 70s led to a major drop in crime in the 90s.
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