[anti-abuse-wg] Certainty vs. Severity as a deterrent (was Notice: Fradulent RIPE ASNs)

Ronald,

On Monday, 2013-01-21 03:44:57 -0800, 
"Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:
> I can't remember where anymore, but somewhere, a long time ago, I
> read something about crime & punishment that basically said that
> for crimes that are particularly easy to pull off, it can be easily
> seen that those specific types of crimes will run rampant _unless_
> the punishment for those few who get caught is made extremely harsh...
> you know, so that anyone in their right mind would really have to
> think twice before trying it, even in the odds are only one in a
> hundred of ever actually getting caught.

Contemporary research tends to suggest that increasing harshness won't
help:

    While the criminal justice system as a whole provides some
    deterrent effect, a key question for policy development regards
    whether enhanced sanctions or an enhanced possibility of being
    apprehended provide any additional deterrent benefits. Research to
    date generally indicates that increases in the *certainty* of
    punishment, as opposed to the *severity* of punishment, are more
    likely to produce deterrent benefits.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/deterrence%20briefing%20.pdf

Cheers,

--
Shane

p.s. There is a _Star Trek_ episode which posits that we only need the
     death penalty to achieve utopia though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29