Yeah, I agree with this. I'd be surprised if the chance was as high as .25, but the principle is the same; career criminals can count on eventually being arrested.
That said, the original context of this discussion was the behavior-modification effects of prison policy on the not-yet-arrested population, and from a behavior modification point of view a punishment that usually fails to kick in for the first several crimes doesn't do much to deter those first few crimes.
And making the punishment more and more severe doesn't help the deterrence factor all that much in that situation, which was my original point.
and from a behavior modification point of view a punishment that usually fails to kick in for the first several crimes doesn't do much to deter those first few crimes.
Disagree. It deters the first crime. It's deterrent power will decrease for subsequent crimes (until caught) unless the criminal has friends who have been caught.
The next discussion thread is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: