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army1987 comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Don't look at it from the perp point of view, look at it from an average-middle-class-dude or a suburban-soccer-mom point of view.
If there's a guy who, say, committed a robbery in your neighborhood, physical punishment may or may not deter him from future robberies. You don't know and in the meantime he's still around. But if that guy gets sent to prison, the state guarantees that he will not be around for a fairly long time.
That is the major advantage of prisons over fines and/or physical punishments.
That's only an advantage if the expected cost to society of keeping him in prison is less than the expected cost (broadly construed) to society of him keeping on robbing.
The relevant part: "look at it from an average-middle-class-dude or a suburban-soccer-mom point of view".
They do have political power and they don't do expected-cost-to-society calculations.
I guess I just hadn't interpreted "point of view" close enough to literally.