One additional assumption: there is no significant target shift.
Armed robbery for taking week’s profit from ten businessmen may be less of a strike to all of them in sum than armed robbery taking months’ salary from a minimal-wage-working single mother. It would count for a greater crime rate, though...
If all this were true and if the model held around zero, then doing the thing that minimizes suffering would be good.
That doesn’t mean we should not check if other forms of punishment would drop crime rate further.
Of course, the model would have to include a lot of stability checks. With 1¢ fine for every crime, people would use a lot of interesting weapons for self-defense in broad sense (including defending good neighbour’s property from theft by force just in case). People wanting retribution would do the retribution themselves… Some other interesting effects would occur…
If that worked out to lower aggregate crime rate for each victim group—it would be nice...
One additional assumption: there is no significant target shift.
Armed robbery for taking week’s profit from ten businessmen may be less of a strike to all of them in sum than armed robbery taking months’ salary from a minimal-wage-working single mother. It would count for a greater crime rate, though...
If all this were true and if the model held around zero, then doing the thing that minimizes suffering would be good.
That doesn’t mean we should not check if other forms of punishment would drop crime rate further.
Of course, the model would have to include a lot of stability checks. With 1¢ fine for every crime, people would use a lot of interesting weapons for self-defense in broad sense (including defending good neighbour’s property from theft by force just in case). People wanting retribution would do the retribution themselves… Some other interesting effects would occur…
If that worked out to lower aggregate crime rate for each victim group—it would be nice...