re: #662 reine.de.tout

The deterrent with incarceration or death (as in death penalty), isn’t that people are scared off from committing crimes. The deterrent is that long prison sentences or the death penalty keep people from being on the streets where they may continue to murder.

We’re never going to execute enough people to actually impact the murder rate significantly. And that’s not actually the meaning of ‘deterrent’. A deterrent, in criminologists parlance, is something that makes someone not commit a crime because of the consequences.