Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
As was highlighted yesterday, Norway's maximum sentence is 21 years in prison. In defense of this lenient criminal justice system, one Norwegian law professor claimed that, "Norwegian society will gain nothing from a higher punishment level, people of this kind will not become less prone to engage as this man did on Friday 22 July."
I am doubtful that there is empirical evidence that there is no difference in deterrent effect between a 21 year sentence and a life sentence for premeditated murder. My limited understanding is that the latest empirical research had shown, for example, that the death penalty makes a difference in deterrence -- that once statisticians had corrected for the variety of variables that might effect murder rates, the states with the death penalty had lower murder rates than states that don't allow the death penalty. If this is true, then we would expect life sentences to have a similar effect as opposed to 21 year sentences for murder.
But what this is really about, I think, is differences in European and American approaches to crime control. Europeans, I suspect, will think that crime is the result of urges and impulses that cannot be controlled -- that the crimes are "society's fault," as some liberals in the United States even say. The Norwegians might be right for murders that arise from spontaneous emotional responses or mental illness -- something like what the common law used to call murder from irresistible impulse (if memory serves). But much economic research has gone to show that criminals are, in fact, rational. Criminals respond to changes in sentences, differences in police enforcement strategies, to greater economic rewards from certain crimes. If criminals are rational, and they can be, and they engage in extensive planning, as the Norwegian killer did, then greater punishments should create greater disincentives. In other words, the Norwegian murders are not "society's fault," and that by imposing life sentences or the death penalty, we can deter some -- on the margins -- away from murder.
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Feb '11
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
I don't understand bold, italicized part.
Dec '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
Does anybody else wonder why the left seems to believe that a harsh punishment for a "hate crime" is a deterrent, but the death penalty is not?
May '11
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
What about the part where this guy committed a crime so heinous that he has forfeited his right to remain a living member of humanity?
Jun '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
Europe has completely turned itself over to the falsity of relativism and determinism.
G. K. Chesterton's take on determinism in Orthodoxy is still the best: "
[T]he bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. . . . [Thus] he is not free to . . . curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants or even to say "thank you" for the mustard."
If something as simple as passing the mustard is fated by a deterministic world, then of course a “thank you” for it is unnecessary. Chesterton’s point is a serious one, as his other examples illustrate: if free will does not exist, we have no power to resist temptations (even though we do some of the time), to rebuke tyrants (common event on Ricochet), or even make New Year’s resolutions (some of which we actually keep). In other words, determinism assumes that humans are no more than rafts adrift on the open ocean, meaningless ciphers whose actions have no moral or spiritual significance. I think we're far more significant beings.
Edited on Jul 26, 2011 at 9:26amMay '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
The modern death penalty is carried out by absurdly comfortable methods. If fear is part of its purpose, putting the criminal to sleep with an IV is counterproductive. For a crime as heinous as the slaughter of dozens of people, I would hand the criminal over to an angry mob.
Jun '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
For this guy, that works out to about 81 days per murder. Anyone who thinks that is justice lives in a different universe than I do.
Aug '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
What I don't understand is why nobody points out the obvious: When a killer is in prison, he is unable to kill again!
Sep '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
There is no deterrence when the issue is cancer, and that's what this is, social cancer. The Norwegians are apparently into faith-healing. I'm into cutting it out.
Nov '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
Given America's muder rates relative to the rest of the world, I don't think Americans in general are in much of a position to advise other countries on the do's and don'ts of the matter. It's something the Norwegians are going to have to work through themselves.
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
I wish I could have the same serene confidence of the Norwegian professors in the innate goodness of man. But there is this case of Anders Behring Breivik, which is a counterexample to the general proposition. And it illustrates a grim fact about the criminal law. For most people, the criminal law is irrelevant to the way in which they live their lives. They know that it is wrong to kill, and they will not do so if the criminal law is removed tomorrow. Likewise they will not accept money to kill others even if they are given every assurance that they will escape detection and punishment. But these "inframarginal" people are not the ones that we care about. Rather, the criminal law is directed to outliers that might well take into account the threat of sanctions in deciding what actions to perform. Indeed, it could well be that Breivik did just that, given his obviously planned course of action. It is to this tiny group of individuals that the criminal law is directed. So think about the matter this way. Suppose we thought that at most one-tenth of one percent of the individuals were deterred by the criminal law with the current sanctions. At this point, if we relax them just a bit, there may be another tenth of the population that will move to criminality. It doesn't sound like much until one realizes that that move doubles the criminal population. So think about the fringe, and ask whether the humane benefits of a gentler law are worth the 50 percent chance of stopping one madman, who then denies terrorist allegations by pleading his holy cause.
Edited on Jul 26, 2011 at 1:38pmRe: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
Here are two predictions.
First, Breivik may not be released after 21 years. Perhaps there will be consecutive sentences; perhaps there will be civil commitment. But if at age 42, he is capable of doing this horrific deed again, instincts of national self-preservation will take over.
Second, it is hard to formulate social policy on the strength of single bad outcomes in low probability situations. But let this happen again, and I suspect that the Norwegian professors will reconsider their position, or that an enraged public will force them to do so, once it is concluded that demented individuals will take advantage of the situation.
It is hard to defend noble sentiments in the face of inexcusable and atrocious conduct.
May '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
Latest empirical evidence? Links?
For every study that affirms a deterrent effect of the death penalty there's a study that denies it. Personally, it seems to me that more econometricians and statisticians have concluded that there is no or very little causality between the death penalty and deterrence.
Sep '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
My major stumbling block against agreeing with life in prison as a sentence for someone who has been found without a doubt, and with malice aforethought, to have murdered another person or persons is that the law is in effect saying that the murderer's life is worth more than the person or persons who were killed. People who care about all persons can't care about any one person very much.
Edited on Jul 26, 2011 at 2:36pmJun '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
My anecdotal evidence suggests that a criminal faced by an armed citizen with a handgun pointed in his face is a deterent 100% of the time.
May '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
If you live in a society like Norway, made up of mostly polite, law-abiding citizens, you can probably make do with a relatively lenient criminal law. If your society contains a lot of West African men, you probably need a stricter solution.
Dec '10
Re: Anders Behring Breivik and Europe's Flawed Approach to Crime Control
He can't kill people who are not in prison.