Random Speculation On Contemporary Crime and Punishment

Out of the blue speculations today: our legal and criminal justice systems are anachronistic in a lot of ways.


In many cases the penalties for crimes seem to be fear-based and not only that but based on primal fears regarding personal space or lack of control. We spend massive amounts of time, resources, etc. to minimize threats on airplanes. But anybody can get on a city bus with explosives if one would like. (I often take a city bus; do not entertain this plan, please, thanks.) It's true that one could do not quite as much damage as one can with a plane, but one could do a lot of damage. But the security in airports is incalculably more. The only reason for this that I can think of is that people are already scared of flying, but not riding in a bus so much. Since they are already in "scared mode," they attend to possible risks and demand the maximal decrease in risk. But they are comfortable with enterprises with similar risk and even much riskier enterprises elsewhere as long as there is not some primal fear associated with that particular enterprise.

Similarly the penalty for "white collar" crimes is often much less in comparison with crimes with similar effects than the damages they do would indicate it should be. If someone breaks into your house and steals your t.v., the penalties can be fairly severe, including jail time, which is worse than any fine. Rick Scott helps bilk Medicare for billions of dollars, and his company is fined and he is now governor of Florida. The amount of money Scott helped steal from many people outweighs the loss of a t.v. millions of times. But since it is complicated and not immediately scary, people don't demand more penalty. I think in the case of these sorts of white collar crimes, normal people look at it more as a misfortune from the gods. Whereas crimes done in physical space can be more easily understood and attributable to a person's character.

Anyway, probably a lot of junk in this post. If someone knows more about these things and can show how I am wrong, I'd be very interested.