Terry Mitchell

Do Tougher Sentences Mean Less Crime?



Posted: Friday, September 30, 2011

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

Some people, especially politicians running for office, are always advocating tougher sentences for criminals as a means of reducing crime. But do tougher sentences really result in less crime? I don’t see any such evidence. In fact, many European countries hand out much lighter sentences to criminals than does the United States, yet most of them are not plagued by nearly as much violent crime.

Let’s look at Norway as an example. After that infamous shooting in Norway a few months ago in which more than 80 people were killed and dozens more were injured, many U.S.-based pundits ridiculed the fact that the shooter could receive no more than that country’s maximum sentence of 21 years. They said Norway is way too lenient on such criminals. Very well, but that still has not resulted in a spate of violent crime there. In fact, Norway is one of the least violent countries on earth. That shooting was a major aberration.

Conversely, the U.S. has one of highest violent crime rates in the world. And that is in spite of the fact that many states, along with the federal government, utilize the death penalty for certain types of murder. In the states that don’t use the death penalty, those types of murders are often punishable by life in prison without the possibility of parole. Other violent crimes such as rape and aggravated assault are sometimes punished with life sentences as well, or multi-year sentences which often amount to life sentences. Even non-violent criminals in the U.S. sometimes spend the rest of their natural life behind bars.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to the reduction of (or increase in) crime. Obviously, the tougher sentences could not possibly be the only factor. The facts described above make that perfectly clear. Politicians and other demagogues should stop acting as if it is some kind of magic bullet. And their listeners should start rejecting that claptrap.
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Christofer French
 230 days 5 hours ago.
74 fans.
Good to have you back in the saddle and injecting both a heart and a head to the fray. Clarity and Spirit.
» left by Terry Mitchell 229 days 16 hours ago.
93 fans.
Christofer, thanks for being a consistent reader. It is greatly appreciated. :-)
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