Mostly the latter, though organized crime needs a swift kick in the teeth.
That was kind of a trick question. Punishment is intended to prevent crime. If there is no crime, there should be no need for punishment. It's supposed to be a deterrent...unless you also get an emotional dose of dopamine from seeing transgressors suffer. I'd challenge you to take some time to consider your feelings and motivations on criminal justice.
If you actually want to reduce shoplifting and other property crimes...would it surprise you to know that "getting tougher" does not correlated with a reduction in crime?
The causes of shoplifting and other forms of physical theft are well-known. Poverty. Income inequality. Desperation.
Massive inflation and economic suffering lead directly to increased property crime. You can imprison people for longer - it wont affect that increase much. It'll cost you more tax dollars though, to deal with enforcement and prosecution and incarceration.
Why the focus on punishment, when it's the least effective way to combat crime? When the better solution for literally everyone - for your property rights, for your tax bill, for the lives of people who might be driven to steal - is literally better welfare programs and more progressive taxation?
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.” - Francis Bacon"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
“A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.” – Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995...
"Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - Gandalf, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord Of the Rings
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."
1 Corinthians 15:26King James Version (KJV)
Nihil supernum
™ Version 4.2
