If the same punishment is prescribed for two crimes that injure society in different degrees, then men will face no stronger deterrent from committing the greater crime if they find it in their advantage to do so.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think it's common sense to say that the longer away from a crime it gets prosecuted, the less deterrent effect there is.
Incarcerating non-violent offenders in the same population as more dangerous criminals has the effect of inculcating the former into a culture of criminality common among the latter, making them more of a risk to public safety upon release than when they originally went in.
By 'justice', I understand nothing more than that bond which is necessary to keep the interest of individuals united, without which men would return to their original state of barbarity. All punishments which exceed the necessity of preserving this bond are, in their nature, unjust.
High testosterone levels have been proven to make men more likely to commit crimes. The tendency in men toward risky behaviour keeps turning up even where socialization is different, and so does crime and delinquency.
To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than the products of justice.
The principles and passions of men are always the same and lead to the same result, varying only according to the circumstances in which they are placed.
When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment - in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes - outweighs the risk of error.
Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.