I’m unsure whether this matters for your overall point, but do you have references for the claim that chance and level of punishment "both contribute the same to deterrence”? I’ve not looked at this literature, but I remember being told that the chance of punishment matters more than level. My first result on Google for ‘punishment sever…
I’m unsure whether this matters for your overall point, but do you have references for the claim that chance and level of punishment "both contribute the same to deterrence”? I’ve not looked at this literature, but I remember being told that the chance of punishment matters more than level. My first result on Google for ‘punishment severity frequency’ is this paper, which suggests that chance is more important than level. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108507118
On your 'pay for increased punishments' proposal: people might be willing to tolerate inequality in cases where the inequality sufficiently improves the chance of justice, because they believe (e.g.) that allowing people to hire private investigators or install cameras is more likely to lead to correct pronouncements of innocence/guilt. If you allow people pay to increase the severity of punishment, there isn't a comparable increase in the probability of a correct outcome. Admittedly, 'allowing people to pay for better lawyers' doesn't obviously increase the probability of a correct decision either, but I expect that most people who'd denounce the 'pay for punishment' proposal would also object to the status quo where rich people can hire better lawyers.
I’m unsure whether this matters for your overall point, but do you have references for the claim that chance and level of punishment "both contribute the same to deterrence”? I’ve not looked at this literature, but I remember being told that the chance of punishment matters more than level. My first result on Google for ‘punishment severity frequency’ is this paper, which suggests that chance is more important than level. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108507118
On your 'pay for increased punishments' proposal: people might be willing to tolerate inequality in cases where the inequality sufficiently improves the chance of justice, because they believe (e.g.) that allowing people to hire private investigators or install cameras is more likely to lead to correct pronouncements of innocence/guilt. If you allow people pay to increase the severity of punishment, there isn't a comparable increase in the probability of a correct outcome. Admittedly, 'allowing people to pay for better lawyers' doesn't obviously increase the probability of a correct decision either, but I expect that most people who'd denounce the 'pay for punishment' proposal would also object to the status quo where rich people can hire better lawyers.
I reworded the post to say that chance matters at least as much as level of punishment.