How to Prevent Crime

Crimes are acts or omissions of acts punishable by law. The law determines what acts can be punished, and to what degree they can be punished. The law criminalizes acts to allow for a more prosperous life for the citizens under that law.

Therefore it is essential to have good crime prevention to keep order.

This is done by using this function of the probability someone will commit a crime:

P(Crime Committed) = Morality of Crime + P(Getting Caught) + Punishment for Crime

If someone wants to commit a crime there are only three things that will prevent this individual from committing the crime. Their personal morals, the probability of them getting caught, and the punishment if they got caught.

Morals

The first is their morals. If we lived in an anarchical society, with no rules or laws, then the only prevention of someone committing a crime by today’s standard is their morals not to do so. For example, murder is a crime according to the law, but if there is no law that says murder is illegal then the only thing stopping someone from murdering is that it is morally wrong.

The problem with relying on a system of morals to prevent crime is that everyone has different morals. There is such a wide range of morals among people that one person might think murdering another is acceptable while another person may think stepping on a bug is objectively wrong.

This is one reason why societies without any sort of governance don’t work because not everyone can agree on what is morally right or wrong. And the more people you have in this society the harder it is to come to an agreement.

Since this isn’t an effective way to regulate crime prevention we must resort to other methods, like law and order.

Getting Caught

Since everyone has different morals we will assume that someone will commit a crime if the benefits of committing the crime outweigh the probability of you getting caught and the punishment that goes with it.

Getting caught red-handed is a big part of prevention. Putting laws and regulations in place will not be effective if you are unable to catch anyone who breaks the law.

If you can get away with breaking any law then it’s as if there isn’t a law in place to prevent these crimes in the first place. No consequences for committing the crime, therefore under our assumption everyone would commit crimes.

On the other hand, what happens if you got caught every time you committed a crime? Caught for anything and everything, from robbing banks to speeding, every single time you would get caught. You probably wouldn’t commit very many crimes. The only time, in this case, you would commit a crime is if the benefit of committing the crime is greater than the punishment for said crime since the probability of you getting caught and having to face the consequences is 100%.

Both of those examples where the extremes of never and always getting caught. In the real world, it is not practical to never get caught, and to always get caught uses too many resources and is quite impractical as well. We fall in between these two extremes when trying to catch criminals.

Going to work each day we know what roads are more likely to have cops on them, so we know to not speed there, as our chance of getting caught increases. While you know some of those back roads haven’t had a cop on there in years, so maybe you can push the speed limit a little more frequently. We make rational decisions all the time when breaking low-level laws, if we are unlikely to get caught we will be more willing to commit the crime.

Punishment

Finally, another big part of crime prevention is the punishment that comes with getting caught committing a crime. Let’s say you are speeding and the cop pulls you over, but instead of getting a ticket, you get put in jail for 10 years. How often do you think you would speed if the punishment was a decade behind bars? It is safe to say almost never.

On the reverse, if every time you got caught speeding you would have to pay a $0.25 fine, you would probably disregard the speed limit completely since the benefit of getting to your location faster is greater than a possible $.025 fine.

Hammurabi’s Code

Strict punishments were implemented with Hammurabi’s Code. The popular phrase “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” meant that inflicting an injury on someone would be punished with the same injury to the aggressor. Other crimes like theft were punishable by forcing the criminal to pay back up to 30 times the value of what they stole.

The punishments for Hammurabi’s Code seem harsh by today’s standards but it was used as an effective method of crime prevention. If stealing an apple led to your hand being cut off you would think twice before grabbing the apple without paying.

Punishment Doesn’t Matter

There are some instances when the punishment doesn’t matter. If the punishment for stealing a loaf of bread is 10 years in prison, many would not steal bread. But if you and your family are starving to death, well you’re going to steal the bread and hope that you don’t get caught. There is no other option.

The Balance

When it comes to crime prevention it is important to find the correct balance between catching the criminal and punishment for said crime. There aren’t enough resources to catch every crime, that is just a fact. So to deter people you would increase the punishment for the crime.

Just like how there are morals to committing a crime there are morals to the punishment of the crime. The death sentence for going 5mph over the speed limit is a very unfair punishment and even considered inhumane. But since morals are subjective, finding the morally correct punishment which properly deters criminals is near impossible.

So it is important to find an equilibrium between the crime prevention measures to have adequate crime prevention while also having a free and humane society. It is possible to help crime prevention by teaching people morals but a lot of morals are taught through your parents and the people around you. Also having the government teach what’s right and wrong will go over very poorly as they are also the ones to enforce the laws and punishment on what they consider wrong.