Many years ago I worked in a startup, as it turns out the primary owner of the business is what a typical person would likely consider a con-man. I have a rolodex filled with people who were harmed by this man's lies.
Good luck seeking justice if you don't have a bank-roll to fund a strong lawsuit.
I've long since let it go, but for a solid year or so I was consumed by hatred for this man and very much would've loved to take a tire-iron to this man's knees. Some of the other people hurt are close personal friends, I can say with certainty that I'm not the only one who wanted retribution. These people also have family / relationships, some amount of wealth, opportunity, etc.
As it turns out, the risking non-trivial amounts of time in prison serves a deterrent for certain classes of individual. People with something to lose. That, statistically, it doesn't quite appear to serve the purpose should make you question the circumstances, the incentives at play as relates to the people committing those crimes.
Do be cautions when drawing black-and-white conclusions from statistics.
This argument can be extended to cover murder, theft, drug use and any other crimes you might think of by examining people’s value systems. I think we can all agree that murder is against most people’s values but you can’t say it’s universal. Some people are okay with murder in different circumstances but they may not necessarily be psychopaths who crave murder to the detriment of all else. It’s these people that I think may be deterred by the threat of punishment for murder.
Furthermore, to complicate matters a little bit, there is the principle of marginal deterrence. If the punishment for murder is much more severe than for burglary, for example, you can expect a burglar to think twice before deciding to murder the home owner during a break-in. If, on the other hand, you punish stealing with the same severe penalty as murder (say, death penalty for either crime) then you risk incentivizing the burglar to murder anyone who might be a witness to the burglary.
Ultimately, I think the soundness of the principle of punishment as a deterrent derives not from the assumption that everyone has the same values (we don’t) but from the differences in everyone’s values. This helps society produce an outcome that would not otherwise be achievable if we required 100% consensus on every individual value.
I have my personal set of ethics/morals. Murder and theft are not allowed by those. The laws in Canada line up pretty close to these ethics, but not perfectly. The threat of punishment is what stops me from doing stuff in the "does no harm to anyone" category where the laws and my ethics disagree.
I know a lot more people would park in handicap spaces if the fines were made optional. Speeding is another good example where people literally slow down when they see someone capable of punishing them.
Would I try heroin if there were no negative consequences? I'd certainly be less averse.
Why?
I'm mainly using it as an example of a behavior that's mildly antisocial but not bad enough to trigger serious enough guilt/embarrassment to stop people from doing it if they couldn't be punished.
just Saturday night I tried to walk outside of a bar holding my drink. the owner asked me not to do it because he might get in trouble.