I have some pretty serious doubts about it when it comes to large financial crimes where both those things are absolutely part of the process. A death sentence probably isn't going to stop someone from killing another person, they're already off the deep end of irrationality. However 25 years of prison is probably going to be a significant deterrent to someone choosing to commit billions worth of fraud, maybe the profit margin isn't that important.
Frankly, I think we need a lot more of this kind of punishment to get more trust back into our high-trust society. More rich people need to go to prison for crimes against society, because honestly it feels more like Madoff and SBF were one offs rather than business as usual.
My point along with the grand parent is that at a certain point it is more costly than it is worth in deterrence. And the data backs that up, generally.
But what that point is, I have no idea.
Capital punishment is cheap though. And more humane than life sentence. Actually I think that we should return some form of corporal punishment and shorten prison sentences for non violent crimes. Subject SBF to Singapore style caning every month and 2-3 years in prison, forbid him to ever work with other people's money and be done with him.
Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn more effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison may desensitize many to the threat of future imprisonment. See “Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence” for additional discussion on prison as an ineffective deterrent.
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5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals. According to the National Academy of Sciences, “Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.”