Do Laws Deter Crime? Education vs Fear

[TheStatutoryApe]

fining people for everything seems to be the norm these days :(


the latest here is: No riding of scooters or skates/skateboards on roads after dark.

im not kidding either.

There have been similar laws here for a while. You are not supposed to operate a vehicle on the roads after dark without lights. So no skates, skateboards, or even bikes though you can easily outfit a bike with lights. I think you are supposedly able to even skate if you can attach proper lights to your own self.

 

[Jasongreat]

This made me curious, so I looked up some stats:


-In 2008, an estimated 11,773 people died in drunk driving related crashes (about 30% of all fatalities)...
-Over 1.46 million drivers were arrested in 2006 for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics.
-Fifty to 75 percent of drunk drivers whose licenses are suspended continue to drive.
http://www.madd.org/about-us/about-us/statistics.aspx

These stats tell me a few things:
-Traffic accidents are a somewhat significant problem (not huge, though, given the amount of driving people do).
-Drunk driving causes a significant fraction of traffic fatalities, so it should get a significant fraction of the attention.
-1.46 million arrests is a HUGE number and an awful lot of arrests in proportion to the number of fatalitles. How many fatalities does that prevent? I'm not sure if it is worth all that effort or not though. It might just be one of those things that has to be done even if the cost/benefit ratio isn't really there.

Nearly a third of all traffic fatalities are drinking related, what are some of the other signifigant #'s,Not paying attention is about equal with DUI in all the studies(some studies even more) I've looked at, are we empowering cops to pull over, arrest, and punish those that look away from the road? Its just as dangerous, but that doesn't just involve a segment of society people have been trying to get rid for quite a while. Also we should remember that if a drunk steps into the road and gets hit, that is considered an achohol related crash and is included in the DUI stats, even though it wasnt a drunk driver. Also remember that even if a car pulls out right in front of you and even if you were sober you couldn't have stopped, it is automatically your fault if you have .08% of alchohol in you system, even if no person on Earth sober or not could have avoided the accident. So stats are exagerated by this.
1.46 million people arrested and still over 11,000 deaths, that seems to me to be concrete proof that the law and the punishment do not deter to any signifigant degree(nor do they seem to fit the crime). I agree that some of those arrested might have been invovled in an accident, but you didnt let them continue down the road where you would then have concrete proof one way or the other, but by pulling them out, you can no longer cite any facts regarding those you removed(since there are none, just assumptions), granted some might have got in an accident just as well as some(most) wouldn't have gotten in an accident, we will never know one way or the other. Of course that doesn't stop people from exerting assumptions that are not supported by the evidence.
It seems to me the outrage towards drinkers is just bigotry, there are tons of other actions that are just as deadly or more so but you hardly ever hear about them. Like the 160,000+ plus americans that die every year from the proper use of prescription drugs. Or the 700,000+ that die from medical mistakes every year. I have never heard a plan to ban prescription drugs or to ban doctors, because that would be foolish wouldn't it, even with the huge numbers of deaths related to these things. The only time it is allowed to punish the majority
for the crimes of the minority is when actions that you don't believe in(and believe will never affect you) are invovled, such as drinking and smoking. I will never drink, but I drive and I might get hit by a driver that does drink one day, so let's ban drinking and driving, even though it has been shown time and time again that banning a behavior never, ever gets rid of that behaviour. Prohibition of alcohol didnt work, prohibition of drugs hasnt worked, and prohibition of drunk driving hasnt worked, nor will they ever work, since laws don't deter.
If I was in a science lab, and kept reaching into the experiment, changing the outcome, and then claimed very precise results, would that experiment pass the muster? Why then do we allow societal experiments to be ran that way? I think the proponents of DUI laws might want to consider that if you started to get into the signifigant areas, such as .15% or higher BAC's. Then your stats might start to be in a range worthwhile, I would assume that if you looked at fatalities caused by someone at .08%, it would be a very small %, but if you looked at fatalities with people over .20% I would bet that is a % that would be signifigant. If you could find the BAC where the chance of being in an accident is over 50%, then you would start to punish the majority for the actions of the majority, instead of the majority for the actions of the minority. You would still be punishing people for what they might do, but you would have the stats to substantially back up your claims as to how deadly a certain % BAC is. The way its set up now with .08% as the line you can't cross, you will continue to not get the support you think you deserve.
If you still think the way to get to where you want to be is by way of punishment, how about a punishment that teaches at the same time. Have the cops film the drunks actions, then gather that drunks peers(friends, family, coworkers) into a room and show the film to all of them. Its easy for a drunk to forget how stupid he acted, it is also easy to keep a dui hidden from your family and friends, but I would about bet my life on it, that if you showed that film to the people he/she cares about and the drunk could see the reactions of those in attendance(I bet you wouldn't want to show people at .08%, it would probably put the friends on the same side as the drunk), and could also see how stupid he/she was acting on tape. That drunk would have a far less recidivism rate than by fiscal punishment, or any other type. Mortification is a far more powerful punishment than governmental coercion, since it comes from within instead of from the outside. Of course you would find some that didnt care what others thought, but youve already got that now, but anytime you can let someone decide for themselves you have a far more consistent outcome, they won't as easily forget why they choose not to get plastered and then drive down the road, since like has been stated in many posts in this thread, if the only thing keeping you from commiting a crime is the fear of punishment, once that fear is gone you will commit the crime. What is booze good at? Removing fear?

 

[Office_Shredder]

1.46 million people arrested and still over 11,000 deaths, that seems to me to be concrete proof that the law and the punishment do not deter to any signifigant degree(nor do they seem to fit the crime). I agree that some of those arrested might have been invovled in an accident, but you didnt let them continue down the road where you would then have concrete proof one way or the other, but by pulling them out, you can no longer cite any facts regarding those you removed(since there are none, just assumptions), granted some might have got in an accident just as well as some(most) wouldn't have gotten in an accident, we will never know one way or the other. Of course that doesn't stop people from exerting assumptions that are not supported by the evidence.

The question isn't how many people arrested would have continued on in that trip to kill someone, the question is how many people decided not to drink and drive because of a fear of being arrested, and how many people didn't drink and drive because of having previously been arrested.

 

[russ_watters]

Given the potential for fines for those arrests, what IS the net cost? A first time offense is usually a minimum of a couple hundred dollars, so there's close to a half billion dollars of income at least (probably more)

I would suspect that a few hundred dollars in fines comes nowhere close to covering the cost of an arrest and prosecution.

A dui isn't like a speeding ticket: a speeding ticket might generate $150 for 10 min worth of work for a cop. A dui is probably 5 hours between a handful of cops, a few hours of a prosecutor, maybe an hour for a judge, plus other court staff. I bet the whole thing costs $5,000 or more.