What is criminal deterrence and why is it important? Deterrence is the process of discouraging and preventing people from committing criminal acts. Having these restraints placed on people with criminal “intent” enables the “law-abiding” people to feel safe. However, this is a hotly debated topic as to how stringent the restraints must be to allow citizens to feel secure in their environment.
The Classical School of Criminology includes such thinkers as Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. These theorists believed that people were “hedonistic” and only concerned with their own self-interests. People would commit crimes, but only if it benefited them in some way. The strategies of deterrence reinforced that criminals understood that only non-criminal actions are in people’s own self interest. Both Beccaria and Bentham felt that the punishment given must be in direct proportion to the crime committed and carried out promptly.
Today, neither promptness nor proportionality seems to exist within the tangled web of the criminal justice system. Criminals remain stuck in the prison system for years due to all the bureaucratic “red tape”. Now, the prison system faces severe overcrowding. In fact,
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