Agree or disagree: criminalization of something is only useful if doing so reduces it from happening

[Ferguson97]

Agree or disagree: The criminal justice system should seek to reduce crime, and the criminalization of an action is only worthwhile if criminalizing it actually reduces that action from happening.

[John Dule]

Criminalizing something can only increase the amount of crime, as more actions will be designated as "criminal."

[Ferguson97]

Criminalizing something can only increase the amount of crime, as more actions will be designated as "criminal."

You get what I mean, for example will criminalization marijuana consumption reduce the amount of times marijuana is consumed?

[RI]

Can you give an example of a time when criminalizing something didn't reduce its incidence, even marginally?

[John Dule]

Criminalizing something can only increase the amount of crime, as more actions will be designated as "criminal."

You get what I mean, for example will criminalization marijuana consumption reduce the amount of times marijuana is consumed?

Well if I'm not being snarky, I agree. If a law doesn't actually decrease the prevalence of an activity, then all the government is doing is just siphoning off revenue from the population. This is how speed limits work, for example.

[dead0man]

I disagree.....even if murder being illegal didn't decrease the rate of murder, it should still be illegal.


But for victimless crimes we, as a society, have decided to use the state as a mother.  A very harsh and violent mother.  A sometimes too forgiving and a sometimes unforgiving mother.  You just never know what you're going to get from the state.  Criminalizing victimless crimes to try and get people to do less (or more) of something is always wrong, it doesn't (and shouldn't') matter if it's successful in it's goal of reducing some thing a majority of society at some point the past thought was wrong.

[Dr. MB]

disagree because there are plenty of illegal things that should be legal even if the rate of those illegal things happening would go up if they became legal

[thumb21]

If there's something you think should be illegal, then how effective a ban would be and what negative side-effects could be caused should be relevant to whether or not you should follow through and make it illegal. But as MB said, if you think something should be allowed in principle, you probably oppose the ban regardless of whether it does the job or not.

[progressive85]

Confusing a little bit, but I think basically in a nutshell:

The American people should be totally free to do whatever they damn well please so long as it doesn't harm another person... and by harm I mean cause the other person's health in any way to be jeopardized or worsened by your actions.

So there's a lot of interpretation with that, but if I wrote up a Constitution, that would be the basic guideline - maximum freedom to a point, but when it starts to hurt people, and especially hurt innocent people like our children, then enough is enough and the State then has the moral and legal authority to clamp down on something.

So two consenting adults banging each other's brains out is no concern of the State.  It just isn't.  We've got a million more important fish to fry and demons to chase.

However, when a young person (girl or boy) is coerced into a life of selling themselves by street pimps, those hurting those kids must be dealt with severely.

So for prostitution or sex work or whatever you want to call it, it's the world's oldest profession and it will likely be the world's youngest profession too when the Earth is done for good, so it's around to stay.

Keep vulnerable people - minors - away from it and safe from it... but good lord if a 45-year-old gay man wants to sell his body for a night to another gay adult man, is that really something important for the State to criminalize?

[beaver2.0]

I disagree.....even if murder being illegal didn't decrease the rate of murder, it should still be illegal.

This is what I was thinking.  There are some things that should be crimes regardless of any other factors (murder, rape, terrorism) so I disagree with the initial question.

[Pericles]

Punishment is a legitimate goal in its own right. While of course prevention of crime and rehabilitation if offenders is so important, since we have agreed as a society that certain actions are so immoral then logically those who do them deserve to be punished.

[AGA]

disagree because there are plenty of illegal things that should be legal even if the rate of those illegal things happening would go up if they became legal

How is this relevant to the question?