In the 18th century, the Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria devised the deterrence theory that criminal justice systems worldwide have depended on since. He cited three primary principles to deterrence: the severity of a punishment, the speed at which someone is captured and the certainty he or she will be found.

American policy often focuses on severity. In recent decades, lawmakers responded to spikes in crime by increasing the length of prison sentences. They paid less attention to the certainty and swiftness of punishment. Yet those two other factors may matter more to deterrence, some experts say.

America pays attention only to the severity of punishment. Certainty and swiftness of punishment is always just glossed over by the typical tough-on-crime types. And cops don’t generally care if they get the right person either. They care about conviction rates, but accuracy never seems to come up at all. Nobody in power seems to care that when you convict the wrong person, not only are you doing a great injustice to that person, you are leaving the actual murderer out on the streets to kill again! What fraction of that 58% clearance rate were not actually the real murderer and had just been beaten or otherwise coerced into confessing? I wouldn’t be surprised if that number dropped close to or even below 50% if that were to somehow be taken into account.

Hell, even when a person in the USA is shown to have been wrongfully convicted of a crime and imprisoned, the state will fight tooth and nail to keep them in prison, particularly if it’s an election year.