Codified legal codes deter crime through abstract certainty of punishment

Evidence

By defining offenses, fixing scales of punishments, identifying who in the bureaucratic-legal hierarchy is to execute the punishment, the legal code also functions as one of the ever-potent tools of power. By creating a mental association of crime and punishment, the legal code instills in the minds of people the feeling of the inevitability of punishment and its link to the crime being performed. Laws, civilian or military, owing to their abstract codification of crimes and their corresponding punishments, and to their association of the possible benefits of crime with the greater disadvantages of punishment, function as an effective deterrent to crime, and thus as a powerful means to impose discipline. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 691

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the mechanism by which abstract legal codification produces deterrence — inevitability and association outweighing potential benefit.
• XREF: connects to: Criminal justice marks, prevents, and punishes wrong conduct in sequence — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 783; Even weakly enforced laws redirect how violations occur — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1046; Raising penalty severity theoretically deters crime but complex systems prevent it — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1135 (+8 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Criminal justice marks, prevents, and punishes wrong conduct in sequence — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 783; Even weakly enforced laws redirect how violations occur — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1046; Raising penalty severity theoretically deters crime but complex systems prevent it — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1135 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Abstract legal codification deters crime by engineering a mental link between offense and punishment #corroborates (0.97)
• Codified legal punishment works by creating mental associations of crime and punishment. #corroborates (0.95)
• Certainty, not severity, makes punishment deter because it fixes crime-punishment links in minds #expands (0.92) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 157