Penal policy ignores the criminal psyche and acts on market incentives

Evidence

In his article on capital punishment, Ehrlich said: “The abhorrent, cruel, or pathological nature of the crime is of absolutely no importance. There are no reasons for thinking that people who love or hate others are less ‘responsive,'''' less accessible, or respond less easily to changes in the gains and losses associated with their activity than persons indifferent toward the well-being of others.,, In other words, all the distinctions that have been made between born criminals, occasional criminals, the perverse and the not perverse, and recidivists are not important. We must be prepared to accept that, in any case, however pathologi<:a1 the subject may be at a certain level and when seen from a certain angle, he is nevertheless “responsive” to some extent to possible gains and losses, which means that penal action must act on the interplay of gains and losse~ or, in other words, on the environment; we must act on the market milieu in which the individual makes his supply of crime and encounters a positive or neg;ltive demand. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1357

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘environmental technology’ here links to Becker’s economics of crime and later nudging literature. — connects to: Moderation was legally punished, creating a perverse incentive not to police content — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 357; Punishment deters when its expected cost merely exceeds crime’s benefit — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 154; Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 374 (+8 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The erasure of the criminal subject as the founding gesture of neoliberal penality is a genuinely paradigm-shifting claim.

Broader Connections

• Punishment deters when its expected cost merely exceeds crime’s benefit #qualifies (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 154
• Neoliberal selfhood reframes reward and punishment as risk outcomes, not justice #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 273
• Penalties target the inmate’s transformation, not the exchange value of the crime #contradicts (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 374
• Harsher penal measures show no connection to actual crime rates. #contradicts (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 475
• Prisons demonstrably fail to reduce the crime rate #contradicts (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 402
• Moral self-sanctions and social censure deter crime more than legal penalties do #complicates (0.78)
• Prison wages act as a fiction measuring moral transformation, not production #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 370
• Selective punishment builds the impression that transgression is never safe #contradicts (0.72) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 58