Actually, for young offenders the best way to reduce crime would be to punish the mother. For older criminals the girlfriend or wife.
This may sound a little strange, but the fact is that these boys and men are not acting entirely independently. Basically the women in their life carry about 50% of the responsibility. No, I'm not off my rocker. As we all know here women achieve their goals and achieve "power" differently to men. Indirectly. Basically, a mother carries at least half the responsibility of her sons crimes. When they get older some of the mothers half gets distributed to girlfriends or wives. And I don't mean that, for example, this boy's mother encouraged him to commit the particular crime he was charged with. It's much more subtle than that. Could be something as indirect as that she "seeks" the drama of a criminal son. Something to wail about to the other church ladies, for example. Anyway, I should stop there, because my own view is that nothing is co-incidental, and it's a bit difficult to describe and get agreement on.
There are very few penal systems I know of that punish the offenders family, but it is fairly easy to understand in terms of "Natural Law" so I'm sure there must be some. Especially in the Muslim world. The only one I can think of is what the Israeli's do to the families of suicide bombers. Bulldoze their house. Publicly humiliate the mother and sisters etc. As horrible as this sounds, it is what a person wanting to prevent further bombings would do.
Lastly. Actually the most effective way to reduce crime is simply to have a detection ability so good that the likelihood of a criminal being caught is very high. The average criminal is usually pretty thick, but not so thick that they can't weigh the likelihood of being caught against the potential gain. That's why, unfortunately, civil liberties laws actually increase both crime, and the punitive effect on criminals when they are caught. Despite obviously being promoted in order to achieve the opposite effect. The added liberties emboldens criminals, who are subsequently caught and...punished. Whereas if they had a more realistic view of whether they would be caught or not they wouldn't do the crime, and therefore wouldn't be punished.
This may sound a little strange, but the fact is that these boys and men are not acting entirely independently. Basically the women in their life carry about 50% of the responsibility. No, I'm not off my rocker. As we all know here women achieve their goals and achieve "power" differently to men. Indirectly. Basically, a mother carries at least half the responsibility of her sons crimes. When they get older some of the mothers half gets distributed to girlfriends or wives. And I don't mean that, for example, this boy's mother encouraged him to commit the particular crime he was charged with. It's much more subtle than that. Could be something as indirect as that she "seeks" the drama of a criminal son. Something to wail about to the other church ladies, for example. Anyway, I should stop there, because my own view is that nothing is co-incidental, and it's a bit difficult to describe and get agreement on.
There are very few penal systems I know of that punish the offenders family, but it is fairly easy to understand in terms of "Natural Law" so I'm sure there must be some. Especially in the Muslim world. The only one I can think of is what the Israeli's do to the families of suicide bombers. Bulldoze their house. Publicly humiliate the mother and sisters etc. As horrible as this sounds, it is what a person wanting to prevent further bombings would do.
Lastly. Actually the most effective way to reduce crime is simply to have a detection ability so good that the likelihood of a criminal being caught is very high. The average criminal is usually pretty thick, but not so thick that they can't weigh the likelihood of being caught against the potential gain. That's why, unfortunately, civil liberties laws actually increase both crime, and the punitive effect on criminals when they are caught. Despite obviously being promoted in order to achieve the opposite effect. The added liberties emboldens criminals, who are subsequently caught and...punished. Whereas if they had a more realistic view of whether they would be caught or not they wouldn't do the crime, and therefore wouldn't be punished.