OT: Insightful (re: Amish shooting)

[Mephisto]

Renegade 13 said:
If society and the justice system showed that there would be no tolerance for crap like that, and the punishment actually befitted the crime, crime wouldn't appear to be such an attractive thing.

Unfortunately every statistic says that this is not the case. And we can easily see this in some Islamic countries as well where the Sharia rules. If you rape a women you will get killed, if you are a thief you will lose a hand. But crime is still rampant in many of these countries.
A deterrent only works if you think rational about a matter, weighting loss and gain. But many crimes are committed in a state where rational thinking is no longer present. And you have to get caught in the first place to have a deterrent work.
Actually, if the risk of getting caught is high even "low" deterrents work very well. Statistics show that blue collar crimes dropped significantly when more pressure was put into detecting such crimes and bring them to court and public. The shame to stand in court and lose your career did have quite an effect.
So, our aim should be to detect and bring to court crimes with a high probability. And this is something that would help many violated women as well. How many women are beaten because the man can do it without fear that it might see the light of public. But how many will beat a women if it is a) brought to public and b) considered a crime by the public and neighbors (if the public doesn't care, then your are completely on your own ).