@Jerykk

I'll address by paragraph.

(1)

Wait, so I'm confused. Not enough research on my claim yet the death penalty apparently offers guaranteed results despite evidence to the contrary that I suggested?

Firstly I think you might be trying to make a bit of a straw man. I'm not saying that there should be no penalty. Some penalty obviously discourages some crime. But the argument is more over whether harsher sentences and mandatory minimums as this video discusses are helping, which I would argue they are not for the reasons outlined previously.

As for evidence of rehabilitation reducing recidivism, take for example:

http://ijo.sagepub.com/content/12/1/9.refs (see PDF)

Page 1
Finland, Norway and Sweden all have ~50-70 locked up per 100K, among the lowest. US has 716.

Page 2-3
Norway recidivism - 20%
US recidivism - 52%

I await your evidence to the contrary.

(2)

I'm talking per capita. Per capita the US certainly does have the highest among first world countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country

Sort by per capita and find me a developed country higher than the US please.

Russia is not a first-world country (that's actually a Cold War term, more correctly not a a developed country). I'm Russian, I assure you, I would know

Russia's GDP/capita is $14K USD, versus the US's $52K. Not even a close comparison.

(3)

But do criminals proportionalise justice? Like I asked, do you think anything but a small minority (likely white collar criminals) accurately know the likely sentence of a crime before they commit it? If they don't what's the purpose of making them more severe?

Nobody is proposing there be no penalty. Even Scandanavian prisons are a penalty. The question is, does the threat of 30 over 15 years locked up (should they even be able to decipher legal code to know this) actually make a difference? I would argue not, hence the argument for harsher sentences is illogical.

People are generally good at gauging the likelihood of being caught (ie your pirating example) but that's not what I was talking about (the scale of punishment being a deterrent).

(4)

I don't think what you're proposing is practical or logical. No society is going to accept the death penalty as a punishment for speeding. It's an irrelevant argument to make.

Again, why the need for elaborate ideas never before attempted? Why not just adopt a model that has already worked, such as the Scandinavian one? It seems like you're trying to wrap your mind around a solution that fits your preconceived notion of incentives and no government assistance like I suggested in my first post.

(5)

Venezuela is a developing country. Crime is largely a result of economic mismanagement by Chavez leading to joblessness and civil unrest.

There are plenty of countries with which to compare the US with. Obvious choices would be Australia or the UK. Anglo-Saxon countries, similar culture, comparative income/capita. Or really any European country. Your comparison would suggest tp me you're trying to stretch your argument to fit.

I'm english conan, but I'm also european. If you bypass the tabloid rubbish you'll find that most people can't be bothered to bring up the war. It will not be forgotten but times have changed. Anyway man, we english are german, french, scandanavian and so on. What I'm trying to say in all this ramble is it's the people in power who create divisions, I don't know I'm tired........ and you are right to take the piss on the football front, we're shite.

farhad: I agree that Scandanavian countries are much cleaner than the rest of the west (the only vague examples I could struggle to think of earlier). However, the recent Pirate Bay scandal in Sweden should proove two points: they aren't scot-free in these countries; and the US (and its industries) throws its weight around like a champion sumo wrestler.

For those that don't know: the US & its MPAA forced the Swedish government (via threats of sanctions) to close down the worlds largest BitTorrent site. In Sweden, the government is entirely seperate to the police; they have no right to get the police to investigate anyone (never mind illegally shutting them down with no charge/reason). I state this, as it's in fact NOT illegal to have a website hosting torrents according to their own laws; plus the police witholding its servers, which other (also legal) companies use - is blatantly wrong.

Wumpus: presidents calling each other names isn't entirely what the issue is here (besides, Bush never speaks about foreign policy without Evil being in the speech somewhere: EG Axis of Evil, anyone?) The US president backing yet another illegal overthrow of a democratically elected government in South America IS. This is a persistent theme in US foreign politics over the past four plus decades - plus the rest of the world too (smells of religous-based rascism to me).

Also, as ren said: the UN is a neutral international site - even though it's in New York (not America's house - that's in Washington). And again, as ren said: the US has by far more violations of international (and its own) laws than Hugo Chavez could ever get away with. Think before you type please Wumpus (or even better: read some of Chomskys' books) I found that earlier comment insulting - and I'm a bland caucasian Brit...

I could be wrong, but hasn't crime gone down in most "western" countries over the last 20-25 years? Including all those liberal scandanavian countries with concepts like reformation and treatment?

My stats may be wrong, but there's nothing like a bunch of politicians claiming responsibility for the manifestation of global trend in a local environment. Then again, most of them probably don't look outside their local environment to the world as a whole, so it isn't really a surprise.