Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“One way of choosing among different forms of punishment is by how much it costs to impose a given cost on the criminal. Consider first execution. The cost to the criminal is one life. That is also, if we ignore the salary of the hangman or the electric bill for the electric chair, both trivial in comparison, the total cost, so the ratio of total cost to amount of deterrence is about one. The same would be true for a corporal punishment such as a flogging. Next consider imprisonment, one of the two common forms of criminal punishment in modern societies.” (04/22/26)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-case-against-efficient-punishment