Penal-causal dissonance?

[dstebbins]

Whenever there's a long period of time between the act a person commits that gets them punished, and the actual punishment itself, it seems that the punishment will have only a minimal deterrent effect on the acts. For example, if a person commits a crime on the streets, he is usually arrested immediately thereafter. But if he's already incarcerated to begin with, he can't be arrested again. So just adding a new charge doesn't have any immediate consequences. You have to convict him - a process which takes several months at the very least - before you can do anything tangible to him, such as extend his sentence. This definitely appears to heavily water down the deterrent effect of the punishment.

However, that's only how it APPEARS to work! I haven't exactly examined the stats very closely. Has there actually been any double-blind studies testing this hypothesis?

Edited October 13, 2017 by dstebbins

[dstebbins]

This has been posted for more than a month. Does nobody have an answer?