[Skybird]

As I understood it, the NY zero tolerance scheme was not about excessive penalties, but about not closing cases of minor importance (shoplifting, graffiti spraying) but chasing even small fishes down and bring them to court at all. And comparing crime rates before and after the change convinces me that they have had a valid point there. As an ex-psychologist I also know that they just implemented known findings from behavioral reasearch and behavior shaping, althoiugh maybe thy did it wiothout knowing it. If a penlty should serce it'S pourpose to alter an individual'S behavior, it must

- be implied soon after the deed, for the more time passes between deed and penalty, the smaller the lesson beign learned,

- the penalty must be real and not just imagined (I strictly oppose the idea of suspended penalties),

- the penalty must be of such an aversive quality that the positive gain by the deed is not perceived as a compensation for it,

- and in the early phase of behavior shaping you need to consistently give the penalty stimulas EVERY time the unwanted behavior is being shown. Later the educational effect gets maximised using rewards instead, and after that: there is so-called intermittend shaping, you give the reward only in some cases of wanted behavior, but not in all (every pet-holder does like that by instinct).

But today, courts violate these principles time and again, for claimed good intentions and heavily flawed pedagogic conceptions. This social ambition is as wrong as are boot-camps. I hate to say it, because I do not like it so much in general, but Skinner's behaviorism understands these mechanisms of rewrd and penalty better than any other socio-psychological model.

[ The other thing where I have to admit behaviorism is the method of choice, is the treatement of phobias (systematic desensitizing, stimulus confrontation). ]