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That matches my recollection of both being a young man and relevant psych studies. People, in particular young men, tend to be intuitively bad at expected value considerations in risk assessment. A 1 in 500 chance of going to jail for 50 years is more favorable from their perspective than a 1 in 100 chance of going to jail for 5 years. So increasing the probability of penalty, even with a reduced severity, would be a greater deterrence.
Is it not actually more favorable? When we’re talking about ‘low probability of very bad outcome’, the way most sensible people make decisions is to disregard differences in badness and focus on actual probabilities of suffering them.
Assuming the potential payoff is the same, then no, the 1 in 500 scenario is worse. .002 * 50 = .1 years of lost freedom. .01 * 5 = .05 years of lost freedom. Twice the expected negative value.
Mathematically, going from 1 in 100 chance of 5 years to 1 in 20 chance of 2 years, the first one is a better risk. But I suspect most people would hesitate more at the 2nd one. What's sensible, I guess that depends on how you like to structure your risk, how many times you plan to take said risk, expected positive value, lots of factors really. But from a public policy perspective, it's more important to understand how criminals (mostly young men) structure their risk. Probably not utilizing game theory, so increasing enforcement rather than penalties makes sense.
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