It seems to me that the perennial calls for harsher penalties, ie longer terms of imprisonment, are doing the rounds again at the moment. It is predictable and understandable for relatives of the victim to be dissatisfied with a sentence, vengence forms part of our makeup after all, and they want to see the offender punished.

Calls from the general community for harsher penalties however are more to do with the deterent aspect of imprisonment. They think, somewhat simplistically, that increasing the punishment will deter others and reduce the overall crime rate. Paradoxically this often has the reverse effect. This is seen clearly in 18th century England where stealing a handkerchief could result in death or transportation. Crime was flourishing.

Here is a question for you to think about? Why do we imprison criminals? There are four reasons I can think of (feel free to flame if you come up with more)

1. Remove risk to society - This is a short term benefit if, when they are eventually released, they are worse than when they went in.
2. Punishment - Important from a closure perspective of the victim, but in most cases no punishment is enough for the victim.
3. Rehabilitate - Possibly the most important reason and the one that is least likely to be acheived.
4. Deter others - What the community wants but is not acheived.

On point 4 research from Canada points to the fact that criminals are detered by the chance of being caught not the severity of the punishment if you are caught. Makes sense really, if you think there is little chance of being caught what does the punishment matter. You can read about it here.