Deterrence In Mosaic Law

There is no such thing as a Biblical position on criminal justice other than theonomy (without the presuppositionalist and postmillennial bullshit that is often associated with it).  As a cursory examination can reveal, the punitive commands in Mosaic Law are connected to the moral nature of the Christian deity, relating to what people who commit certain acts deserve by virtue of carrying out those acts.  Justice is about the nature of the punishment itself, and it is thus deeply contrary to Biblical ethics to prescribe, endorse, or tolerate any framework that treats deterrence as the objective of justice.  Mosaic Law instead demands that specific penalties be imposed on certain crimes because these are the only penalties that are just according to Christian morality.

Deterrence has to do with nothing more than what some people subjectively and circumstantially find harsh enough to convince them to avoid a course of action.  As such, it has nothing to do with whether a particular punishment is just.  To revise laws in order to maximize deterrence is therefore unjust, since it deviates from the obligation of inflicting on others what they deserve, and nothing more or less than that.  The major error of any ideology that emphasizes deterrence for the sake of deterrence (even from a strictly logical perspective that does not reference the Bible) is that feelings and arbitrary outcomes are treated as the basis of justice.  There is no guarantee that anyone will react in any particular way to a law, regardless of the consequences either way, but the central issue is that justice does not hinge on what discourages individuals from doing wrong.

Deterrence is a certainly possible side effect of the penalties in Mosaic Law, and the Bible draws attention to this on several occasions (such as in Deuteronomy 21:18-21).  It is not as if the Biblical stance on criminal justice is that deterrence dictates what is just, however.  The Bible makes it equally clear that to go beyond its strict limitations on specific punishments is unjust without respect to whether harsher punishments would deter crime.  For example, it is Biblically unjust to inflict more than a maximum of 40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3), no matter how incensed an offended party is or how concerned an administrator is about "making an example" out of a criminal.  It is likewise unjust to combine separate Biblical penalties (and especially extra-Biblical ones) for the sake of shocking people with prolonged displays of punishment.  Every person who commits a sin that the Bible invokes a legal penalty for deserves to be punished, according to the Christian worldview, only in the way that the Bible details.

That some people react to a law by wishing to never break it is a matter related to their personal psychologies and subjective thresholds of motivation, having nothing to do with whether the law underpunishes or overpunishes.  It follows that there is no legitimacy in creating or revising laws with deterrence in mind.  If a punishment is unjust, it needs to be amended solely because it is unjust; preferences and reactions are irrelevant.  If a punishment is just because it matches the right penalty to an offense that deserves to be legally punished, it needs to remain unedited.  In either case, deterrence is of no primary significance.  In fact, deterrence, when regarded as anything more than a secondary, incidental benefit at most, is the best way to rally people around legal punishments that degrade the recipients and trample on their Biblical rights as criminals.

Only a fool makes deterrence the defining factor in their worldview as far as justice is concerned.  Such a person is always on the brink of potentially descending into a heinous savagery that betrays the very justice they claim to seek, but they have betrayed reason even if they never actually let their ideology take them beyond the legal prescriptions of Mosaic Law.  Ironically, given the reputation that Old Testament laws are themselves degrading and unjust, Mosaic Law is the only thing that provides Christians with awareness of the specific moral obligations that exist on the Christian worldview in the first place.  There is no place in a sound worldview for emotionalistic or utilitarian ethical stances, and this completely rules out the notion that deterrence is anything more than a helpful but happenstance result.