What did they expect?
This is what happens when career criminal keeps getting hit with same ineffectual punishment
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/07/2012 (4830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
People base their expectations of future events on their observations of prior events. It is a principle Thomas Bayes, a Presbyterian minister with a fondness for mathematics, expressed in an elegant formula more than 250 years ago, and may help explain why at least three girls are dead today.
James Turner did us a favour by posting Shawn Lamb’s rap sheet on his blog. It provides a great amount of insight into how somebody could end up as a career criminal, with the assistance of the criminal justice system.
In 1976, Lamb, as a teenager, got his first taste of jail with a six-month sentence for theft over $200. In 1979, he was convicted twice of break, enter and theft with sentences of nine months and then six months in jail. I do not know how much of that he actually served.
It does not get better. Over the years he committed many other thefts and frauds with ever-decreasing sentences:
– 1984: theft under $200: one month in jail.
– 1987: theft over $1000: five months less a day, concurrent with other sentences.
– 1990: uttering a forged document: 30 days
– 1990: theft under $200: 15 days
– 1990: theft over $1,000: 3 months
– 1991: theft under $1,000: 20 days
– 1991: theft under $1,000: 20 days
– 1991: theft under $1,000: 10 days
– 1997: theft under $5,000: three days
He was convicted of approximately 40 crimes related to theft or fraud, and regardless of how bad his track record got, the punishment in terms of jail time never exceeded the nine months he received as a young adult in 1979.
In 1980, Shawn Lamb graduated to violent offences with armed robbery and two counts of assaulting a peace officer. He received two years for the armed robbery and six months for each assault. For all of the violent offences that followed, he never had to spend more than two years in jail.
In 1992, he graduated once again to a more serious offence: sexual assault. For this, he was sentenced to four years in prison, but despite 45 previous convictions, he was paroled after only 16 months behind bars, having served only a third of his sentence.
If you wanted to breed a career criminal, Lamb’s sentencing history would make a perfect template. It is a demonstration that criminal history means nothing. Repeat offences are not discouraged with higher penalties. Using the innate Bayesian inference we all use, Lamb knew what punishment to expect when committing another robbery or assault or other crime: the same sentence he got last time, give or take… the same punishment that didn’t work every other time.
It is a pattern that firmly embedded Lamb in a criminal lifestyle, so deeply that he could do nothing but plunge further in. It should be a surprise to nobody he has been charged with the killings of three women in Winnipeg.
Many people argue jail time does not work, and we should focus on alternative measures. Those people could point to this pitiful record and claim it as evidence. See! He’s been in jail dozens of times and keeps reoffending. Jail doesn’t work! That would be the absolute wrong conclusion to take away from this. The conclusion should be: Jail time doesn’t work as a disincentive when you don’t use it properly.
What is desperately required is sentencing that takes into account behavioural science, or even just basic common sense. Supposing Lamb’s jail terms increased significantly with each subsequent conviction for a similar crime. Lamb’s expectations would have adapted accordingly. He would know if he got caught again he would have to suffer a yet-harsher penalty. Perhaps he would have refrained from committing the additional offence, and the one after that and the one after that. Perhaps he would have not graduated to violent crimes. At the very least he would have spent more time behind bars where he would not have had the opportunity to commit crimes. And… perhaps the three women would still be alive.
Follow this blog at anybody-want-a-peanut.blogspot.ca .