JB/050/029/001

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CERTAINTY of PUNISHMENT.

When we speak of the Execution of an
ordinary Law, we mean the compliance paying
obedience to the Law with it's mandate or prohibition: of
a Penal Law, the infliction of the
punishment [denounced for non-compliance for disobedience
] but these are so far a the number of these is so small and so uncertain as never to enter into political calculations.

We must remember, that it is not to the certainty itself of the Law that it owes it's efficacy but to the opinion of that certainty: and that the efficacy of the Law is not owing in therefore to the abstract certainty but to the strength & universality of that opinion. So that on the one hand, supposing that every one who committed a Crime was to be have due punishedment inflicted on him in all proper form, but no body know any thing of the matter that punishment would be just as if there was none at all.- & on the other hand if we could make men believe that suffering punishment would follow without making it actually follow, it would only be so much the better: - but that we cannot do
The strength of the motive is in the
compound ratio of the intensity of the punishment
and the probability of it's infliction — In pains, that is in the idea of pain the certainty of a
small one makes an equal impression is an equal motive
with a probability of a great one: just
as in of pleasur the certainty of £50 is
equivalent to an equal chance for an
hundred.
For strictness of speech indeed they are not equal since many persons would prefer the chance to the certainty & many again the certainty of the chance; chance & certainty not being properly commensurable: but if you will compare them this chance is nearer equal to that certainty than any other greater or lesser chance that can be assigned.

The probability of the infliction is not
simply as the number of examples the persons punished: it is, as
the ratio of that
number to the portion
commi violating the Law
number of those who
escape: if the latter
Number be 0 that
ratio is infinite.
the probability therefore
of the infliction of the
penalty is infinite: that
is it amounts to a certainty.
This train of reasoning will not be denied to have it's influence, tho' it should not present itself ordinarily to men's minds in that regular form which for the sake of intelligibility & precision I have endeavoured to give it.

This train of reasoning, + to which for the sake of the reader I have endeavoured to give some degree of precision, must be acknowledged to have it's operation on the minds of men obnoxious to crimes, however indistinctly and irregularly may be that operation.

Identifier: | JB/050/029/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 50.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	050	Main Headings	procedure code
Folio number	029	Info in main headings field	certainty of punishment
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	16020
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