Would Stricter Laws Have Benefits?

For a long time people have tried to lower crime rates with various ideas and activities. One of the more popular ideas is making the laws stricter with making the punishments harsher or making the laws more general so people will not try to be borderline with them. At first this seems like a great idea to lower crime since people will be afraid of the harsher punishments. But stricter laws would not have all positive outcomes. While they can make the situation better to an extent, they can also have harm, maybe even more than the benefits.

Firstly, I will be talking about the benefits. As I have said above, stricter laws would make people more afraid of doing illegal activity since they would have harsher punishments. An example of this was when truck drivers were going trough a road they were not allowed to go trough but it was a shorter path and going trough there and paying the fine was cheaper than the gas needed to go trough the intended path. If the laws were stricter and it had a greater fine as a punishment they would go through the intended path and possibly lower the accidents that could have happened in the short route.

As for the negative outcomes of stricter laws, an example is when laws are more generalized people may be afraid of actually doing something remotely close to it. Another thing is that when the laws are stricter people may start to start protests against them because no one wants to be in those strict conditions. Also when people are strictly forced to follow the laws they are not doing it to be actually good, they are doing it to not be punished which makes them more likely to actually do something when they get the chance to. Also with stricter or no tolerance laws innocent people in situations could get punishments too which really is not ideal.

So as a conclusion, making laws stricter may seem as a good choice at first but when you think about it more you can realize it has a bunch of negative sides too. While it makes people scared of the laws and follow them more it also makes people not enjoy being there because they are more scared of the laws and if they will accidentally do something wrong.