What Price to Pay for Deterrence?

I have a two year old son. Occasionally he gets spanked.

Last night is an example. With a pair of chopsticks, he developed a fighting style that looks a lot like Phillipino stick fighting. The 3' plant was an unwilling sparring partner and is expected to recover. For this he got spanked and sent to his room for about 5 whole minutes.

The rest of the night went like a charm (as usuall).

I doubt that I had to spank him for the night to go as well as it did. I do believe that spanking him will prevent some boyish assaults on things that should not be destroyed. Yea, spanking works as a deterrence, but not all the time.

Jumping to capital crimes, is execution a deterrence? Is it the best deterrence?

Criminals don't commit crimes expecting to get caught. Unlike my son, who has a parent nearby the vast majority of his life, and a trusted adult the rest, the criminal element is not supervised (outside of prison). Maybe if the violent carjacker had someone say "You'll get executed if you do that" when he's eyeing the blue haired lady in the Lexus, hand on his 'baby nine', the threat of execution would work. But this is not the case.

Even in prison, the rapists continue to rape, the drug users continue to use drugs, and the thieves continue to steal. Prison is not a deterrent either, it just shields society from it at a high cost.

What would be an effective deterrent? How about the torture of the criminals children? For some men, I think this would be a more effective deterrent than anything we could threaten them with.

Now I'm only running a thought experiment here, I'm not actually proposing this. For those of you who want to get hung up on the Constitutionality of this, it's not like the courts follow the Law of the Land today and the Constition can change. The Constition is not an issue in this intellectual exercise.

Now I thought "NO!" when I asked myself this. Even thought it would make an excellent deterrent for some criminals, I still say "NO!" I expect many of you will answer similarly.

This tells me that the whole "It's an effective deterrent" arguement for capital punishment does not have a valid logical foundation.

So what moral price will people pay for an ineffective deterrent?

I thank Vox and the O.C. for conflicting my once stable position on Capital Punishment.