NEW: What’s the purpose of jail?

And how to destroy the world in 72 minutes…

Jail is not just imposed as a punishment for the person who has committed the offence.

It serves other functions too.

Like 'deterrence'.

Jail and Deterrence

Superpower states like the United States, Russia and China have stockpiles of nuclear weapons. These nuclear weapons can cause not only enormous damage, they also serve a vital purpose: deterrence.

Merely having a nuclear weapon guarantees that you will not be invaded by a hostile state. Why?

Because if this happened -so the theory goes- you’d unleash your nuclear stockpile to defend yourself. A general nuclear war would then begin.

Once begun, it cannot be stopped. This war would drag in other nuclear powered countries and destroy the planet in just over an hour.

Yes that’s right, just over an hour.

In Annie Jacobsen’s excellent (and terrifying) book Nuclear War: A Scenario, the time between the first nuclear bomb being dropped and the chain-reaction of other nuclear armed nations unleashing their stockpiles of weapons, is 72 minutes.

And once this chain-reaction begins, it cannot be halted.

Once the first bomb is dropped, others inevitably follow.

Major urban areas are incinerated in fires that burn at hundreds and thousands of degrees. Organised human life ends soon after.

Seventy-two minutes after, to be precise.

72 minutes to end human civilisation.

These weapons are so terrible they can never be used, because to use them means ending the world.

As soon as the first one is dropped it sets off a chain reaction that cannot be reversed. Countries like the US, Russia and China have a “nuclear doctrine”, steps to be immediately taken once a nuclear weapon is detected as having been detonated.  

"In Annie Jacobsen’s excellent book Nuclear War: A Scenario,

the time between the first nuclear bomb being dropped and the chain-reaction of other nuclear armed nations unleashing their stockpiles of weapons, is 72 minutes.

And once this chain-reaction begins, it cannot be halted"

The deterrence power of nuclear weapons is clear. That’s why a relatively small country like North Korea will never be invaded by the US.

If the US were foolish enough to invade, the North Koreans would simply drop a nuclear weapon on Seoul, the capital of South Korea, a US ally.

And Seoul is very helpfully just beyond the border with North Korea, making it easy to target.

That’s one of the reasons why President Trump repeatedly says nice things about Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator.

It’s also the reason why some countries want to have nuclear weapons: not because they want to use them, but as a guarantee against invasion.

That’s the lesson nations have taken from the Iraq War of 2003 and the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. Neither of these leaders possessed nuclear weapons. Both countries were invaded and the leaders executed.

If both counties had a nuclear weapon (the fake reason for invading Iraq) this would have acted as a permanent deterrent against invasion.

This is the power of deterrence.

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What are the odds I go to jail?

Courts may not possess nuclear weapons but they do possess significant powers of deterrence.  

For civilised society to prosper the State must reserve to itself the power to jail offenders. And they must be capable of doing it. If not, anarchy takes place.

People need to know -from hearing and reading about people who have been jailed- that they run the risk of jail too, if they commit the same kind of offence.

Bad news travels fast, goes the thinking.

"In 2024, 36 drivers were arrested three times for intoxicated driving,

263 drivers were arrested twice and

seven drivers were arrested between five and eleven times"

Once people are aware of this potential steep penalty, it helps to regulate behaviour in society. The ‘deterrence’ power of jail is now established.

Fear of jail is a sufficient deterrence to ensure good behaviour in society without having to send people to jail to find out for themselves.

All of us as drivers know that getting behind the wheel carries responsibilities.

One of them is to our fellow drivers. We all know that if we crash into another vehicle and flee the scene, jail is a real possibility.

We all have a moral and legal obligation to assist other road users who may be injured as a result of an accident involving us.

If people are aware of this, the ‘deterrence’ power of jail has been effective.

In other words, the risk of jail helps people to ‘self-police’ while on the roads, without the necessity of having police officers standing on every street corner or sending scores of people to jail.

Almost every offence carries a potential jail sentence. In other words the penalty for drink driving includes a maximum fine of €5,000 fine or 6 months in jail, or both.

The fine is a maximum, it limits judges imposing higher fines.

But I have never seen judges impose the maximum. Usually if a person is convicted they’ll get a fine of between €400-€1,000.

There is only one judge -based in the Midlands- that I have seen nationwide who imposes steep financial penalties on people he convicts.

He regularly imposes fines of €2,500 even on first time offenders.

This is irrational behaviour.

Thankfully he is an outlier, an extreme rarity among his judicial colleagues.

So will you go to jail for 6 months for drink driving?

Almost certainly not. I have never seen a person with no previous convictions receive a jail sentence after being convicted of drink driving alone.

So why does the law include the possibility of jail?

Because there are people who have more than one previous convictions for drink driving.

In 2024, 36 drivers were arrested three times for intoxicated driving, 263 drivers were arrested twice and seven drivers were arrested between five and eleven times.

The threat of jail exists for such motorists, but very likely not for you.

That of course assumes that nobody was injured in any accident involving you when you were arrested.  

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Jail is reserved for motorists who are repeat offenders, people who have received disqualifications in the past but continued to offend.

Judges often say: “he’s received a previous disqualification and it made no difference. He’s back offending again”. 

They are the ones who go to jail. Jail might be the court's 'nuclear option', but you’re probably pretty safe.