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Here's a little anecdote that might help with some of the "deterrent" stuff, because it is kind of counterintuitive at first blush . . .
My research indicates that about 80% of people think they are better than average at determining when a person is lying. About 75% of people think they are less likely than average to be taken advantage of by an insurance company during a claims experience.
People think they are better at, well, everything than they really are. This is a pernicious and consistent effect. Criminals expect they are smarter than the 'average' criminal, and thus less likely to be caught - and that's when they're even examining the risk/reward axis, which generally doesn't happen. Now, combine this with a social science phenomenon known as the "Fundamental Attribution Error," which says that people are unfortunately driven to ascribe actions of an individual to some internal characteristic of that person, rather than to temporal or situational effects, and it's easy to paint a criminal with a broad brush and say "they simply don't fear the punishments enough - let's put the fear of God into them, and they'll get it!" Sometimes, it's even simpler.
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