Certainty rather than severity of punishment deters crime. Discuss in the context of sexual offences in India.

Beccaria argued that a would-be offender is deterred more by the likelihood of being punished than by how harsh the punishment is. Since Nirbhaya (2012), India has dealt with sexual violence mainly by raising severity. The data suggests that certainty is the missing link.

Severity: the legislative response

• The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2018 raised the minimum sentence for rape from 7 to 10 years. Rape of a girl under 12 now carries at least 20 years, extendable to death [2].
• It expresses society's condemnation and responds to public outrage.
• Critics warn that harsher penalties may not deter and may be disproportionate [2].

Certainty: the weak link

• Low conviction: fewer than 30% of rape cases end in conviction. Only about 2% of cases sent to trial end in conviction in the same year [1].
• Rising pendency: about 84 rape cases are registered every day. Registrations have been flat since 2018, yet pendency keeps rising [1].
• Court capacity: the target of 1,023 FTSCs [3] was cut to 790. Only 725 were working by June 2025 [4].
• Backlog even in FTSCs: in 2024, 88,902 cases were instituted but only 85,595 were disposed of [5].
• Delays before trial: forensic labs were told to add staff so that DNA reports reach courts on time [6].

Why certainty deters better

• An offender weighs the chance of being caught and convicted. When conviction is below 30%, a 20-year sentence is a distant risk.
• The government itself links deterrence to fast, time-bound trials [3]. FTSCs dispose of 9.51 cases per court per month, against 3.26 in regular courts [4].
• Long trials re-traumatise survivors and make it more likely that witnesses turn hostile.

Way forward

• Make FTSCs permanent courts with dedicated judges, instead of relying on repeated scheme extensions [4].
• Fund forensic laboratories in the same plan as the courts [6].
• Report conviction rates and trial duration, not only the 96.28% disposal rate, which also counts acquittals [5].
• NCRB should follow each year's cases for several years to show how long justice really takes.

Severity sets the moral benchmark, but certainty is what actually deters. Police, forensic and judicial capacity must work together so that every offender expects to be convicted quickly. That would deliver the speedy trial guaranteed under Article 21 and advance gender justice under SDG 5.