Magazine article: Punishment for crimes is justified if it actually deters people from committing them. But a great deal of carefully assembled and analyzed empirical data show clearly that punishment is not a deterrent. So punishment is never justified. The reasoning in the magazine article's argument is flawed because the argument ['attempts to be more precise than its subject matter properly allows', 'ignores the problem of mistakenly punishing the innocent', 'mistakenly allows the key term "punishment" to shift in meaning', 'mistakes being sufficient to justify punishment for being required to justify it']