What's wrong with chopping the hands off of thieves and executing muderers? A lot of cultures have very little forcible redistribution of wealth, and little crime.
an idea already tried in repressive states like iraq/ iran. I would expect you of all people to spot the obvious deficiency. a criminal system relies on the word of police and prosectors. a system with penalties like these tends not to have a "due process". that is, countries with policies like this tend to have only sham trials. reasonable trials and nasty sentences like these seem never to be found in combination. probably because they go together in the mind of the public-- reasonable trials, reasonable sentences. also, in any criminal justice system you cannot detect guilt with 100% certainty. some people would sleep better at night knowing that if a mistake has been made, it won't be too severe on an innocent person. that is a tradeoff that politicians never talk about-- about the difference between "criminal" and "suspect" and how our system is guaranteed imperfect in detecting the difference. for interesting ideas on the court system, a new book called "the truth machine" (fiction) has some speculations on a future criminal justice system based on a 100% effective truth detection machine.