In Greene and Cohen's paper, they talked about certain objections to a consequentialist approach of legal punishment. A particular worry is that the approach will justify draconian penalties. For example, the government might impose death penalty to ones who break parking rules so as to deter future violation. I agree with retributivists that it is wrong to kill people for minor misbehavior; however, even from a consequentialist perspective, imposing heavy penalties on minor crimes will not serve as deterrence. In fact, it might incentivize people to commit more serious crimes.
Suppose the government imposes death penalty on double parking, and it's common knowledge that once a policeman sees you violating the parking law, he will arrest you and the judge will sentence you to death. Now think about the incentive of Adam, who just violated the law and unfortunately, saw a policeman coming to him. If he does nothing and gets arrested, he will be dead for sure. But if somehow he manages to kill the policeman and bury his body, he has a chance to survive. Killing and burying a police officer is no doubt a felony, but given that the person has already committed a "serious" crime (serious due to the consequence of death), the marginal penalty imposed on Adam for an extra felony is...zero. On the other hand, the marginal benefit for him is a chance to live. So it's theoretically possible that punishing people for minor misbehavior actually leads to more serious crimes, which is not at all a good consequence.
While the specific case that you illustrated above does show an instance where there is a more serious crime as a result of the over-punishment, this could be irrelevant to the consequentialist. The only thing that matters from the consequentialist point of view is if the net benefit to society is higher than the net loss. While this point is hard to rationalize specifically for the parking case, for what is the real benefit for society by saving a parking space? But it is easy to see in other possible cases. For example, perhaps those who drunk drive are executed. This is more easily rationalized, for they are possibly endangering multiple of members of society by driving drunk, and in many cases do end up killing people. So a consequentialist type government might enact such a law and think, I would say arguably so, that it does in fact reduce the amount of drunk drivers. You might have some cases where individuals act out more due to the possibility of being executed, but this doesnt matter to the consequentialist as long as the net benefit increases. Of course we don't really know if the threat of death would stop those who are drunk driving in significant amounts. But it is at least conceivable in this case that the net benefit of society could go up as a result of this law. So while I think your point does have some merit to it in that specific example, all that it illustrates is the law makers have to be careful in creating which laws over-punish.
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