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So long as the majority population deems an error rate to be preferable to letting the more extreme criminals (rapists, murderers, arsonists, blah) 'walk free',

by Nadya 11y ago

So long as the majority population deems an error rate to be preferable to letting the more extreme criminals (rapists, murderers, arsonists, blah) 'walk free', there will be an error rate. I'd sooner let ten all-but-certain criminals walk free than convict even a single innocent person. But I am not most people. Furthermore, there is not a good demonstration that decreasing the error rate (which would require imprisoning less actual criminals whom lack certain evidence, etc.) is beneficial for society as a whole. I mean, there's no studies showing it is any worse off either, but I digress. It's not an argument you can make to most people - they'd rather "keep their family safe from potential murderers" than "not be sentenced to 20 years in prison for a crime they didn't do" because they cannot imagine themselves being sentenced for 20 years for a crime they didn't do but they can imagine a criminal harming their family.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? You said 10. But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many innocent people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? That's a different question, isn't it? I think this gets to the question of "beneficial for society as a whole". If you stick some plausible values on this (say we're talking about people accused of major crimes, recidivism rate = X%, some weighted values assigned to harm for false imprisonment, being raped, being murdered, etc., and some plausible relationship between false conviction rate and non-conviction of those who are actually guilty), then it should be possible to calculate an optimum rate of convicting people. (Two notes: First, as the rate of false convictions goes up, the rate of non-conviction of the guilty goes down. Second, calculating the optimum is going to depend on the exact values chosen for all those parameters, but it still could be an interesting exercise.)
- Nadya 11y ago
  >How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? You said 10. All of them. With the difference in terminology: They are not being "set free" after being "knowingly guilty" but "remaining free" after "uncertain evidence". >But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many innocent people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? That's a different question, isn't it? I'm well aware of the entire argument you are trying to make. Which is why I said the false conviction rate exists. People are willing to trade security from potential repeat offenders at someone else's expense, while never imagining themselves as that someone else. Let me ask you this: Would you serve a lifetime prison sentence for a crime you did not commit? If you are not willing to serve one yourself - you have absolutely no right to ask someone else to do so for your or societies' security. That is my stance on this. People are only okay with this because they never imagine themselves becoming a part of that statistic. Likewise, nobody ever thinks they'll be the one to die in a car accident and even less that they'd be at fault for the accident. But it happens.
  - Shaanie 11y ago
    >Would you serve a lifetime prison sentence for a crime you did not commit? The thing is, if you let a serial killer off the hook because you didn't actually catch him red-handed (though the other evidence is very reliable) then you're killing innocents by inaction. Therefore, we can reframe your question as: "Would you let you and your family get murdered by a repeat offender to ensure that no innocents are imprisoned?" As long as there are prisoners, there will be some amount of innocents imprisoned, simply because it's almost impossible (entire impossible?) to prove that someone did something to a 100% certainty. By setting such insane standards you're killing way more innocents than the amount you'd falsely imprison.

by Nadya 11y ago

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? You said 10. But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many innocent people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? That's a different question, isn't it? I think this gets to the question of "beneficial for society as a whole". If you stick some plausible values on this (say we're talking about people accused of major crimes, recidivism rate = X%, some weighted values assigned to harm for false imprisonment, being raped, being murdered, etc., and some plausible relationship between false conviction rate and non-conviction of those who are actually guilty), then it should be possible to calculate an optimum rate of convicting people. (Two notes: First, as the rate of false convictions goes up, the rate of non-conviction of the guilty goes down. Second, calculating the optimum is going to depend on the exact values chosen for all those parameters, but it still could be an interesting exercise.)

Nadya 11y ago
>How many guilty people would you set free to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? You said 10. All of them. With the difference in terminology: They are not being "set free" after being "knowingly guilty" but "remaining free" after "uncertain evidence". >But probably some of those 10 will be repeat offenders. So how many innocent people will you see murdered in order to avoid imprisoning an innocent person? That's a different question, isn't it? I'm well aware of the entire argument you are trying to make. Which is why I said the false conviction rate exists. People are willing to trade security from potential repeat offenders at someone else's expense, while never imagining themselves as that someone else. Let me ask you this: Would you serve a lifetime prison sentence for a crime you did not commit? If you are not willing to serve one yourself - you have absolutely no right to ask someone else to do so for your or societies' security. That is my stance on this. People are only okay with this because they never imagine themselves becoming a part of that statistic. Likewise, nobody ever thinks they'll be the one to die in a car accident and even less that they'd be at fault for the accident. But it happens.
- Shaanie 11y ago
  >Would you serve a lifetime prison sentence for a crime you did not commit? The thing is, if you let a serial killer off the hook because you didn't actually catch him red-handed (though the other evidence is very reliable) then you're killing innocents by inaction. Therefore, we can reframe your question as: "Would you let you and your family get murdered by a repeat offender to ensure that no innocents are imprisoned?" As long as there are prisoners, there will be some amount of innocents imprisoned, simply because it's almost impossible (entire impossible?) to prove that someone did something to a 100% certainty. By setting such insane standards you're killing way more innocents than the amount you'd falsely imprison.