4 ms·

N Guilty Men (1997)

58 points by zargon 11y ago

rchiniquy 11y ago
Thanks so much for posting this. I read it so many years ago and have frequently wanted to refer back to it, but didn't remember the title. Very grateful.
Zikes 11y ago
It would be nice to live in a society when the certainty of someone having committed a crime directly relates to the justice system's proclamation of guilt. Instead, for most Americans, for whom a competent lawyer is outside of the range of reasonable cost, we only get public defenders. A prosecutor's career is built on the back of successful convictions, whether just or not, while a public defender's career is built on the number of cases they can speedily close. For both, the most advantageous and therefore most common resolution is a guilty plea bargain. "N Guilty Men" philosophical debates are too far above today's justice system for serious consideration.
- patrickmn 11y ago
  Related: Why Innocent People Plead Guilty (written by a U.S. federal judge) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...
- jMyles 11y ago
  > It would be nice to live in a society when the certainty of someone having committed a crime directly relates to the justice system's proclamation of guilt. Such a great distillation of the national shame of the United States. Agreed! > "N Guilty Men" philosophical debates are too far above today's justice system for serious consideration. I do not concur. I think that this is exactly the kind of thinking that we need to motivate ourselves to replace the current "criminal justice" system in full.
  - emmelaich 11y ago
    Exactly. If N is found to be low, then your society is in trouble.
patmcc 11y ago
Excellent piece - I think my favourite is the advice to criminals section: "Criminals, therefore, are advised to go to New Mexico (n = 99) or Oklahoma (n = 100)."
- sirclueless 11y ago
  I particularly like the reasoning they use to determine that N > 1/54 for involuntarily committing people in California. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T187 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T187 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#187 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#187
massel 11y ago
"To be on the safe side, criminals who go to D.C. to violate federal law should run for public office." - Best thing I've read today
whack 11y ago
In all these discussions pitting innocent men getting imprisoned vs guilty men going free, one factor rarely ever comes up: innocent men (and women and children) who fall victim to crime. IMO, one of the most valuable roles of the justice system is to be a deterrent. "If you commit a crime, you will be put in jail, so don't even think about it." If you've ever witnessed schoolyard bullying in action, that's exactly what every single day in adult life would also look like, if not for the justice system. By deterring would-be-criminals, it keeps innocent people safe, without even having to send the would-be-criminals to jail. Except that it isn't a perfect deterrent. Crime is still a major factor in society. To give just one example, 20% of women in America experience sexual assault at some point in their lives. And then there's robbery, assault, manslaughter, homicide... Some crimes are committed by those who're mentally unstable, or in the heat of the moment. But the vast majority are committed by criminals who are fully aware of what they are doing. People who would never do it if they knew for sure they would go to jail, but think they have a good enough chance of getting away with it. They either think they won't get caught by the police, or even if they did get fingered, they can find some loophole or weakness in the prosecution's case that would enable them to beat the rap. And the likelihood of the latter really comes down to how high the burden of proof is. A guilty person is much more likely to get convicted in a legal system where "n = 5", as opposed to "n = 10." Psychology studies show that punishments are most effective as deterrents when they are consistent, immediate and guaranteed. The greater the variance, the better the chances of someone getting away with it, the less powerful the deterrent effect will be. Which means you're going to have more victims of crime. More victims of assault, kidnappings, rape and murder. Which is really what the trade off should be all about. "It's better that N innocent people fall victim to crime, than for 1 innocent person to go to jail." Now what would your answer for N be?
- Zikes 11y ago
  Is it better to have the atrocities committed upon a person by a stranger, or by their government, which is charged to protect them? Getting arrested, tried, and imprisoned can be a brutal process all on its own. Losing years or even the entirety of the remainder of one's life to imprisonment is (for me, at least) an extremely scary thought. The sort of treatment you can expect in prison is absolutely dehumanizing. You aren't a name anymore, you are a number. You have no more freedoms, no choices, and unless you have someone on the outside financing your entertainment, you're at the mercy of a very limited library of options for which the prison has absolutely no incentive to improve upon. I have a father and a brother both in prison right now, and it is absolutely not an experience I would want to wish on any innocent person, even at the risk of criminals going free.
kazinator 11y ago
Is this figure supposed to be independent of the level of crime and punishment? As in * better to let ten shoplifting schoolboys go than to give one a slap on the wrist; and * better to let ten serial killers go than to execute an innocent person?
- sirclueless 11y ago
  This is addressed somewhat in the essay. For example, it mentions that God and Roman emperor Trajan limit the maxim to capital punishment, but Blackstone considers his version to apply to all forms of punishment. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T37 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T37
JoshTriplett 11y ago
This is the kind of reasoning that doesn't get thought about very often. Much like debates on how much a human life is worth, people look at you as heartless for even considering the question, but with limited resources, it's more heartless not to. If you want to save the most lives, you need to determine how to do the most good. Questions like this one inform standards of evidence, burdens of proof, and many other factors of the justice system. Any potential change to the justice system will potentially change 'n'. For instance, criminal law uses "beyond a reasonable doubt", while civil law uses the lower standard "preponderance of the evidence", precisely because 'n' is lower when talking about money than when talking about jail time.
- tamana 11y ago
  Civil law is symmetric: party a vs party b. If the rules were biased, it would be profitable to commit civil crime or to make false claims. Criminal law is far more asymmetric -- the government never goes to jail, and citizens can never press their own charges.
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  The premise it's all wrong. The reason we let an "innocent" person go free it's because you don't have enough evidence to prove that it is guilty in the first place. Imprisoning that person anyway just to be "safe" won't make you safer since the actual guilty person may still be around. If that is the case then you effectively pardoned him/her while exacting punishment on an innocent. It's very easy to talk about the "innocent" person in the abstract but if you happen to be the innocent you will care very much about being punished without having actually committed any crimes.
microcolonel 11y ago
If a criminal is free, perhaps they can be reformed. If an innocent is convicted, they will suffer as a criminal.

N Guilty Men (1997)

58 points by zargon 11y ago

Thanks so much for posting this. I read it so many years ago and have frequently wanted to refer back to it, but didn't remember the title. Very grateful.

Zikes 11y ago

It would be nice to live in a society when the certainty of someone having committed a crime directly relates to the justice system's proclamation of guilt. Instead, for most Americans, for whom a competent lawyer is outside of the range of reasonable cost, we only get public defenders. A prosecutor's career is built on the back of successful convictions, whether just or not, while a public defender's career is built on the number of cases they can speedily close. For both, the most advantageous and therefore most common resolution is a guilty plea bargain. "N Guilty Men" philosophical debates are too far above today's justice system for serious consideration.

patrickmn 11y ago
Related: Why Innocent People Plead Guilty (written by a U.S. federal judge) http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...
jMyles 11y ago
> It would be nice to live in a society when the certainty of someone having committed a crime directly relates to the justice system's proclamation of guilt. Such a great distillation of the national shame of the United States. Agreed! > "N Guilty Men" philosophical debates are too far above today's justice system for serious consideration. I do not concur. I think that this is exactly the kind of thinking that we need to motivate ourselves to replace the current "criminal justice" system in full.
- emmelaich 11y ago
  Exactly. If N is found to be low, then your society is in trouble.

patmcc 11y ago

Excellent piece - I think my favourite is the advice to criminals section: "Criminals, therefore, are advised to go to New Mexico (n = 99) or Oklahoma (n = 100)."

sirclueless 11y ago
I particularly like the reasoning they use to determine that N > 1/54 for involuntarily committing people in California. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T187 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T187 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#187 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#187

massel 11y ago

"To be on the safe side, criminals who go to D.C. to violate federal law should run for public office." - Best thing I've read today

whack 11y ago

In all these discussions pitting innocent men getting imprisoned vs guilty men going free, one factor rarely ever comes up: innocent men (and women and children) who fall victim to crime. IMO, one of the most valuable roles of the justice system is to be a deterrent. "If you commit a crime, you will be put in jail, so don't even think about it." If you've ever witnessed schoolyard bullying in action, that's exactly what every single day in adult life would also look like, if not for the justice system. By deterring would-be-criminals, it keeps innocent people safe, without even having to send the would-be-criminals to jail. Except that it isn't a perfect deterrent. Crime is still a major factor in society. To give just one example, 20% of women in America experience sexual assault at some point in their lives. And then there's robbery, assault, manslaughter, homicide... Some crimes are committed by those who're mentally unstable, or in the heat of the moment. But the vast majority are committed by criminals who are fully aware of what they are doing. People who would never do it if they knew for sure they would go to jail, but think they have a good enough chance of getting away with it. They either think they won't get caught by the police, or even if they did get fingered, they can find some loophole or weakness in the prosecution's case that would enable them to beat the rap. And the likelihood of the latter really comes down to how high the burden of proof is. A guilty person is much more likely to get convicted in a legal system where "n = 5", as opposed to "n = 10." Psychology studies show that punishments are most effective as deterrents when they are consistent, immediate and guaranteed. The greater the variance, the better the chances of someone getting away with it, the less powerful the deterrent effect will be. Which means you're going to have more victims of crime. More victims of assault, kidnappings, rape and murder. Which is really what the trade off should be all about. "It's better that N innocent people fall victim to crime, than for 1 innocent person to go to jail." Now what would your answer for N be?

Zikes 11y ago
Is it better to have the atrocities committed upon a person by a stranger, or by their government, which is charged to protect them? Getting arrested, tried, and imprisoned can be a brutal process all on its own. Losing years or even the entirety of the remainder of one's life to imprisonment is (for me, at least) an extremely scary thought. The sort of treatment you can expect in prison is absolutely dehumanizing. You aren't a name anymore, you are a number. You have no more freedoms, no choices, and unless you have someone on the outside financing your entertainment, you're at the mercy of a very limited library of options for which the prison has absolutely no incentive to improve upon. I have a father and a brother both in prison right now, and it is absolutely not an experience I would want to wish on any innocent person, even at the risk of criminals going free.

kazinator 11y ago

Is this figure supposed to be independent of the level of crime and punishment? As in * better to let ten shoplifting schoolboys go than to give one a slap on the wrist; and * better to let ten serial killers go than to execute an innocent person?

sirclueless 11y ago
This is addressed somewhat in the essay. For example, it mentions that God and Roman emperor Trajan limit the maxim to capital punishment, but Blackstone considers his version to apply to all forms of punishment. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T37 http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm#T37

JoshTriplett 11y ago

This is the kind of reasoning that doesn't get thought about very often. Much like debates on how much a human life is worth, people look at you as heartless for even considering the question, but with limited resources, it's more heartless not to. If you want to save the most lives, you need to determine how to do the most good. Questions like this one inform standards of evidence, burdens of proof, and many other factors of the justice system. Any potential change to the justice system will potentially change 'n'. For instance, criminal law uses "beyond a reasonable doubt", while civil law uses the lower standard "preponderance of the evidence", precisely because 'n' is lower when talking about money than when talking about jail time.

tamana 11y ago
Civil law is symmetric: party a vs party b. If the rules were biased, it would be profitable to commit civil crime or to make false claims. Criminal law is far more asymmetric -- the government never goes to jail, and citizens can never press their own charges.
rpgmaker 11y ago
The premise it's all wrong. The reason we let an "innocent" person go free it's because you don't have enough evidence to prove that it is guilty in the first place. Imprisoning that person anyway just to be "safe" won't make you safer since the actual guilty person may still be around. If that is the case then you effectively pardoned him/her while exacting punishment on an innocent. It's very easy to talk about the "innocent" person in the abstract but if you happen to be the innocent you will care very much about being punished without having actually committed any crimes.

microcolonel 11y ago

If a criminal is free, perhaps they can be reformed. If an innocent is convicted, they will suffer as a criminal.