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It's not particularly hard to find people serving 5+ years in US prisons who one could gamble are no more or less a threat to society that the average person.
by miracle2k 9y ago
It's not particularly hard to find people serving 5+ years in US prisons who one could gamble are no more or less a threat to society that the average person.
Having said that, I could make you the same offer, except I choose for you a as-of-now non-offending police officer, corrections officer, doctor, fireman, military service man or other upstanding citizen, for whom who will take life-long responsibility. If they commit a crime your penalty will match theirs.
If that doesn't sound super appealing, it might have something to do with playing Russian roulette, rather than an argument against rehabilitation.
- crucini 9y agoI think both your points are valid: the "Black Swan" nature of the criminal liability, and the baseline risk. How can we reformulate the scenario to avoid both? Also, I want to emphasize the reformer's level of belief in his reform, rather than ability to pick the perfect inmate. How about these changes? * No criminal liability for the reformer - it all gets converted to civil financial liability. So a murder might be $1M; simple theft might be triple the value of the stolen article. * Reformer's initial payment includes an offset for "average criminality", using the above dollar conversions. So if the reformee exhibits average criminality in the remainder of his life, the reformer only pays back that offset. * Inmate is picked by lottery, excluding those with strong signs of unreformability. I'm afraid these mods make the example less intuitive.