3 ms·

I think you've missed the point. Even if this system works, people who have not committed a crime (yet) are innocent. Taking an innocent person, and improsoni

I think you've missed the point. Even if this system works, people who have not committed a crime (yet) are innocent. Taking an innocent person, and improsoning him against his will is a crime, pretty extreme one. Even if this system works really well, it's hard to imagine that the crimes it prevents can be more extreme than the crimes it commits.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Taking an innocent person, and improsoning him against his will is a crime Every criminal justice system has to balance (1) the risk of convicting the innocent, (2) the risk of letting the true crime-committer commit additional crimes (due to not being caught or caught later), and (3) the risk of being abused. We don’t like pre-crime convictions because we believe risks 1 and 3 outweigh any gains in 2. A culture with a different balance of risks, however, could come to a different but consistent conclusion. I don’t like that conclusion. But it’s at least debatable. Putting political enemies in jail is not.
- SerLava 9y ago
  >Every criminal justice system has to balance (1) the risk of convicting the innocent, But that's not balancing it. It's just convicting the innocent automatically. >We don’t like pre-crime convictions because we believe risks 1 and 3 outweigh any gains in 2. There is no such thing as a pre-crime conviction unless a crime occurs. >But it’s at least debatable. It's debatable in the same way any nonsense is debatable - you can put the words together in a sentence - but in the colloquial sense of "debatable" it really isn't.