4 ms·

I wonder if the algorithm includes the taxes that people won't be paying due to sentences. That could get really complicated. For example, having a felony con

I wonder if the algorithm includes the taxes that people won't be paying due to sentences. That could get really complicated. For example, having a felony conviction on your record probably hugely reduces lifetime incomes. For certain people, the lost taxes might be much larger than the "direct" costs.

eli 16y ago
I doubt it. It's rare politicians consider costs past the next budget year.
hugh3 16y ago
If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? A burglar maybe steals $52,000 worth of stuff every year, and it winds up being worthwhile locking him up. But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing.
- lliiffee 16y ago
  If we are committed to the mercenary approach, we would have to define how bad a murder is "in dollars". If you think we should be focused on justice instead of a cold cost-benefit analysis, may I suggest defining how valuable justice is, in dollars? (I'm joking, I think...)
  - matwood 16y ago
    You mean putting a dollar number on a human life? This is done everyday by actuaries primarily for insurance purposes.
    - lliiffee 16y ago
      I meant that I was joking about putting a dollar number on "justice". Although, I'm not sure how unreasonable that is.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Whatever dollar value may be put on a human life for insurance purposes it's not an actual value. For instance, I can't pay that amount and then kill you.
- ewjordan 16y ago
  I'll respond out of order: But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing. This is almost trivial to account for, though, as long as you have a person looking at the numbers and making a decision - even if a judge sees that there's a large price tag if he sentences a child rapist, he's still going to do it, because the monetary value equivalent to "letting a child rapist back out into the world" is going to be ridiculously high, probably on the order of many millions of dollars. Same thing for other very serious crimes. Where it gets more interesting is cases like "college kid caught carrying eight pounds of marijuana", where there's no clear and present threat to anyone if the kid was given some sort of reduced sentence. If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? Sure, why not? In theory we lock people up because it helps society, right? So why wouldn't we want to consider all the possible higher order effects of different sentences on society as a whole? The problem is mainly that figuring out these effects can be very difficult, and I suspect that some of the second and third order effects end up being comparable in magnitude to the first order ones (direct cost of sentencing). Plus, in many cases we're really locking people up to satisfy a thirst for vengeance, not necessarily to help society in any way whatsoever. It would be nice if we had a better measure of what it actually costs us, though.
- philk 16y ago
  It's not going to be used that crudely. The child rapist is going to get a hefty sentence regardless of the cost because people want to punish serious crimes more than they want to save a couple of bucks. Where it does come in handy is for relatively minor crimes[1], serving as a spur to consider whether the cost of incarceration is really offset by the benefits to society. [1] Things like drug offenses, etc.

eli 16y ago

I doubt it. It's rare politicians consider costs past the next budget year.

hugh3 16y ago

If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? A burglar maybe steals $52,000 worth of stuff every year, and it winds up being worthwhile locking him up. But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing.

lliiffee 16y ago
If we are committed to the mercenary approach, we would have to define how bad a murder is "in dollars". If you think we should be focused on justice instead of a cold cost-benefit analysis, may I suggest defining how valuable justice is, in dollars? (I'm joking, I think...)
- matwood 16y ago
  You mean putting a dollar number on a human life? This is done everyday by actuaries primarily for insurance purposes.
  - lliiffee 16y ago
    I meant that I was joking about putting a dollar number on "justice". Although, I'm not sure how unreasonable that is.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Whatever dollar value may be put on a human life for insurance purposes it's not an actual value. For instance, I can't pay that amount and then kill you.
ewjordan 16y ago
I'll respond out of order: But a child rapist has no major impact on economic productivity, so... yeah, I'm starting to see the problem with this mercenary approach to sentencing. This is almost trivial to account for, though, as long as you have a person looking at the numbers and making a decision - even if a judge sees that there's a large price tag if he sentences a child rapist, he's still going to do it, because the monetary value equivalent to "letting a child rapist back out into the world" is going to be ridiculously high, probably on the order of many millions of dollars. Same thing for other very serious crimes. Where it gets more interesting is cases like "college kid caught carrying eight pounds of marijuana", where there's no clear and present threat to anyone if the kid was given some sort of reduced sentence. If we can predict that, shouldn't we also be estimating the cost of the crimes they won't be committing? Sure, why not? In theory we lock people up because it helps society, right? So why wouldn't we want to consider all the possible higher order effects of different sentences on society as a whole? The problem is mainly that figuring out these effects can be very difficult, and I suspect that some of the second and third order effects end up being comparable in magnitude to the first order ones (direct cost of sentencing). Plus, in many cases we're really locking people up to satisfy a thirst for vengeance, not necessarily to help society in any way whatsoever. It would be nice if we had a better measure of what it actually costs us, though.
philk 16y ago
It's not going to be used that crudely. The child rapist is going to get a hefty sentence regardless of the cost because people want to punish serious crimes more than they want to save a couple of bucks. Where it does come in handy is for relatively minor crimes[1], serving as a spur to consider whether the cost of incarceration is really offset by the benefits to society. [1] Things like drug offenses, etc.