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If every time you enter the legal system and you have a 1% chance of being falsely convicted, that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how other coun

If every time you enter the legal system and you have a 1% chance of being falsely convicted, that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how other countries fare at that metric. Especially if you consider that certain underprivileged demographics are already at a higher risk of having more run-ins with the police regardless of their criminal state.

caminante 4y ago
> that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how other countries fare at that metric. No. It's on topic because the parent singled out the US, and I'm curious if other countries are taking procedures that could be adopted in the US to reduce false positives and ALSO false negatives.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  Wait, why do you think it's necessary to also reduce false negatives? Suppose there are five people who stole some candy, out of 100 people in the village. I claim that a system A in which three of the actual thieves are successfully convicted, but the others escape is better than a system B in which four people are successfully convicted, three of them are thieves but one is innocent. You seem to disagree, insisting a better system must also reduce false negatives.
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    If you don't care about reducing false negatives, then the ideal policy is simply to abolish prisons because that results in zero falsely imprisoned people.
    - rfrey 4y ago
      They said they don't think it's essential to reduce false negatives, presumably from current levels. That's quite different than your reducto ad absurdum.
      - caminante 4y ago
        Well, GP/"they" didn't do a good job being clear. They laid out two scenarios with 5 people stealing candy. A. 0% false positive; 40% false negative B. 20% false positive; 20% false negative (or maybe 4 people convicted with 1 innocent.) Either way, the false negative % decreased, and it seemed like the point was that they viewed A as morally superior (at the expense of higher false negatives). Overall, sure. You don't have to necessarily decrease the false negative rate, however, it's something that ideally doesn't go up, all else equal.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - caminante 4y ago
    > a system B in which four people are successfully convicted, three of them are thieves but one is innocent. You might need to re-phrase your hypothetical: "five people [...] stole some candy candy", now you have three getting convicted, a new person is innocent, but charged, and what happened to the 5th person? Regardless, you're skipping a step to argue values about how many people should be incarcerated, etc. False negatives matter because just like you don't want innocent people being locked up for stealing candy (or serious crimes), you ALSO don't want a high number of murderers freed into the streets!
    - tialaramex 4y ago
      > what happened to the 5th person? They weren't convicted. I feel like the fact you weren't able to figure that out suggests I need to work through this example a little more slowly in the hope you can follow: In the village of Example there are one hundred people, that's too many for me to name so I'm just going to number them E00 through to E99. It so happens five of these people have stolen some candy, with our god view of the world we happen to know that it's E09, E14, E43, E44 and E90, but this information is not available to the other Example villagers or to a prosecutor, judge etc regardless of whether they live in Example. We have this god view, they do not. No real world prosecutors know for sure who committed which crimes and in many cases it's even unclear whether a crime was committed. In system A, three people are convicted, and they are, let's say E14, E44 and E90, they are actually all thieves. But in system B, four people are convicted, they're E09, E20, E43 and E90. Unfortunately E20 wasn't a candy thief, we know that with our god view. I claim that system A is better than system B. Your claim was that system A isn't better because, apparently you feel that a better system must catch more of the thieves, and you've offered no argument for that beyond that you don't seem to see a difference between "more" and "not less".
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - caminante 4y ago
        Hold up... > apparently you feel that a better system must catch more of the thieves, and you've offered no argument for that beyond that you don't seem to see a difference between "more" and "not less" Where did I say or imply that. I asked if other countries were doing things that could [X=reduce false positives] and [Y=reduce false negatives]. That's not presenting an argument. If there are ways to reduce false positives without necessarily reducing false negatives, I didn't ask for those, though, it'd be interesting for discussion.
  - addicted 4y ago
    Ben Franklin: > That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved. This builds upon an idea espoused by Voltaire, I believe. Western philosophical/political systems have long held the idea that false negatives are a worthwhile cost to avoid any false positives.
PebblesRox 4y ago
> If every time you enter the legal system and you have a 1% chance of being falsely convicted I agree with you that 1% is a high number in this context, but I don't think the math works for what you're saying here. If 1 out of 100 convictions are of innocent people, that doesn't mean that 1 out of 100 innocent people put on trial are going to get convicted. That rate could be higher or lower than 1% because it depends how many innocent people are rightfully judged innocent. Hypothetically, a court system that always returns a guilty verdict could have a 1% false conviction rate if 99% of people put on trial are actually guilty. But the rate of wrongful conviction for an innocent person entering this system would be 100%.
- Clent 4y ago
  The United State's conviction rate is more than 75% -- You are assuming a fair outcome. The innocent person has a 75% change of being convicted. A plea deal of the innocent isn't counted if it avoids jail time. Better to deal with the cost and hassle of parole than being prisoner where you are legally on the same level as a slave.
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    > The innocent person has a 75% change of being convicted. If the conviction rate is 75%, and the percent of convictions that are innocent is 5%, wouldn't that make an innocent's conviction chance at most 30%? Edit: I'm silly. It's at least 30%. If some of the unconvicted are guilty, the denominator of innocents is smaller.
    - ummonk 4y ago
      Most convictions aren’t via trial but via plea bargains. It’s fair to assume that innocent people are less likely to take a plea bargain than guilty people, so the chances of getting falsely convicted could be quite high for an innocent person going to trial.

caminante 4y ago

> that is a broken and dangerous system regardless of how other countries fare at that metric. No. It's on topic because the parent singled out the US, and I'm curious if other countries are taking procedures that could be adopted in the US to reduce false positives and ALSO false negatives.

tialaramex 4y ago
Wait, why do you think it's necessary to also reduce false negatives? Suppose there are five people who stole some candy, out of 100 people in the village. I claim that a system A in which three of the actual thieves are successfully convicted, but the others escape is better than a system B in which four people are successfully convicted, three of them are thieves but one is innocent. You seem to disagree, insisting a better system must also reduce false negatives.
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  If you don't care about reducing false negatives, then the ideal policy is simply to abolish prisons because that results in zero falsely imprisoned people.
  - rfrey 4y ago
    They said they don't think it's essential to reduce false negatives, presumably from current levels. That's quite different than your reducto ad absurdum.
    - caminante 4y ago
      Well, GP/"they" didn't do a good job being clear. They laid out two scenarios with 5 people stealing candy. A. 0% false positive; 40% false negative B. 20% false positive; 20% false negative (or maybe 4 people convicted with 1 innocent.) Either way, the false negative % decreased, and it seemed like the point was that they viewed A as morally superior (at the expense of higher false negatives). Overall, sure. You don't have to necessarily decrease the false negative rate, however, it's something that ideally doesn't go up, all else equal.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- caminante 4y ago
  > a system B in which four people are successfully convicted, three of them are thieves but one is innocent. You might need to re-phrase your hypothetical: "five people [...] stole some candy candy", now you have three getting convicted, a new person is innocent, but charged, and what happened to the 5th person? Regardless, you're skipping a step to argue values about how many people should be incarcerated, etc. False negatives matter because just like you don't want innocent people being locked up for stealing candy (or serious crimes), you ALSO don't want a high number of murderers freed into the streets!
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    > what happened to the 5th person? They weren't convicted. I feel like the fact you weren't able to figure that out suggests I need to work through this example a little more slowly in the hope you can follow: In the village of Example there are one hundred people, that's too many for me to name so I'm just going to number them E00 through to E99. It so happens five of these people have stolen some candy, with our god view of the world we happen to know that it's E09, E14, E43, E44 and E90, but this information is not available to the other Example villagers or to a prosecutor, judge etc regardless of whether they live in Example. We have this god view, they do not. No real world prosecutors know for sure who committed which crimes and in many cases it's even unclear whether a crime was committed. In system A, three people are convicted, and they are, let's say E14, E44 and E90, they are actually all thieves. But in system B, four people are convicted, they're E09, E20, E43 and E90. Unfortunately E20 wasn't a candy thief, we know that with our god view. I claim that system A is better than system B. Your claim was that system A isn't better because, apparently you feel that a better system must catch more of the thieves, and you've offered no argument for that beyond that you don't seem to see a difference between "more" and "not less".
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - caminante 4y ago
      Hold up... > apparently you feel that a better system must catch more of the thieves, and you've offered no argument for that beyond that you don't seem to see a difference between "more" and "not less" Where did I say or imply that. I asked if other countries were doing things that could [X=reduce false positives] and [Y=reduce false negatives]. That's not presenting an argument. If there are ways to reduce false positives without necessarily reducing false negatives, I didn't ask for those, though, it'd be interesting for discussion.
- addicted 4y ago
  Ben Franklin: > That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved. This builds upon an idea espoused by Voltaire, I believe. Western philosophical/political systems have long held the idea that false negatives are a worthwhile cost to avoid any false positives.

PebblesRox 4y ago

> If every time you enter the legal system and you have a 1% chance of being falsely convicted I agree with you that 1% is a high number in this context, but I don't think the math works for what you're saying here. If 1 out of 100 convictions are of innocent people, that doesn't mean that 1 out of 100 innocent people put on trial are going to get convicted. That rate could be higher or lower than 1% because it depends how many innocent people are rightfully judged innocent. Hypothetically, a court system that always returns a guilty verdict could have a 1% false conviction rate if 99% of people put on trial are actually guilty. But the rate of wrongful conviction for an innocent person entering this system would be 100%.

Clent 4y ago
The United State's conviction rate is more than 75% -- You are assuming a fair outcome. The innocent person has a 75% change of being convicted. A plea deal of the innocent isn't counted if it avoids jail time. Better to deal with the cost and hassle of parole than being prisoner where you are legally on the same level as a slave.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > The innocent person has a 75% change of being convicted. If the conviction rate is 75%, and the percent of convictions that are innocent is 5%, wouldn't that make an innocent's conviction chance at most 30%? Edit: I'm silly. It's at least 30%. If some of the unconvicted are guilty, the denominator of innocents is smaller.
  - ummonk 4y ago
    Most convictions aren’t via trial but via plea bargains. It’s fair to assume that innocent people are less likely to take a plea bargain than guilty people, so the chances of getting falsely convicted could be quite high for an innocent person going to trial.