6 ms·

One would imagine that a significant portion of the time they tried to put the person behind bars because they believed the person to be guilty. I’m curious wh

One would imagine that a significant portion of the time they tried to put the person behind bars because they believed the person to be guilty. I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. It seems you might go higher than ten—but how high? Should we be so concerned about wrongful convictions that we allow 1000 guilty men to go free for each one? 10,000? Then, turn that around. Given how often prosecutors have good motives and adequate grounds for moving forward with a conviction, how many innocent prosecutors would you put through the wringer just to catch one guilty one?

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. This is incoherent; it is obvious that you'd want to set this differently for different crimes.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Which do you think would require more certainty: crimes with severe punishments, or crimes with low impact of the victims?
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    What kind of certainty? All else equal, (1) when the punishment for the crime is severe, you'd want to be more certain that the convicted criminal is actually guilty ("It's bad when innocent men are punished."); (2) when the crime is not very serious, you don't really care whether the convict is guilty or not (because we assume the punishment is not very severe). So we want more certainty-of-guilt in case 1 and less certainty-of-guilt in case 2. We can also ask for certainty that people who are guilty in fact get convicted. ("It's bad when guilty men go free.") This is the opposite of the other kind of certainty. Here, we'd want a lot of that type of certainty for crimes with severe punishments (we assume that such crimes are very serious), and we don't really care about this for crimes with no particular impact on victims. So we want more certainty-of-conviction in case 1 and less certainty-of-conviction in case 2. Certainty-of-conviction and certainty-of-guilt are, in the general case, directly in conflict with each other. We don't want either (in a relative sense) for trivial crimes, so it doesn't really matter what happens. We want lots of both for serious crimes, so what happens matters, but we can't actually achieve both goals. In conclusion, when setting your policy, you need to look at other aspects of the crime than the one(s) you mention here, which are not informative as to this question. (Though they are informative as to the question you literally asked; we want more certainty of every type on serious crimes.) Perhaps the punishment for a particular crime is out of proportion to how serious that crime is. If the punishment is too heavy, we'd want more certainty-of-guilt; if it's too light, we'd want more certainty-of-conviction. Perhaps it's much easier than usual to reliably determine guilt-in-fact for a particular crime. Then we'd want more certainty-of-conviction.
    - watwut 4y ago
      > whether the convict is guilty or not (because we assume the punishment is not very severe) There is nonsuch thing. Even short conviction destroys people's ability to hold jobs, find housing and to find partners. People inyour life stop trusting you and that is super big one too. And it may cause divorce with law abiding lartner and factor into custody dispute. Any Criminal conviction has huge ramifications.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      In the face of all this complexity, I think it is not "obvious that you'd want to set this differently for different crimes." It is clear the perfect certainty would be ideal, if possible. It is not clear to me that variable standards are desirable from a practical standpoint. The relevance of a Blackstone number is it basically sets all this aside and looks at an ideal circumstance, and you can adjust from there, if you want to take peculiarites into account.
brailsafe 4y ago
Honestly it seems absurd that innocent people can actually end up being robbed of their life and thrown in prison at all.
- eru 4y ago
  In aggregate, it's all a question of numbers. Alas. If you want 0% chance for innocent people to get convicted, you have to let many guilty people go.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    If you want literally 0% innocent people punished, you have to let all guilty people go, i.e. don't attempt justice.
    - eru 4y ago
      Well, we only have about 8 billion people on the planet. If you can drive down the rate of innocent people punished below, say, 1 in a trillion, that's probably close enough to zero in practice?
      - andrewflnr 4y ago
        But we won't get there, not even close, maybe not even in a panopticon dystopia. Anyway, your baseline should be total accusations (not prosecutions, you're already a fair bit into the pipeline at that point and imposing significant costs), which is significantly higher than total people.
- GavinMcG 4y ago
  Does it seem more absurd than the fact that innocent people can be killed by drunk drivers? Or that they can be dismembered in industrial accidents? It seems like you have an expectation that human systems could be perfect, and I’m curious where that comes from or what sustains it.
  - 4y ago
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. The problem is that we are not achieving the blackstone number more than 1/10th of people in prison are innocent. That means the criminals responsible for those crimes are still out there
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > The problem is that we are not achieving the blackstone number more than 1/10th of people in prison are innocent. > That means the criminals responsible for those crimes are still out there That's more than a little concerning. Link?

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. This is incoherent; it is obvious that you'd want to set this differently for different crimes.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Which do you think would require more certainty: crimes with severe punishments, or crimes with low impact of the victims?
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  What kind of certainty? All else equal, (1) when the punishment for the crime is severe, you'd want to be more certain that the convicted criminal is actually guilty ("It's bad when innocent men are punished."); (2) when the crime is not very serious, you don't really care whether the convict is guilty or not (because we assume the punishment is not very severe). So we want more certainty-of-guilt in case 1 and less certainty-of-guilt in case 2. We can also ask for certainty that people who are guilty in fact get convicted. ("It's bad when guilty men go free.") This is the opposite of the other kind of certainty. Here, we'd want a lot of that type of certainty for crimes with severe punishments (we assume that such crimes are very serious), and we don't really care about this for crimes with no particular impact on victims. So we want more certainty-of-conviction in case 1 and less certainty-of-conviction in case 2. Certainty-of-conviction and certainty-of-guilt are, in the general case, directly in conflict with each other. We don't want either (in a relative sense) for trivial crimes, so it doesn't really matter what happens. We want lots of both for serious crimes, so what happens matters, but we can't actually achieve both goals. In conclusion, when setting your policy, you need to look at other aspects of the crime than the one(s) you mention here, which are not informative as to this question. (Though they are informative as to the question you literally asked; we want more certainty of every type on serious crimes.) Perhaps the punishment for a particular crime is out of proportion to how serious that crime is. If the punishment is too heavy, we'd want more certainty-of-guilt; if it's too light, we'd want more certainty-of-conviction. Perhaps it's much easier than usual to reliably determine guilt-in-fact for a particular crime. Then we'd want more certainty-of-conviction.
  - watwut 4y ago
    > whether the convict is guilty or not (because we assume the punishment is not very severe) There is nonsuch thing. Even short conviction destroys people's ability to hold jobs, find housing and to find partners. People inyour life stop trusting you and that is super big one too. And it may cause divorce with law abiding lartner and factor into custody dispute. Any Criminal conviction has huge ramifications.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    In the face of all this complexity, I think it is not "obvious that you'd want to set this differently for different crimes." It is clear the perfect certainty would be ideal, if possible. It is not clear to me that variable standards are desirable from a practical standpoint. The relevance of a Blackstone number is it basically sets all this aside and looks at an ideal circumstance, and you can adjust from there, if you want to take peculiarites into account.

brailsafe 4y ago

Honestly it seems absurd that innocent people can actually end up being robbed of their life and thrown in prison at all.

eru 4y ago
In aggregate, it's all a question of numbers. Alas. If you want 0% chance for innocent people to get convicted, you have to let many guilty people go.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  If you want literally 0% innocent people punished, you have to let all guilty people go, i.e. don't attempt justice.
  - eru 4y ago
    Well, we only have about 8 billion people on the planet. If you can drive down the rate of innocent people punished below, say, 1 in a trillion, that's probably close enough to zero in practice?
    - andrewflnr 4y ago
      But we won't get there, not even close, maybe not even in a panopticon dystopia. Anyway, your baseline should be total accusations (not prosecutions, you're already a fair bit into the pipeline at that point and imposing significant costs), which is significantly higher than total people.
GavinMcG 4y ago
Does it seem more absurd than the fact that innocent people can be killed by drunk drivers? Or that they can be dismembered in industrial accidents? It seems like you have an expectation that human systems could be perfect, and I’m curious where that comes from or what sustains it.
- 4y ago

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> I’m curious what your “Blackstone number” is. The Blackstone principle is that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent one to be imprisoned. The problem is that we are not achieving the blackstone number more than 1/10th of people in prison are innocent. That means the criminals responsible for those crimes are still out there

lelanthran 4y ago
> The problem is that we are not achieving the blackstone number more than 1/10th of people in prison are innocent. > That means the criminals responsible for those crimes are still out there That's more than a little concerning. Link?