
Better That 10 Innocent Men Be Murdered - whack
https://outlookzen.com/2019/03/23/better-that-10-innocent-men-be-murdered/
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monkeydreams
The assertion that criminals commit crimes because they do not think they will
be caught is thin on evidence. The assertion that they commit crimes because
they think they can break the prosecution's case is skipping through the
purple tulip fields of far-off fantasy. Most aren't thinking that far ahead.

Perhaps not treating crime as a binary solution of punish OR release, but
spending those tax dollars on prevention in the unsexy form of treatment,
intervention, etc, might be a better result. You know, like those countries
that don't have close to 3% of their adult population incarcerated.

~~~
Gibbon1
I don't spend much time around criminals. But limited experience says most
people that commit serious crimes seem to have intrinsic executive decision
making failures or poor impulse control.

I remember two things. One was a retrospective of California's death row
inmates who's sentences were commuted to life in prison when the death penalty
was overturned. Most of them (famously not Manson) were eventually released
and the majority of them lives quiet lives after being released. Interviews
with them painted pictures of what I described above.

And another was a comment by a prison warden when asked what he wished the
public knew about prisons. He said 'I wish people realized that all these men
are going to be released eventually'

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microwavecamera
It's all fun and games until you're the one in prison and sometimes executed
for a crime you didn't commit. Why do I doubt the author would just accept
their fate for the greater good of society if it was them wrongly convicted
and imprisoned for a crime they did not commit?

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diablerouge
I think the author is overestimating the deterrence factor of the justice
system. American prisons have a much lower quality of life for their
inhabitants than many other countries, and yet we also have much higher crime
rates than those countries with less horrible prisons.

I think the author is also overestimating the number of calculating criminals
who evaluate carefully how likely they are to end up in prison. Crime is often
just an emotional response, rather than a pre-meditated action.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Or maybe we just over-prosecute our public compared to the rest of the world.

~~~
rayiner
Maybe, maybe not. One thing we have good data for going back a long time is
homicide data. US homicides were 5-10x higher than the UK for the entire 20th
century. The last time homicide rates in England was as high as the US is
today was the 17th century. (Most of the rest of Western Europe was down to
current US levels by the 18th century.)

Maybe we’re just a much more violent and criminal country.

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glangdale
It's a weird trope on HN here that you see daft "I had a thought about this
today" blog posts hit the front page. In these article, someone discusses a
few other blog posts and some late night discussions over beers and discovers
a glaring error in Human Thinking:

"in all these discussions pitting innocent convicts against guilty criminals
who go free, one factor rarely ever comes up"

If only someone would create a couple of fields entirely devoted to the study
of this sort of thing, and do quantitative research. They could call these
fields "criminology" and "penology", and perhaps write research papers
attempting to analyze the rates these events happen.

Sarcasm aside, I find it highly unlikely that the additional protection
against judicial and police errors that the whole ("better 10 guilty men..")
stuff is about factors remotely into the prospect of your average kidnapper,
rapist, murderer or bank robber. If they figure they are going to get away
with it I would imagine that they are picturing "not getting arrested at all",
not "being freed on a technicality because Dirty Harry didn't Miranda-ize
them".

Also, a world where we don't have this particular trope is a world where
police and prosecutors get sloppier and sloppier. In this world, a lot of
other people are _also_ murdered/raped/kidnapped/whatever because when we find
a convenient patsy for a crime and put them away, the actual criminal walks
free.

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100100010001
This is straight up ridiculous! Most people believe they are special so by
allowing one criminal to go free (since you convicted the wrong one) others
will be emboldened!

~~~
Pinckney
Why is it that we only convict a single person of a crime?

If we accept, for the sake of argument, that we should be willing to send
innocent people to prison as a deterrent, and we have three people who might
have committed a given crime (with probability p=.3, .3, and .4, respectively,
say), then perhaps we should send all three of them to prison as a deterrent?

~~~
100100010001
Great freaking point!!! That makes a lot more sense as a deterrent! Hell,
throw a whole family in jail for the actions of a single entity. Then a
person’s closest allies might give them up if it means freedom.

