[T]here are probably so many guilty suspects (...) that the legal system does strictly worse than (...) just assuming that everyone is guilty.
Careful, there: the economic damage of not locking up a thief is much lower than the economic damage of incorrectly locking up a non-thief. “It’s better that X guilty people go free than that one innocent person goes to prison” is a good principle.
(Note that X is likely to have different values for weed users, thieves and serial killers.)
A thief at large but constrained by trying not to get caught doesn’t do as much net economic damage as destroying the economic, family and social life of an otherwise productive member of society.
For example, it would be almost impossible for a single shoplifter or casual stealer of office supplies to do anything like the economic damage of even removing themselves from the economy and putting them in prison. The only reason we still do it is to discourage behaviour that would seriously hurt the economy if it became the norm.
If you start locking people up with careless disregard for whether or not they are guilty, you get all the economic cost of the prison system but lose the clarity of the signal. The message becomes “hey, you’re probably going to prison at some point anyway. Might as well grab what you can while you are still free to enjoy it”.
The message becomes “hey, you’re probably going to prison at some point anyway. Might as well grab what you can while you are still free to enjoy it”.
I wouldn’t quite expect that, but certainly I agree that if there’s no expectation that punishment correlates better with committing a crime than with refraining from doing so, then punishment loses its deterrent function, which I gather is your real point here.
In addition to that, perception of unfairness in the justice system devalues the social contract between government and individuals. It places the individual in a competing rather than cooperating relationship with social institutions (such as law enforcement), so it’s not a mere lack of deterrence, it’s active encouragement to defect for individual gain at the expense of “the man”.
If you doubt it, ask anyone who lives in a neighbourhood where the cops have a record of incompetence or abuse of authority.
If you start locking people up with careless disregard for whether or not they are guilty, you get all the economic cost of the prison system but lose the clarity of the signal. The message becomes “hey, you’re probably going to prison at some point anyway. Might as well grab what you can while you are still free to enjoy it”.
I’ve heard (anecdotally, not with good evidence) that this is precisely the attitude that many poor urban young black men already have (actually with ‘go to prison’ changed to ‘go to prison or get killed’). Thus one has every reason to join a gang for the immediate services that it provides, future be damned.
Careful, there: the economic damage of not locking up a thief is much lower than the economic damage of incorrectly locking up a non-thief. “It’s better that X guilty people go free than that one innocent person goes to prison” is a good principle.
(Note that X is likely to have different values for weed users, thieves and serial killers.)
Worse epistemically, not instrumentally.
Could you expand on that?
I’ll have a go.
A thief at large but constrained by trying not to get caught doesn’t do as much net economic damage as destroying the economic, family and social life of an otherwise productive member of society.
For example, it would be almost impossible for a single shoplifter or casual stealer of office supplies to do anything like the economic damage of even removing themselves from the economy and putting them in prison. The only reason we still do it is to discourage behaviour that would seriously hurt the economy if it became the norm.
If you start locking people up with careless disregard for whether or not they are guilty, you get all the economic cost of the prison system but lose the clarity of the signal. The message becomes “hey, you’re probably going to prison at some point anyway. Might as well grab what you can while you are still free to enjoy it”.
I wouldn’t quite expect that, but certainly I agree that if there’s no expectation that punishment correlates better with committing a crime than with refraining from doing so, then punishment loses its deterrent function, which I gather is your real point here.
Part of my point.
In addition to that, perception of unfairness in the justice system devalues the social contract between government and individuals. It places the individual in a competing rather than cooperating relationship with social institutions (such as law enforcement), so it’s not a mere lack of deterrence, it’s active encouragement to defect for individual gain at the expense of “the man”.
If you doubt it, ask anyone who lives in a neighbourhood where the cops have a record of incompetence or abuse of authority.
I’ve heard (anecdotally, not with good evidence) that this is precisely the attitude that many poor urban young black men already have (actually with ‘go to prison’ changed to ‘go to prison or get killed’). Thus one has every reason to join a gang for the immediate services that it provides, future be damned.