Which is more important: protecting the innocent or punishing the guilty?

[Sage_Rat]

@jsgoddess

We don’t achieve anything perfectly.

You achieve less perfection if you ignore half of everything you need to do.

How are they inextricably linked?

For every person, we have four mechanical bodyguards who insure that no one can touch them.

So yes, they’re protected. But this is way overkill. How do you know who will misbehave or when?

How do you verify that the people making your water heater did a good job and that it’s not going to explode. Even with your four mechanical guards, there’s no reason to trust that you or anyone isn’t planning or causing a boobytrap that will explode in your basement one night.

If there’s no repercussion for wrong-doing, there just plain off isn’t any guard against a slew of potential threats, before even mentioning that you have to live your entire life distrusting every single human contact.

So how do you protect, without punishing?

[jali]

This is a detour, and I hope this doesn’t annoy anyone - when reading this thread this case came to mind. (“punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty” is the comment that brought this on)

There’s a death row case here in Georgia where 7 of 9 witnesses have recanted their testimony naming the prisoner as the murderer and there’s been a cry for a stay of execution based this and on the lack of any physical evidence from the crime.http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080923/pl_afp/usjusticeexecution

The local news stations have interviewed the victim’s family members and they want the execution to proceed. It seems that a symbolic death is important - I fear they may get what they want - and that the actual murderer will still be free.

Most coworkers I’ve asked feel he’s guilty since he’s been convicted - they have complete confidence in our justice system.

[wonky]

@Sage_Rat

You achieve less perfection if you ignore half of everything you need to do.

No one is talking, at all, about ignoring half of anything. The question is where the bias is going to lie. There will be a bias, though it won’t necessarily be a systemic one.

[Sage_Rat]

@jsgoddess

No one is talking, at all, about ignoring half of anything. The question is where the bias is going to lie. There will be a bias, though it won’t necessarily be a systemic one.

Well ultimately the bias will be on punishment, because the only alternative is removing anyone possibly risky. So we would either need to euthanize or to deport everyone we were worried about. That’s not likely to happen.

Of course most people would call that punishment, though it really isn’t in this case. Punishment implies rehabilitation.

[Der_Trihs]

@Sage_Rat

Of course most people would call that punishment, though it really isn’t in this case. Punishment implies rehabilitation.

Not really. There’s also punishment for revenge, or to intimidate others. To use the obvious example, executions are a punishment, but they certainly aren’t going to rehabilitate the guys you killed.

[Sage_Rat]

@Der_Trihs

executions are a punishment, but they certainly aren’t going to rehabilitate the guys you killed.

Which why they aren’t really a punishment. You aren’t “punished” if you aren’t there to regret it.

[Der_Trihs]

@Sage_Rat

Which why they aren’t really a punishment. You aren’t “punished” if you aren’t there to regret it.

You’ll probably dislike the idea of being executed beforehand. And defining executions as not a punishment seems to distort the meaning of the word. “We aren’t going to punish you, just kill you” strikes me as something a Bond villain would say.

[erislover]

@jsgoddess

The way rule-systems come about is usually through the tension between the outcome and the desired outcome. Just as if you’re designing a game thread on the Dope, you want to ensure that it’s easy enough that people want to play, while hard enough that there’s a bit of challenge to make it fun. You propose the game and find that it’s too much one or too much the other, and then you make changes.

I agree, but it gets a little hairy. It is plain to say, for instance, that we never set a guilty man free. This is just what corresponds to “guilt” within our system. But plainly, we feel, at a different level, that the person is responsible for an act and was not punished for it. They are ‘guilty’ in an everyday sense. If we use a different word, the choice we’re making is a bit more plain, “Better than ten culpable people go free than one innocent person be found guilty.” While this makes the distinction more plain, it also makes more plain just how impossible our task is: how, exactly, would we determine how many culpable individuals were found not-guilty so that no innocent person was found guilty? Simply put, this cannot be done. (If you think it can, please return to the tautology that we never let a guilty man free in our system.)

So, the individual rules are being put in for a reason that isn’t necessarily in line with the overarching reason for the game/society. “This needs to change so we can get to there even if it conflicts with our overarching theme.” The desired ends create the means?

But that was my original point: criminality is the exception, not the rule. Would you agree to any implicit or explicit social contract where this was not the case?

[Bryan_Ekers]

Can’t we do both, punish the innocent and free the guilty?

[wonky]

@erislover

But that was my original point: criminality is the exception, not the rule. Would you agree to any implicit or explicit social contract where this was not the case?

I think there are many instances where it isn’t the case, though perhaps not from any social contract in its entirety.

I think most of us assume that most of us speed, for example. I think most of us assume that if we left a 20 dollar bill under our windshield wiper blade that someone would steal it. And if it were stolen, who would offer sympathy? No, we’d be told we should have known better.

In the context of the things I mentioned in the OP, I think many pro-death penalty people assume that no one who is convicted is innocent or that even if they are they are guilty of SOMETHING. I’ve seen that particular charming canard offered as defense for the death penalty.

Regarding terrorism, I think again that we are operating under the presumption of guilt, not innocence. You have to prove you’re innocent to get on a plane.