If there were 2,000,000 innocent and two or three guilty, retrying everyone would not be practical. - Edit 2
Before modification by Burr at 05/03/2010 09:27:46 PM
There is some percentage at which it becomes either more practical or more ethical (or both) to release everyone.
It is an important question because of its implications for determining what counts as having been rehabilitated. If you have 100,000 thieves with an average 5% probability of reoffending, then you know about 99,500 of them are rehabilitated and 500 of them aren't, but you can't necessarily identify which ones are which. Is it practical or ethical to continue the imprisonment of 99,500 rehabilitated prisoners just because you can't identify the 500 non-rehabilitated prisoners? If so, then what if the probability of reoffending were even less, so that there were only 1 non-rehabilitated prisoner among two million rehabilitated prisoners? At what percentage does the balance lie?
It is an important question because of its implications for determining what counts as having been rehabilitated. If you have 100,000 thieves with an average 5% probability of reoffending, then you know about 99,500 of them are rehabilitated and 500 of them aren't, but you can't necessarily identify which ones are which. Is it practical or ethical to continue the imprisonment of 99,500 rehabilitated prisoners just because you can't identify the 500 non-rehabilitated prisoners? If so, then what if the probability of reoffending were even less, so that there were only 1 non-rehabilitated prisoner among two million rehabilitated prisoners? At what percentage does the balance lie?