There is some percentage at which it becomes either more practical or more ethical (or both) to release everyone.
Not really. The only way your 'example' could ever come up is if the government never jailed any REAL criminals and let them run loose. Not even the worst governments have that poor a record. It will never be anything like that.
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?
Recidivism isn't innocence and this is still a waste of time argument. In actuality, recidivism isn't that hard to predict if you don't have a political agenda. Of course, no system is foolproof so you will invariably release some folks who will re-offend and keep some who never would.
However you will quite simply never reach some kind of extreme 'we have to let everyone go now'.
Besides, if you couldn't identify WHO was going to re-offend, how could you ever have the stats you describe above? The entire thing is nonsensical.
May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.
Old Egyptian Blessing
Old Egyptian Blessing
A level-of-comfort question regarding imprisonment of mixed innocent and guilty groups.
- 05/03/2010 02:39:53 AM
328 Views
as things stands, I don't think we'd ever reach a level where that'd be necessary oO
- 05/03/2010 03:24:07 AM
206 Views
100%
- 05/03/2010 03:47:31 AM
214 Views
Law of averages says there are certainly many innocent people in prison.
- 05/03/2010 04:09:41 AM
199 Views
Doesn't matter
- 05/03/2010 04:22:19 AM
189 Views
Clarification: X% of them definitely did not meet the standards of reasonable doubt.
- 05/03/2010 09:44:09 PM
172 Views
A relevant question; it seems to hinge on where one draws the line.
- 05/03/2010 04:19:34 AM
177 Views
I never really liked silly questions like this
- 05/03/2010 02:23:36 PM
206 Views
If there were 2,000,000 innocent and only 1 guilty, retrying everyone would not be practical.
- 05/03/2010 09:22:16 PM
179 Views
That's silly though
- 05/03/2010 09:39:53 PM
185 Views
Re: That's silly though
- 05/03/2010 11:11:50 PM
193 Views
Re: That's silly though
- 06/03/2010 12:11:06 AM
175 Views
what does the chance of reoffending have to do with guilt?
- 05/03/2010 10:02:21 PM
166 Views
Debt can be paid off, leaving the question of rehabilitation. *NM*
- 05/03/2010 10:32:38 PM
67 Views
I still don't see the realtionship to guilt
- 05/03/2010 10:59:28 PM
159 Views
Re: I still don't see the realtionship to guilt
- 05/03/2010 11:31:51 PM
171 Views
there is a reason they call it the justice system and not the rehabilation system
- 05/03/2010 11:33:55 PM
188 Views
It's called all kinds of things
- 06/03/2010 12:02:00 AM
186 Views
Re: It's called all kinds of things
- 06/03/2010 05:44:32 AM
176 Views
Well, we aren't going to agree at all (and I DID say it was opinion)
- 07/03/2010 09:00:37 AM
151 Views