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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   37122 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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This is my fundamental issue with progressive/liberal theories of crime: they are utterly allergic to thinking probabilistically.

In this particular case, is it not the opposite? Individuals generally do indeed age out of violent crime, so treating all third time offenders as likely to be a threat, regardless of their current crime, does not seem to me to be thinking probablistically at all. At the very least, it is not a matter of not thinking probabilistically, but rather where to draw re what level of probability is sufficient.

you can accurately and reliably predict people’s future behavior based on their past behavior.

Again, how accurately? Esp without taking into account other predictors of future behavior, such as age, the precise nature of the previous and current crime, etc?

if it’s some knock-down argument against dealing with very obviously dangerous and impossible-to-live-around individuals

Again, the point is that the original iteration of the law gave 25-life sentences to people who were not very obviously dangerous.

I understand that your personal opinion is to err on the side of public safety versus erring on the side of individual liberty. But can you really not understand why some people might disagree and weigh those interests differently?

Do you have any evidence that a significant portion of the people being imprisoned as a result of three-strikes laws had committed only three totally innocuous offenses? (Keep in mind that I do not consider drug possession an innocuous offense.) I’m not asking as a gotcha: I’m open to the possibility that this was happening more often than I assume.

Please note that I didn't say they were innocuous.

I don't know the numbers, but why is that relevant? Surely the numbers were higher under the original version than in the amended version. And, after all, we are not discussing the merits of the law, but rather whether some might weigh the competing interests differently than you do. That is the explanation for the conundrum that you put forth in your original post.

Edit: I just found this data

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