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Notes -
The 'better ten guilty to free than one innocent be imprisoned' notion far precedes the richest cities in the world becoming uncivilised eyesores. If people in past times managed to have nice cities while still believing in this principle must we really do away with it if we want nice cities now?
There's a lot of nuance in 'belief'. You can believe in God and go to church every Sunday or you can believe in God and dedicate your whole life to holy war. I think in the past people had a certain level of implicit understanding that they just had to get rid of the problem people - hence they acted outside the law from time to time. There was a certain formal level on which the presumption of innocence worked as is formally described but there was an informal level too. The informal level is gone now, along with old-style community institutions in urban areas. So now we're just left with the formal level which never quite worked properly alone and certainly doesn't now it's been intensively defanged. Miranda rights for instance, amongst other innovations the US has introduced that benefit criminals. The US emphasis upon avoiding innocents being imprisoned has increased markedly, so fewer criminals are arrested. Or consider Sailer's conclusion that black exuberance has increased as a result of policing being scaled down following the racial reckoning of 2020, resulting in markedly higher crime and driving deaths.
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