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I am totally fine with innocent people occasionally being killed by justice system, yes. Fortunately, this is extremely rare. Justice system almost never snatches and imprisons totally innocent people for violent crimes. When people are released from prison or death row, it is almost always a case of prosecution screwing up some procedural stuff, or defender being deemed lousy years later, or activists pressuring critical witnesses to recant the testimony years after.
You’ll find it extremely hard to find a case where a person without prior criminal record being imprisoned for many decades or put on death row, who simply had absolutely nothing to do with the crime they have been accused of. On the other hand, for every person like this, I will find you ten people who should have been put to death for their crimes, but haven’t, and killed more people after being released.
The issue of what proportion of people who are innocently convicted is the issue at question, and I'd prefer some stats or research to guide my opinion. Also having 'something to do' with a crime is a low bar.
What about the unknown unknowns, where you don't hear about it but it happened. Looking to the past shows definitively that quite a number of innocent people were put to death essentially by corruption - you think that corruption has now been fixed aside from a few outliers, who you are 'fine with' them dying.
You may not really be arguing for it and more of an aside but utilitarianism is such an ugly morality isn't it, a moral system where you are fine with innocent people dying seems to lack something. In this case I think it's because it claims a morality but is often argued from a shit happens view, which is just fatalism. I may be weak-manning it though.
Yes, you missed the argument I make, though to be fair, I did not put it at the front and center:
It's not that I'm fine with "innocent people dying". What I said is that I am "fine with innocent people occasionally being killed by justice system", because the alternative is that we let people who are know are bad go out and commit more crimes. I am not arguing for knowingly killing innocent people for some sort of utilitarian purposes. What I am arguing is that, occasionally, mistakes will be made despite adequate efforts, and this should not prevent us from achieving greater good, which is protecting totally innocent people from becoming victims of crime. Think of it like, say, doctors making a treatment decision, following all the appropriate procedures and standard, but which nevertheless is incorrect in the particular patient's case, leading to his death. Should we prevent doctors from practicing medicine, just because some people will die from wrong, but reasonable decisions? No.
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Well if you struck a false positive 1/3 times I'd say the policy in question needs to be revisited.
But isn't it a primary defense of the Utilitarian to prefer that, precisely because the alternative is worse?
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