Blackstone's Ratio: it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
Peter Todd's avatar Peter Todd
Due process costs money, a lot of money. El Salvador had to compromise on due process when they rounded up the gang members. When 1% of your population are murderous , violent, criminals who need to be locked up, there simply aren't enough judges or lawyers to give everyone full due process. The West faces the exact same problem with illegals. We've allowed in literally tens of millions of violent, unproductive, people who need to be forced out, and fast. There aren't enough judges or lawyers on the planet to give every one of those people trials. The compromise is some innocent people will be wronged. But overall it's the right compromise to make. Fighting violence and criminality at this scale is closer to fighting a war than it is a policing action. View quoted note →
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Replies (14)

GrumpyGardener's avatar
GrumpyGardener 9 months ago
Tell that to the victims that will never see justice while child rapists complain about their civil rights. The people of El Salvador are not living in fear of their government. It's fine to debate a course of action before the fact, but once it's done and the results shown positive, then any further debate on whether or should've been done is cowardice and envy. Bukele said it right. He didn't imprison thousands, he liberated millions.
You realize how _high_ that ratio is if taken literally: almost 10% of people found guilty will be innocent. In practice, the west probably does more like 1% or 0.1%; El Salvador has released ~6% of those arrested. Though that figure also includes plea deals, and cases where people argued for clemency. And they're probably incorrectly releasing people who are in fact gang members too. These kinds of numbers are easily justified when you take into account the fact that criminals repeatedly commit crimes. In the case of El Salvador, literally hundreds of lives per year are being saved, and an entire country is being transformed for the better.
chrstphr's avatar
chrstphr 9 months ago
only if you suffer from commie logic
CptKook's avatar
CptKook 9 months ago
At least now we know, beyond a reasonable doubt, Peter is part of a conspiracy to commit a crime
That's not what the ratio implies. It's basically the ethics behind the concept of requiring a prosecutor prove their charges "beyond a reasonable doubt" even though such a high bar means that more guilty people will be found not guilty. The goal being to convict as few innocent people as possible, rather than to convict as many guilty people as possible.
Peter is honestly a disgusting human being. I can't think of someone more vile, who's consistently been on the wrong side of every issue.
chrstphr's avatar
chrstphr 9 months ago
human sacrifice for the supposed 'greater good' comes in many forms
No, that's not the goal. If the goal was to convict as few innocent people as possible you wouldn't convict anyone at all. The actual goal is a tradeoff between harm to the innocent due to criminals, and harm to the innocent due to the courts. A particularly stark example of this is war: the harm to innocents is enormous, so standards of due process become very low. I'm in Kyiv at the moment, and I'm very glad that the Ukrainian military isn't waiting for court cases to finish before bombing Russians. If they did, it simply wouldn't be possible for me to (relatively) safely be here.
Thanks. Since this is forcing the monopoly of power for proper legitimation. Since when the power monopoly of the state is not legitimized, through proportionality and reducing harm, how would this power be just?
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Bitcoin 9 months ago
Due process costs money Undue process costs the freedom and constitution.