Views on the criminal justice system are interesting. Because, like, I am vehemently against the death penalty. Aside from just believing it’s cruel, I recognise that there is not one single piece of evidence showing it to be effective as a deterrent. It exists for the sole purpose of making people feel vindicated and, frankly, I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to kill someone.
Equally important, every system has the possibility of false-positives. The most perfectly built system in the world will still occasionally convict the wrong person. I am unwilling to take the risk of killing innocent people. I don’t think the supposed “benefits” are worth it. I’d be hard-pressed to find any benefits that were. Even if a system guaranteed conviction of ALL criminals, ensuring the lowest crime rates ever in history, but with the caveat that one innocent person every ten years would be mistakenly put to death, I could not bring myself to support it.
This baffles people. Like, completely throws them fully off their argument because they straight up cannot comprehend it. Even the rare person who manages to pull themselves back together then gets thrown by my second belief: I would rather run the risk of murderers, rapists, and child molesters walking free than risk even one innocent person being put to death.
I can justify this in our current, highly flawed system, but from a purely theoretical perspective…it’s honestly not justifiable. Looked at entirely from a numerical perspective, if every single violent criminal has exactly 1 victim before being convicted, even a dozen or more false convictions every year would result in an overall lower rate of harm than if there were never any false convictions but a dozen violent criminals went free every year. It’s entirely an emotional belief, I can’t stomach the idea of innocent people dying just to give others a greater sense of safety.
And, from what I can gather, this is really the key distinction between different views of the justice system. On the one hand, you have people like me who believe that the worst possible thing that could happen is to convict one innocent person. On the other, you have people who believe that the worst thing that could happen is to let one guilty person go free. In the flawed system we have now, I’d say my side has the better argument. In an ideal one, the other side wins the numbers battle. I’m not sure either is really about numbers, though. It’s an emotional decision based around fundamental beliefs that aren’t easily changed.