If we pass a law that requires the government to randomly shoot or imprison one out of every ten people once a year, the amount of crime will go down by about 10% every year.  Wouldn’t that be great??!!!

I had to reword this once already because my wife pointed out that “killing or imprisoning people is a crime, so the statement simply isn’t true.” Her objection misses the point, but i didn’t know how to get around it, and she won’t tolerate me floundering.  So I’ve turned to you, my friends.  Now, speak up!

If we pass a law that requires the government to randomly shoot or imprison one out of every ten people once a year, the amount of crime will go down by about 10% every year.  Wouldn’t that be great??!!!

I had to reword this once already because my wife pointed out that “killing or imprisoning people is a crime, so the statement simply isn’t true.” Her objection misses the point, but i didn’t know how to get around it, and she won’t tolerate me floundering.  So I’ve turned to you, my friends.  Now, speak up!

I’m afraid it gets even worse.  First, you’d better take the 0.91% US population growth index off.  That leaves 9.09%.  Then you have to come up with some kind of figures to account for crimes committed by unknown illegal immigrants.  This of course would have to be a wild guess, because if you could count these people, they wouldn’t be unknown.  Including theft, identity theft and employment crimes, as well as the attraction of illegal income from drugs, let’s just wildly guess 0.05%. 

Well, guess what.  Unemployment drops by 10%.  So .0047% more jobs are available for people who want them.  Say take-up is 30%.  Now we…

THROW THE WHOLE THING AWAY!

There are different causes to crime.

One is simple disobedience.  This is the kind of crime that supplies markets with vices.  It will expand to fill any deficit, thereby destroying any benefit from any “well-meaning” decimations.

Two is poverty.  Killing 10% of the population will not effectively reduce unemployment; it will not raise the standard of living.  What it WILL do is reduce the GNP.  Economy bad = poverty worse.

Three is violence/rebellion/psychiatric disorder.  These are the only crimes that would be reduced by killing 10%. 

Four is a crime of opportunity.  Will killing 10% of the population reduce opportunity to prey on other human beings?  Hardly.

Therefore, there would be nowhere near a 10% reduction in crime, because only a fraction of crime is known, a percentage of that is reported and a minority of that is violent.

I must hold my tongue.  I was hoping for a simpler explanation.  For example, maybe it would illustrate the principle that no good deed goes unpunished...?  No, but something similarly simple.

Sorry, my fault, I got so caught up in exploring the concept that I forgot the purpose of the post.

Coincidentally, you mentioned a Pyrrhic victory recently, and this is the sort of thing that would qualify for law enforcement.
It also suggests that violence is a solution to the problem.

There’s also a crime displacement theory http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/learningzone/displacement_theory.htm which suggests that crime isn’t destroyed or prevented, merely displaced, a law of thermodynamics for felons.

Let’s see if I can come up with anything useful this time…

You can’t remove a tumor without cutting out some healthy tissue, but sooner or later you wind up killing the patient?

“Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.” ~ Freda Adler
Good point and it brings me to what my brain keeps getting mired in.  Crime is a more arbitrary classification than dividing people by eye color (the famous social discrimination experiment).  Therefore this is equivalent to “If we blind everyone with eyes, we’re sure to get all the brown-eyed people.”

I just don’t see a principle other than throwing away the whole apple because there’s a worm in it.  Except we’re talking something closer to a moldy piece of bread and tearing off more and more of it until there’s nothing left.

Why can’t I do anything simple?

Don’t throw away the whole apple just because there’s a worm in it - that’s a good one.

I was counting on the emotional rejection of the idea to bring more rationality out in the open.  It doesn’t have to be crime.  I’m looking for something which is shown equally well if the 10% attrition was done for the purpose of reducing disease, suffering, or even just sunburns.

That crime cannot be destroyed or prevented seems a silly idea to me.  Maybe if we use the strict legal definition of “crime” then it would work.  I’d much rather stick with common conceptualization of crime because legislators still can’t do their job well enough to get enough willing customers to keep their “business” alive.  But as far as getting people to behave better toward each other without just displacing the bad behavior, I think that must happen all the time.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that it is the silliness of the idea that demonstrates the principle, not the fact that it is true.  I suppose I presented it that way because I think people side with the side that seems to be better asserted, rather than the side which is actually better.  The plan I presented is a bad plan, and we all know that, but is there a simple way to explain why it’s bad?

Today I heard on NPR that some group is lamenting the lack of air quality control, saying that over the last decade (I think it was a decade), 10 to 12 thousand people lost their lives because of the poor quality of air in America, which was blamed on a lax EPA.  So, the same principle discussed above applies in answer to the following question:

Why not pass a law that requires every device that produces exhaust to emit exhaust that is cleaner than the atmosphere into which it exhausts?  This is not impossible, it simply requires that such devices (cars, factories, etc.) be fitted with air-cleaning technology.  Why don’t we have such a law?

Concerning the concept of reducing the crime rate by reducing the population - Here’s the logical flaw that you might be able to somehow work with - define crime rate.  If you define it as simply the number of crimes committed in the country, then yes, the twisted idea works.  However, if you define it in terms of, say, murders per 1000 population, which is more typical and more indictive of the effect of crime on your life and well-being, then you would have no effect - or perhaps, paradoxically, the opposite of the desired effect, since random losses of children, friends, etc. would tend to demoralize the population, increase depression and perhaps increase the percentage of criminals in the remaining population.  If a robot or computer was doing the ‘culling’, based on the simpler logic, it could make a good little story, maybe, as the machine gets wise to it’s errors after watching society crumble in response to its efforts.

Neill

I’m glad you pointed that out because it’s an excellent point often lost of most politicians.

I was aiming for the principle that sometimes, the cost of implementation far outweighs the benefit it produces.  The cost of much of what governments do outweighs the benefits, but since that cost, like crime, is spread across all citizens, it is difficult to sense its magnitude.  The benefits, however, are spread over a smaller chunk of the citizenry, so they are more obvious and make for good campaign fodder.

Along those lines - I’ve wondered occasionally what the true cost is of having so many people imprisoned in the U.S. for ‘victimless’ drug related crimes.  True, there are streets that are safer to walk down because a drug dealer is behind bars, and a ‘get tough on drugs’ policy is sure to boost a politician’s place in the poles.  But what does it really cost to society to turn that many people into prisoners, and, eventually, ex-cons?  The needless loss of a productive future, reduced tax revenues and increased social services costs because no one want to hire ex-cons - it seems to me that these costs would be higher than the obvious ones of building and staffing prisons.

And perhaps there’s a good sci-fi story with a moral there, as well.  A utopian society, safe because of the harsh and unforgiving nature of its law enforcement, that finally falls becuase it can’t afford the cost of losing such a significant portion of its population to prisons.  The hero exposes the massive and ugly infrastructure dedicated to imprisonment and how the bad guy politician’s campaign ploy of ‘cleaning up’ a ‘low class’ area provides the final straw that ruptures the system… I don’t know, have to think on it.

Excellent!

I have to point out that exposure isn’t necessary though.  Maintaining the prisons and the food supply and dealing with the psychological fallout from all the people who work at the prison system would eventually be more work than the free members of the society could handle.  The tax base would dry up as people chose to leave their utopia in search of a system that taxed them less.  In real life, I’m not sure there would be the kind of critical junctures that make for a good story.  But perhaps in a story, there will be a way around that problem without sacrificing too much realism.  Atlas Shrugged was a damn good attempt.

Ah, but perhaps the critical juncture comes from within the prison, in a riot or uprising - Such a substantial number of people could turn an uprising into a sort of civil war, taking control of the prison system and declaring themselves a city-state, at war with the society above (for some reason, I visualize the prisons as subterranean, or the city elevated).  Now the Utopian society is forced to fight a group that they deliberately criminalized, a group that is at heart righteously infuriated by their mistreatment and unjust imprisonment, flavored with an exceptionally high percentage of truly criminal minds.  The uprising is lead by our hero, recently imprisoned as part of a sweep, who wrestles with justifying using criminals and criminal actions to wage this righteous war.  I’m sure you could mix a love story in there somewhere, too.  I’m just not sure how it ends…

Dave Scotese - 21 September 2006 05:58 PM

If we pass a law that requires the government to randomly shoot or imprison one out of every ten people once a year, the amount of crime will go down by about 10% every year.  Wouldn’t that be great??!!!

I had to reword this once already because my wife pointed out that “killing or imprisoning people is a crime, so the statement simply isn’t true.” Her objection misses the point, but i didn’t know how to get around it, and she won’t tolerate me floundering.  So I’ve turned to you, my friends.  Now, speak up!

Hmph well, if you’re randomly shooting and imprisoning one out of ten people once a year, wouldn’t you be likely to randomly shoot and imprison quite a few innocent people?  I mean, maybe I know I’m easily confused and may be missing the point, but the whole conversation so far seems awfully utilitarian to me.  Even supposing that the amount of crime would go down, the people who’d been shot and imprisoned would have been randomly shot and imprisoned, and that DOESN’T seem great. 

I must be missing the point.  I like your wife.

No, no, it’s not a crime if the GOVERNMENT does it - hasn’t the current administration taught you anything?

(Oh - sorry - couldn’t resist...)

[quote author=’julianyway’]I mean, maybe I know I’m easily confused and may be missing the point, but the whole conversation so far seems awfully utilitarian to me.

Utilitarian… has never seemed like something bad to me.  Here’s what I think is going on:  Most people are not intelligent enough to consider ALL the effects of their behavior, which is the foundation of utilitarianism.  As a result, many utilitarians ignore the ill effects of making people upset, demotivating people, etc., and so their “utilitarian” conclusions are nearly as utilitarian as they could be.  So yes, I think you’re right that the idea is utilitarian in nature, but that’s like saying “dividing 1000 things up into ten boxes puts about ten things in each box.” is mathematical.  Yes, it’s mathematical, but it’s wrong too.  The question is, what is wrong with it?

[quote author=’Neill’]a group that is at heart righteously infuriated by their mistreatment and unjust imprisonment, flavored with an exceptionally high percentage of truly criminal minds.  The uprising is lead by our hero, recently imprisoned as part of a sweep, who wrestles with justifying using criminals and criminal actions to wage this righteous war.

I like it.  I’d root for less of a war and more of a gradual “imprisonment” of everyone smart enough to get out of the utopia and into the prison system, which would grow its own economy and unofficial justice system (they always do).  So the critical juncture could be when the courts decide that sending people to prison is no longer a punishment because the prison population takes care of itself too well - better than the free people, in fact. So the government starts using death and torture instead of imprisonment, and the prison is the only safe place during the mayhem that ensues.

Dang, I didn’t see this reply until now, and now you’ve gone and done asked me a mathematical question.
If I wanted to write things in mathematical symbols, I’d be at, like, mathmocracy.com., wouldn’t I??

Ah well, I’ll (try to) think about it.  (Moan)

I may be a bit late to this particular discussion, but if the aim is to find a well-known common phrase to describe the sort of idea inherent in the “annual decimation”, one that springs to mind is “killing the patient to cure the disease”. Along similar lines, there’s the use of a guillotine as a headache cure; also there was Procrustes’ solution for the problem of guests who were too tall for his bed - amputation of the excess length. If there was a single decimation because crime rates were deemed to be 10% too high, that would definitely qualify as a Procrustean solution.

Your wife certainly did miss the point. As long as the chosen solution involves shooting and not imprisonment, there will be an initial spike in the killing rate; but thereafter there will be an approximately 10% annual reduction in the crime rate, even if the judicial killings are counted as crimes.

The imprisonment solution doesn’t work because crimes can still take place in prison; but if prison crimes aren’t counted in the official crime statistics, there’s an easy way to get the crime statistics down significantly. Just go to every jail in the country, and move all the signs at the entrance doors and gates, transferring those on the outside to the inside and vice-versa. Thus, the sign showing the name of the prison will be on the inside, and the one saying “exit - please don’t pass through this door if you aren’t supposed to” will be on the outside. That way we all become inmates, except for the select few who were formerly inmates.