Ethics of The Surveillance Society

[Darth Wong]

Spend much time incarcerated or talking to people who have been?

No. Have you?

I am talking about career criminals. They are not deterred by law enforcement or punishment.

Selection bias. The people who were deterred by the threat of punishment are not in prison, because they never committed a crime.

Those who are truly deterred generally are the people who would not commit the crime in the first place.

You think that someone who is deterred from a crime by the possibility of punishment would, in the absence of any system of laws, behave exactly the same way? Once again, BULLSHIT.

Sure there is a set number of people in jail/prison who did not think they would be caught but a vast majority of those are first time offenders, in Canada is about 60% of people in prison are repreat offenders, I do have not have numbers available but I would expect that the number would be higher in the United States.

So which do you think is more common? That most of the repeat offenders really thought they would get away with everything they were doing or that most figured at some point they might get nailed for something and a year or two is the price to pay for their lifestyle.

Do you understand what a selection bias is?

[CaptainChewbacca]

In a society like Demolition Man, a 'career criminal' is almost an impossibility. With so much monitoring, you may not get caught the first time, but you WILL get caught, and your only choices then are to live underground or accept punishment. And, once punished, any time you try to break the law again you will have a few extra layers of surveilance to circumvent.