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Comment by crucini | Hacker News Reader

That's not exactly what I meant by "skin in the game". What I'd like to offer to any would be reformer and rehabilitator:

1. You will pick an inmate who you think has maximum chance of reform. He must be someone facing 5 years or more imprisonment. He must consent to the experiment.

2. He will be released into your custody and live in your apartment/house.

3. You will receive a check for the estimated total savings you created by housing this inmate. Typically 6 figures.

4. You are responsible for his good behavior for his lifetime. If he commits any offense, you will pay the same penalty as the offender. In addition you will be financially liable for restitution if any, and the costs of imprisoning him.

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It's not particularly hard to find people serving 5+ years in US prisons who one could gamble are no more or less a threat to society that the average person.

Having said that, I could make you the same offer, except I choose for you a as-of-now non-offending police officer, corrections officer, doctor, fireman, military service man or other upstanding citizen, for whom who will take life-long responsibility. If they commit a crime your penalty will match theirs.

If that doesn't sound super appealing, it might have something to do with playing Russian roulette, rather than an argument against rehabilitation.

I think both your points are valid: the "Black Swan" nature of the criminal liability, and the baseline risk. How can we reformulate the scenario to avoid both? Also, I want to emphasize the reformer's level of belief in his reform, rather than ability to pick the perfect inmate.

How about these changes?

* No criminal liability for the reformer - it all gets converted to civil financial liability. So a murder might be $1M; simple theft might be triple the value of the stolen article.

* Reformer's initial payment includes an offset for "average criminality", using the above dollar conversions. So if the reformee exhibits average criminality in the remainder of his life, the reformer only pays back that offset.

* Inmate is picked by lottery, excluding those with strong signs of unreformability.

I'm afraid these mods make the example less intuitive.

You have divided society into two: the criminal and the innocent. I do not detect an iota of empathy for the criminal in your analysis.

Our imperfect justice system often allocates individuals into "criminal" and "innocent" buckets unfairly. Don't assume that you and those you love are immune.

Prisoners have rights. Prisoners should be treated humanely. Prisoners are human.

I don't quite see how your comment relates to mine.

I just offered you a scenario where you can exercise compassion and make a lot of money at the same time. But you would have to shoulder responsibility. Would you do it?

What if you were that prisoner?

An impossible scenario? You could never be a criminal, so measuring the outcome need not take into account the prisoner's stake?

If I were the inmate, I would most likely accept "early release" to a would-be reformer. I would happily sleep on the guy's floor to get out of even a minimum security prison.

I see a number of advantages for me. Not least, I have someone who really, really wants me to succeed on the outside.

But you haven't yet told me what you'd do, either as inmate or prospective reformer.

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