Thought experiment: Imagine that instead of that, we identified people likely to become criminals, using all that new fangled crime prediction AI that police forces are so excited about. Then just given them say half that amount as UBI, so $50,000/year and say you can have this as long as you don't do crime. Peoples lives improve, less crime, save money.
However
> we identified people likely to become criminals
This tricky, because people will think it is GOOD to marked by the algorithm; key free money! Then these algorithm will likely be used in court as evidence that a person likely commit a crime. Sadly, this is already happening today [2]
> you can have this as long as you don't do crime.
So if you are convicted of a crime, in addition to all the stuff convictions currently do to prevent you from getting a job and beating any chance to better yourself besides crime, you also loose that UBI making you even MORE desperate than you were before. All you have done is increase the longer term punishment of prision.
Not to mention it encourages first time convictions so the city can save money. There are many vindictive judges, who will say something like "You don't deserve the money the goverment is giving you."
[1] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-co...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/secret-algorith...
If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you.
Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect.
But more seriously, even if the AI was super smart, it's still limited on it's inputs. The factors you listed are how the current crime AIs determine likely hood the person committed the crime.
This AI is very smart and people trust it. If it says you committed the crime then you must have done it!
> If you are convicted of a crime even if you had this free money, then likely you are doing crime for fun and not out of necessity, so jail is the best place for you.
> Cities may actually decline to convict because jailing people is more expensive, so maybe this would be a counter-effect.
These are exactly my points. Being marked by the AI gives you money, but people won't trust you.
If you're on trail it's this big weight people want to hate you. The jury isn't likely getting the money, why should this person on trail get it.
The judge has an incentive to incarcerate.
Even as a thought experiment, this idea can not stand.
Also, I think you might be missing how impulsive criminals can be... murder is often a crime of passion.
But I agree with the thrust of the idea - investing that money in reducing factors that would cause people to turn to crime is a good idea. I assume it's already being done but maybe not as effectively as we would hope?
This won't work because newfangled AI is very smart.
My opinion is that the money should be spent on labor camps, specifically towards guaranteeing good nutrition, secure housing, access to medicine, with oversight on a government level, but everyone is forced to work. You would solve for things like inner prison violence/drug trade, since people will be physically and mentally exhausted, and best of all, everyone finishing their sentences will have had a good number of years of blue collar work. If some dude spent 5 years every day welding up structures for solar panels, I guarantee you companies are gonna want to interview him to make use of his skills.
This heavily incentivizes people to commit crimes and drop out of school.
So you are forced to only use metrics that are outside their control such as parent's previous income level. And you'll get nowhere near a 50% false positive rate using only these metrics.
Not to mention all of the frustration felt by their neighbor who is working 40 hours a week and taking home $25,000 a year, while they sit at home playing xbox for 50k a year.
And they wouldn't be mad that inmates are getting $100k/yr in court mandated housing services sitting in a cell doing nothing because for some insane reason we decided that it's a good use of our money and their time? Does it suddenly make it okay as long as they're suffering while they do it?
Yes. What a stupid question, of course people would rather pay money to punish criminals than to pay that money to have them play videogames.
You might argue that people shouldn't think that way, but not only do all apes have a sense of fairness, almost all other semi intelligent creatures do too.
Asking people to go go against a built-in drive is like asking teenagers to practice abstinence.
If we didn't have prisons would we punish criminals in a different way or just let criminal commit as many crimes as they'd like? I guess taking a hand or a foot is cheaper than a prison but most people think prison is more human.
> would we punish criminals in a different way
Yes, this is implied. The most popular alternative is "house arrest" (i.e "adult grounding") where you're monitored but allowed to go to work, school, and essential places like the doctor, grocery store, etc.. If you need more we can keep stacking on things like garnished wages, daily detention, mandatory community service.
I think that's way more human. The number of people that, for the safety of others, need to be separated from society I think it's vanishingly small, and smaller than that the number who are such a danger that they require confinement in cells.
This kind of thinking makes no sense in a world where prison sentences are finite. If you think being arrested for a “violent” offense means you are such a danger to others you have to be physically separated from society then you might as well make all prison sentences for life.
“But people can reform” — Great then let them out the moment that happens. Get rid of minimum sentencing.
The thing I care about when it comes to “violent” offenses isn’t what they did but why. If I had an oracle that could see into their soul and know with certainty they would never reoffend I wouldn’t even bother locking them up at all. And if their offense was situational I want to see that corrected first. For $100k/yr we can be a lot more creative about setting people up for success. That kind of money is at the level of send them off to college or trade school, full time caretaker, the very best psych care, rehab, full-on relocation, or pulling them entirely out of poverty.
Prison being the place where people with issues society has decided we don’t want to deal with is heartbreaking. If we have any other option we should take it.
Business man built a giant company and is about to get divorced. Wife is about to get half of everything because he got married before he had any success. He likes her to keep it.
Highly situational murder, zero risk to reoffend. You're saying because he had a zero recidivism rate we shouldn't jail him?
- Instead of losing half his money he now loses 75% of it.
- Instead of alimony 40% of his earnings and appreciation of assets are garnished.
All the money gets split between the wife’s family and a charity that financially supports the victims of violent crime.
- He loses all stake in the company he built and can’t hold any position in the company or a position the company contracts with. All his shares get returned to the company itself like a buyback (that he doesn’t benefit from).
- He is not allowed to remarry.
- He will get tattooed with a symbol people will recognize as a domestic abuser on his pelvis. It won’t show in normal circumstances but any intimate partner will know and he’ll have to explain it for the rest of his life.
If that’s not punishment enough for you then come up with your own scheme. Just so long as it’s not torture and he can continue living a semi-normal life among the rest of society since he’s not actually a danger to anyone.
Bet our hypothetical homeboy will regret his murder a million times more than sitting in a luxury prison for rich people while his stocks appreciate.
Also we don't produce enough goods in the economy to make a 50k UBI possible.
I assumed that UBI meant Universal Basic Income; so I supposed that everybody got it. A UBI that only some people get is just some other benefit.
Anyway, thanks; there were some remarks upthread about UBI that I didn't understand. Now I do.
Does it? I don't know that we can say it will, for sure. You're just assuming people are lazy, probably. Maybe it will discourage people from doing bullshit jobs and working on shitty advertising crapola, and instead we will have another human renaissance period of amazing things. Everyone I know, even those who aren't college educated and on the track to success since birth, would absolutely do amazing things for their communities with their time if they weren't doing stupid bullshit to enrich others.
Another thing worth pointing out is this gives money to the young and the male more than anyone else.
Actually, do we even need the AI? We could give every African American male between the ages of 14 and 30 who lives in a crime ridden area, has been arrested, has an absentee father and has at least one friend in prison the money...
I'm not sure the more general approach wouldn't work, but "funnel a ton of money into poor crime ridden area" sounds obvious enough as a solution that its probably been tried. Anyone know what the results were?
I have vague recollections that a lot of gang crime is more about subculture incentives rather than money directly.
Apologies for disjointed thoughts.