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Most criminals offend multiple times. So if it’s better to let n guilty people go free than punish 1 innocent, how many times (x) would criminals need to reoffend for half of them to end up in prison? Been too long since I studied stats so I’m not sure what type of distribution to use, Poisson?

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That is absolutely true, but there is a reason for it. When society releases someone from prison they generally have so little support to get them back to being a productive member of society that they end up in situations where they reoffend.

Source: working with dozens of parolees.

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