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Comment by khazhoux | Hacker News Reader

It’s worth a debate, even though in American culture we hold this idea as beyond any consideration.

Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer". That's a noble thought, but those 100 criminals can cause suffering of 100s of others. So his assessment isn't necessarily accurate. Every innocent father jailed in El Salvador might save 10 children from losing their own father.

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You can use a proper system to do that though to minimise the risk of jailing innocent people. It's all easy talking until you get locked up in an animal case without recourse until you die. Ask those innocent ones how they like taking one for the team.

Note that Franklin was the product of a society that had been executing felons for hundreds of years. The homicide rate in both England and New England in the early 1700s was around 2 per 100,000, lower than any western hemisphere country today.

Canada's is less than 2 per 100k

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=351000...

I also have to doubt the accuracy of such data collected in the 1700s.

Where did you get that figure from?

There are many sources online that agree, so I won’t bother to link them, that the population of New England was ~100k in 1700 and ~300k in 1750.

The claim that that actual rate of murder in all of New England was 2-6 per year is not believable.

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZomfSetCVGTWj1bS9

https://www.cold-takes.com/unraveling-the-evidence-about-vio...

If the population grew from 100k in 1700 to 300k in 1750, and if the homicide rate was right around 2 per 100k, then that would mean that the total number of homicides in New England, over the 50 years span was less than 300.

Do you really believe that fewer than 300 murders occurred during this time?

In my country homicide rate per 100k is less than 1. Why is 2 unbelievable? Or do I understand something wrong?

He's making a claim about 1700s America. Not modern day countries.

It was a violent time.

Just one 'dataset': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_massacres_in_No...

300 murders per year.

The FBI maintains murder statistics for most policing jurisdictions in the US. Many of them are under 2 per 100,000 per year: Sunnyvale, CA; Hercules, CA; Novato, CA, Brookline, MA; the Twin Cities. The rate in Beverly, MA, is 0.946.

Japan's rate is 0.4.

No, 300 murders total.

The population reached ~300k in 1750. A murder rate of 2 per 100k times 300k people equals 6 murders. Multiply that by 50 years to get 300 murders.

OK. Thanks for the correction. I aspire to make sure I understand a thread before I add to it, but I fell short of my aspiration this time.

This doesn't affect my 2nd and 3rd paragraphs though.

2 per 100,000 is not lower than any western hemisphere country. Where did you get this from?

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