> "That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."
I wonder if that maxim is still generally approved. It seems like some authoritarians would prefer that 100 innocents would suffer than one guilty person should escape.
I suppose it depends how you define "innocent" and "suffer". Under modern law, everyone is guilty of something. And while we might not require suffering in prison, a little suffering of expensive legal fees, invasions of privacy of your digital data/at the border/in the airport, or searches and seizures of property by police in your car are commonplace.
I think, even in places that believed the maxim, 9/11 changed the calculation. Now the question is: How many innocent people should be jailed in order that 3000 innocent people not be killed?
Mind you, I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that this is how the authorities are thinking.
That maxim seems to ignore the possibility that those 100 free guilty people could do more damage to that one innocent person than a prison sentence can.
>Under modern law, everyone is guilty of something.
This is a really dangerous (and unfortunately oft-repeated) mindset that basically boils down to advocating the position of "current laws are so complex that if we give law enforcement better tools [to combat law breaking], we'd implicate ourselves also".
This ignores two huge problems:
1. No, not everyone is guilty of something. I doubt a majority are guilty of anything, and I'd be surprised to hear even like 10-15% are guilty of anything.
2. The people that _are_ guilty of some minor infraction (e.g. jaywalking, speeding, or pick your own obscure state law) are still guilty of much less than the major crimes these kinds of systems are targeted at (terrorism, violent crime, robbery, etc). Comparing the two is like saying "we shouldn't put cameras at bank entrances because what if it catches someone jaywalking outside?"
On a more hard-line note, the people that are guilty of even the smallest things are still guilty of those things. People speed because they think they won't get caught, but it's still against the law. People jaywalk because they think they'll be safe crossing the street, but it's still illegal. People litter because they think it's not a big deal, but it's still illegal. Who gets to decide what people should get away with? Why would anyone be able to get away with breaking any law? (To wit, the obvious response is that some laws are obscure and outdated and that people aren't even aware of them, but feel free to refer back to #2 above until we've fixed those laws. Perhaps actually enforcing them is the nudge we need to push lawmakers into saying, "You know those crazy laws that are still in the books that we've ignored for a hundred years? Yeah, maybe we should get rid of those.")
>That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer
This maxim encourages a false dichotomy that is embraced by the "we're all guilty of something" mindset, and forgets that "suffering" is a spectrum.
The people who are guilty of gotcha laws _aren't_ innocent, and _should_ suffer proportionately to the law they broke (see: fines, warnings, etc that you'd expect for silly laws that people think shouldn't be enforced, yet are still laws). I'd much rather see that "innocent" person get their $50 fine so 100 people guilty of violent crime don't escape.
"It is better 100 guilty [murderers] should escape than that one innocent [jaywalker] should suffer." Sounds silly, doesn't it?
Totalitarianism and police states don't start by jailing the jaywalkers, but they do start by implementing the laws disproportionately against marginalized communities within the general population. This is generally overlooked by the remainder because they think, "Well, it's not affecting me."
The problem with this line of thinking, "they broke the law, they should be punished whatever it was" is that laws and morality, while sometimes intended to be aligned, are not.
Take, for example, "disobeying a police officer". On the surface of it, no one would argue that that is a problem, thinking, "of course I'll follow a police officer's instructions". However, the system has evolved to the point where someone who has initially committed no crime, stopped by the police under suspicion, can end-up dead or incarcerated due to a sadly more-and-more common sequence of escalations.
Asserting that the law is somehow perfect to the extent that all illegal behavior should be punished is also poorly framed because not everything is illegal everywhere, and in fact, what is legal and illegal is not universally known or clear. For example, to access some laws in some municipalities, the laws themselves are under private copyright and a fee must be paid and they are not accessible except directly in person, as in, not remotely (this was news a while back, not sure if there's a HN story about it).
So, I feel this viewpoint is missing some fundamental realities that may drastically change the underlying assumptions.
I wonder if that maxim is still generally approved. It seems like some authoritarians would prefer that 100 innocents would suffer than one guilty person should escape.
I suppose it depends how you define "innocent" and "suffer". Under modern law, everyone is guilty of something. And while we might not require suffering in prison, a little suffering of expensive legal fees, invasions of privacy of your digital data/at the border/in the airport, or searches and seizures of property by police in your car are commonplace.