Even at the highest estimates of false imprisonments, it still means several thousands of murderers are walking free each year that wouldn’t have just 10 years ago.
Mathematically, no, it doesn't mean that. For a start, cases being cleared doesn't even imply that someone was arrested, just that the police decided they knew who did it. There could be zero false imprisonments and also close to zero accurate convictions, if the prosecutors just picked someone with a slam dunk case for one murder and accused them of all the others as well. Even easier if they pick a dead guy and close the case with him the assumed perpetrator - as referenced in the second paragraph of that article - because there's less chance that someone will fight the accusation. But either way, all the murderers except the one fall guy were able to walk away, and the police got a 100% clearance rate.
“Several thousand murderers are walking free each year” probably needs some more commitment - the thought experiment isn’t just saying these free murderers are living a life with no repercussions for past crimes but that this represents some quantity of future murders that would otherwise not happen.
Let’s say thousands of murderers going free that otherwise wouldn’t results in one person dying that otherwise wouldn’t.
Is one person unjustly dying with zero chance of resurrection better than one innocent person going to prison with a non-zero chance of exoneration?
This perpetuates a common fallacy around criminal justice: the idea that there is a class of person called "murderer" who just goes around killing people left and right.
Now, it's true that there is a class of person who meets this description, but we don't call them "murderers". We call them "serial killers", and they're incredibly rare.
Decades of propaganda (some subtle, some overt) has put this notion of "once a murderer, always a murderer" into our collective consciousness, but in the vast majority of cases, that's not true at all. Almost everyone who commits murder has some clear, specific reason to do it at the time, and we would be much better served as a society if we would push harder for addressing those reasons (which, from what I understand, almost all come back to either "proper therapy/anger management" or "providing proper support for every person's basic survival needs") rather than expecting punishment to make people better.
There are downsides to police and prosecutors abdicating their responsibilities. Urban flight and then eventually urban decay and despair. We will see what happens to dense liberal urban cities in America over the next 7-15 years. The trends are clear, alarm sirens are blaring, but people are instead patting themselves on the back.
I’m not suggesting we don’t prosecute crimes in general. I’m suggesting that we only sentence people for whom we are pretty damn sure (well over 99% sure).
If we release someone because there’s a 1 in 200 chance they’re not guilty, so be it. That’s not suggesting we release people where that chance is 0 in 200.
It’s interesting that you responded to a comment about “several thousand murderers” with a rejoinder about “dozens of criminals”, which represents some math or a value proposition you’re making about the “one innocent person”.
The innocent person is worth dozens, but not scores? And certainly “criminals” is a quite broad category - “dozens of shoplifters” but not “scores of pedophiles”?
Curious if that was intentional and where the line actually is.
Otherwise it seems you’re just expressing a cost-free emotional sentiment. In the world of policy with real consequences (violent crime) on real people (also at times innocent), the sentiment gives very little guidance, really only the barest start of an inquiry.
Closs the cases, not solve. It's good that police can't convict innocent people as easily anymore.