I have major disagreements with the arguments of this post (with the understanding that it is a steelman), but I do want to say that it has made me moderately update towards the suitability of the death penalty as a punishment, from a purely utilitarian perspective (though it has not tipped the scale). It has also showcased interesting and important figures, so thank you for that.

Deterrence and recidivism

At that point killing 3 million criminals to save the lives of 2.4 million

How many of those 2.4 million were murdered by recidivists? Even if we assume that the death penalty instituted on a larger scale would save a significant chunk of these people (evidence being very uncertain and model-dependent), there is (weak) evidence that most murderers do not re-murder (less than 10%). Violent re-offenses, however, from what I have seen, range between 20 and 50%, which is definitely significant.

As for escalation, stopping violent pre-murderers might be feasible, but over 40% of offenders of all kinds had zero criminal history, so at most about half of them could have been executed before taking anyone's life. I suspect this number is much lower, because:

After all, might as well be hung for a cow as a sheep. Yes this is a likely cost of the death penalty. I do not think it comes near to tipping the scales.

My intuition is the opposite, though I have not found concrete research either way. This would likely need to be tested, as our extrapolations regarding (say) the current behaviour of serial shoplifters might not extend in a manner we would expect when under such regimes.

One minor point: homicide and violent crime in general has been decreasing quite steadily since the 90s, approaching early 60s levels, in spite of the fall of use of the death penalty (or increasing incarceration rates, for that matter). Shifting the threshold may not even be necessary in the future, if trends continue.

Costs

Imprisoning someone for one year in the USA costs in the order of 100,000 dollars.

The SSC article you link explains that this is for California, with most other states being between 30,000 and 60,000 (which can be cut further, if needed). This halving (possible in California as well) would make the calculations you have made severely less dire. 1-2% of state/federal budgets can be gathered from other sources (such as military spending), and saying that the US is "not prepared to pay" when such large death penalty reforms are even further afield of the Overton window is somewhat strange.

In general, your assertion that "we are not a sufficiently wealthy society" is not sufficiently supported by the evidence, and seems somewhat arbitrary. The issue of investment in these matters is another of the many budget-nudging issues out there, and they can be resolved from within the current political paradigm (irrespective of whether large, systemic shifts are desirable, which they can be, of course).

If the answer to either of those is no, then they are not safe to be released into society, and we are not a society wealthy enough to lock every such person up.

Same consideration. Furthermore, those with illnesses that predispose them to commit crimes are either psychopathy (which does not automatically make one a violent criminal, and as such they should be treated like any median citizen) or disorders like schizophrenia, where the person in question would have already been medicated/in an institution. The costs would still be there.

Justice and due process

I do not believe in vengeance or justice.

An utilitarian analysis cannot include solely economic or (more) easily measurable factors. A widespread belief in justice, trust towards the state, public disinclination towards violence as a means of solving societal problems are necessary for a politically stable society, and removing those might impose major costs on society as a whole (as Knight Lee pointed out). Justice cannot be simply dismissed as a factor here.

This is also related to:

Yes, if you wait 20 years and go through umpteen rounds of court cases to finally elaborately kill a small percentage of the people you originally started the process with it's not going to save you any money. We would obviously have to significantly streamline the process, such that people are executed within 6 months of being caught or so.

There seems to be a general assumption that all of the lengthy due processes, the necessary costs for lawyers, judges, impartial jurors, associated legal staff etc., and the concrete determination of culpability and the degree of severity of the acts committed, are all merely unnecessary bureaucratic fluff that can be easily dispensed with. These processes have developed for centuries in order to ensure that every citizen receives a fair hearing, someone to represent their interests, and a method to dialectically get as close as possible to a reasonable truth, not to mention moral and practical standards of guilt for every possible degree and type of action possible (which would be rendered worthless).

Exceptions cannot be made for certain citizens over others, especially not in high-stakes situations, as that would erode the presumption of innocence and rule of law, trust in institutions, amplify existing systemic problems, and veer dangerously close to authoritarian police states, which have had unpleasant social consequences for its citizens (see the general malaise and low-trust nature resulting in high crime rates of many post-communist states).

Many (though not all, of course) death row convictions drag on due to problems with previous trials, new evidence being produced, and many other considerations. There is also the fact that our society has decided that sentencing and assigning guilt should not be governed by Bayesian standards of probability: even if the evidence is above 50% for guilt, the requirement for "beyond a reasonable doubt" pushes the threshold to the 80-90% territory, due to an acknowledgement of human subjectivity, and a belief in the necessity of the presumption of innocence for a free society where its members are not scared of being wrongfully convicted by an overly-powerful state.^[1] Loosening these norms may have unintended consequences.

All of these problems would be exacerbated the lower a bar is set for the death penalty. Their impact is difficult to measure, but could be massive and potentially society-eroding (as you yourself have pointed out with the issue of scale).

But yes, some innocent people will be killed. Just like some innocent people are killed by police shootings, and numerous innocent people are killed by the US Army, murderers who were let free, and mistaken medical diagnosis. We accept that innocent people die due to our actions all the time, and making a special exception here is an isolated demand for rigour.

Most of the situations you have described are wholly technical in nature. Determining proper guilt is also a technical problem, and as such requires the resources previously mentioned. Streamlining the process would make the rate of innocents killed even higher (see Isusr's comment). Not to mention that the act of execution is very deliberate and isolated, with the moral aspect of the act being front and centre. The situations you list here are not (no one is actively trying to kill bystanders or a patient, but the person being accused is being targeted, especially if due process is eroded). Furthermore, as was mentioned, homicidal recidivism is low enough that the cost of being let free might not be offset by an execution (~100% murder rate).

I do agree that resolving the issue of the method of execution is doable, with the firing squad a (somewhat) reasonable solution. This has historically been extremely fraught, however, with many false promises of humane and efficient executions, and increased demand might make the forces that lead to those many follies resurface, even if it solvable with enough care and integrity.

^{^}
I do have to concede that the citizens of low-crime rate Japan do not seem to suffer from this, despite flagrant presumption of guilt in their legal system. Trying to implement something similar in the US, however, would rightly lead to civil rights protests.

2Viliam1mo

Another important number is, those less than 10% who do, how many more people they kill? Imagine that you have nine murderers who kill 1 person each, and one serial killer who kills 100. It is simultaneously true that only 10% murderers murder again and that executing them could save many lives. (But a life in prison, if the chances of escape are sufficiently low, could achieve the same.)

Rareș Baron1mo10

Gang considerations, however, might be a larger factor here, though I still doubt it is enough to tip the scales (especially as prison gang affiliat... (read more)

See in context

23 The case for the death penalty

by Yair Halberstadt

21st Feb 2025

6 min read

23

Followed By: The case for corporal punishment

Epistemic status: this is an attempt to steelman the case for the death penalty rather than produce a balanced analysis, or even accurately represent my views (the case is presented as stronger than I actually feel).

In a sufficiently wealthy society we would never kill anyone for their crimes. We are not a sufficiently wealthy society.

There are those people whose freedom imposes such high costs on society that society should not suffer to have them free.

A murderer or rapist not only ruins the lives of their victims, not only causes immense suffering to their victims' families, but frightens people into staying indoors at night, or only going out in groups.

A shoplifter might only steal a few hundred dollars of goods, but they force shops to close or lock up all items, causing significant hassle to everyone in the area.

A bicycle thief steals a bicycle worth 5000 dollars, but as a result nobody in the area cycles to the train station, and parking within 5 minutes of the station becomes impossible.

A robber traumatizes the family he's robbed, but also forces everyone into an expensive attempt to have more security than their neighbours.

A wife beater causes misery for their wife, but also makes it far riskier for people to enter relationships.

I know a fraudster who was imprisoned in the USA for 9 years. Once released he betrothed someone in Canada, borrowed a huge sum of money from her brother, and fled to the UK. There he set up a small trading fund and defrauded a Czech company out of millions of euros. He offered to invest his local synagogue's money, then ran off to Manchester. This man has left a trail of misery and destruction behind him, and shows no sign of stopping no matter how many times he's caught.

A small number of people are responsible for the vast majority of petty crimes. Someone who has been arrested 3 times is extremely likely to be arrested again.

I do not believe in vengeance or justice. I do however believe in fixing problems. And it's clear the only way to fix this problem is to put such people in positions where they cannot do anyone any harm.

A sufficiently wealthy society would imprison those people in good conditions for the rest of their life. We are not a sufficiently wealthy society.

Imprisoning someone for one year in the USA costs in the order of 100,000 dollars. Scott Alexander estimated that making a real dent in crime rates would require incarcerating a low single digits percentage of the population. Each extra percentage locked up costs the government some 300 billion dollars, 4% of the combined State+Federal budget, and far too high a price to pay to give criminals a marginally positive quality of life.

Nor is it a price we are prepared to pay. With prisons full, judges err on the side of letting criminals go free, so police officers don't bother catching them in the first place.

A swift death penalty for violent crimes or repeated petty crimes would quickly remove the worst offenders from society. It would save the government billions, and encourage police officers to do their job which is actually the most cost effective way of preventing crime.

Objections

But what about mistakes?

Firstly, you obviously should not impose the death penalty if it's not at all clear who did the crime. Amanda Knox and possibly even OJ Simpson should probably be incarcerated instead of killed, but these are a tiny percentage of actual cases. In the vast majority of crimes we know exactly who did it, and the trial is just necessary bureaucracy we have to go through.

But yes, some innocent people will be killed. Just like some innocent people are killed by police shootings, and numerous innocent people are killed by the US Army, murderers who were let free, and mistaken medical diagnosis. We accept that innocent people die due to our actions all the time, and making a special exception here is an isolated demand for rigour.

But the death penalty doesn't prevent crime!

There is some debate about whether the threat of the death penalty discourages people from committing a crime. There is no debate that dead people commit fewer crimes, which is the purpose of the death penalty here.

Besides those studies are comparing a high chance of life imprisonment Vs a high chance of life imprisonment plus a small chance of maybe being killed 20 years down the line. I am extremely sceptical that when comparing a high chance of being caught and then released a few weeks later with a slap on the wrists Vs being caught and then swiftly executed we wouldn't see large changes in behaviour.

But the death penalty isn't cheaper than incarceration!

Yes, if you wait 20 years and go through umpteen rounds of court cases to finally elaborately kill a small percentage of the people you originally started the process with it's not going to save you any money. We would obviously have to significantly streamline the process, such that people are executed within 6 months of being caught or so.

But executions are frequently bungled.

This isn't particularly high on my list of concerns, but there is a reason most suicide victims use a gunshot to the head if they can. It is the simplest, most reliable, and quickest way of killing someone. But it blows brains all over the wall, which makes people feel squeamish.

So instead we inject people with a lethal combination of drugs which can take hours to work, if it works at all, often leaving them in agonising pain the whole way. The solution is to just use the gun.

But can't people change?

Yes, people can change. But we currently have no reliable way to stop shoplifters being shoplifters, or any way to distinguish those shoplifters who are going through a phase from those who will be in and out of prison for their entire lives. And until they change they continue to do society immense damage.

However I do hope that the knowledge the next time you get caught shoplifting you will be executed, would filter out those who are just in a phase.

But are you really going to execute a single digit percentage of all Americans?

This is the one that really gives me pause, picturing the rivers of blood that such a policy calls for.

Let's get some numbers here. Roughly 6% of the US population will be incarcerated at any point in their life, which gives us an upper limit. Now many of these won't meet the requirements for the death penalty but a large fraction most certainly will.

Of those who do, many wouldn't have committed the crimes in the first place if they knew the death penalty was the probable consequence, and those that would have are likely precisely those with such little self control they are the most dangerous to society. But either way we're probably talking of about 1% of the population. That's a frightening number.

But what you're probably not aware of is that 0.8% of the US population ends up dieing due to intentional homicide, and a larger, but impossible to calculate, fraction will experience rape. Removing violent criminals from the population, often before they ever work up to killing or raping someone would drastically cut this down.

At that point killing 3 million criminals to save the lives of 2.4 million mostly non-criminals, plus largely eliminate other violent +property crime, seems like it might well be a price worth paying, especially when the sensible alternative is not to let these criminals roam free, but to give them a pretty miserable existence in prison.

But what about mental illness?

As stated above, I don't care about vengeance or justice. I care about fixing things. If someone committed a seri us crime due to mental disease I have two questions:

Is there a reliable way of stopping them committing such crimes in the future?
If so, is there a reliable way to make sure it happens?

If the answer to either of those is no, then they are not safe to be released into society, and we are not a society wealthy enough to lock every such person up.

But won't this encourage criminals to take violent steps to prevent capture?

After all, might as well be hung for a cow as a sheep. Yes this is a likely cost of the death penalty. I do not think it comes near to tipping the scales.

World Optimization1

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[-]Viliam1mo*4620

While I don't necessarily approve of the conclusion, there are many important points that people seem to underestimate. (Briefly, before discussing them, I suspect that what currently makes death penalty so expensive is all the legal processes around it, so if we replaced all death penalty with life sentence in prison, we would spend more money on the prisoners, but less money on the lawyers, potentially saving money on the net.)

The key part is: While the truly horrible people are few, they cause vastly disproportional damage, plus all kinds of secondary damage (the population living in fear, not trusting each other, spending more money on security, or just not trying many projects because of the perceived risk). Eliminating these people from the streets might change the situation dramatically, possibly in ways that many of us can't even imagine. It could change a low-trust society into a high-trust society, with various positive impacts on mental health and economy.

I have also seen similar dynamics in other situations. For example, in school, there is often one child in a classroom that constantly keeps disrupting lessons, frustrating the teachers and reducing the learning opportu... (read more)

8Yair Halberstadt1mo

I think for similar reasons trade in ivory from dead anyways elephants is severely restricted.

[-]Jiro1mo173

We accept that innocent people die due to our actions all the time, and making a special exception here is an isolated demand for rigour.

This is also true for life imprisonment, actually. We'll be sentencing some innocent people to life imprisonment. And although perhaps some of them will be exonerated, it's a statistical certainty that not all of them will be, and a statistical certainty that therefore we will destroy some innocent people's lives piecemeal. But we're okay with that, or at least it doesn't get the ire that the death penalty does.

In fact, this is a general problem with all public policies. Anything you do that affects a large number of people is going to statistically kill a number of innocents, unless it's the absolute optimal policy. You can't avoid killing innocents whether you have executions or not.

[-]romeostevensit1mo170

"0.12% of the population (the most persistent offenders) accounted for 20% of violent crime convictions" https://inquisitivebird.xyz/p/when-few-do-great-harm

[-]cousin_it1mo*110

I think the US has too much punishment as it is, with very high incarceration rate and prison conditions sometimes approaching torture (prison rape, supermax isolation).

I'd rather give serial criminals some kind of surveillance collars that would detect reoffending and notify the police. I think a lot of such people can be "cured" by high certainty of being caught, not by severity of punishment. There'd need to be laws to prevent discrimination against people with collars, though.

3Alexander Turok1mo

"There'd need to be laws to prevent discrimination against people with collars, though." Why?

3cousin_it1mo

Because otherwise everyone will gleefully discriminate against them in every way they possibly can.

3Alexander Turok1mo

But why's that a bad thing?

2cousin_it1mo

Because the smaller measure should (on my hypothesis) be enough to prevent crime, and inflicting more damage than necessary for that is evil.

3Alexander Turok1mo

IMO forcing law abiding citizens to associate with criminals is inflicting damage on them without a necessary justification.

0cousin_it1mo

No. Committing a crime inflicts damage. But interacting with a person who committed a crime in the past doesn't inflict any damage on you.

6Said Achmiz1mo

It predictably inflicts damage statistically, however—and (and this is the key part!) it prevents you from affecting that statistical distribution according to your own judgment. It would be as if, for example, you weren’t allowed to drive carefully (or to not drive). Driving is dangerous, right? It’s not guaranteed to harm you, but there’s a certain chance that it will. But we accept this—why? Because you have the option of driving carefully, obeying the rules of the road, not driving when you’re tired or inebriated or when it’s snowing, etc.; indeed, you have the option of not driving at all. But if you were forced to drive, no matter the circumstances, this would indeed constitute, in a quite relevant sense, “inflicting damage”.

2[comment deleted]1mo

2Viliam1mo

I don't care about discrimination of former criminals per se, but making them visibly different might lead to all kinds of secondary crime. For example, if someone is visibly marked as a known thief, it would be tempting for another person to steal something in a situation where only the two of them had access to the stolen thing, and then exclaim "hey, the other guy is a known thief, so going by the priors, it is obvious that he did it". This could be further leveraged into blackmail; if you know that you can use this trick to put the former thief in prison with high probability, and the thief knows it too... then you can make the former thief do various kinds of illegal things, giving them a choice between a chance of getting caught doing the actual crime, and an almost certainty of going to prison for something they didn't do. Shortly, whenever you make a person vulnerable (whether they deserved it or not), you are potentially creating a tool for some predator.

1ProgramCrafter1mo

The follow-up post has a very relevant comment: Well of course this is illegal under current US laws, however this would help against being unjustly accused as in your example of secondary crime. It would also be helpful against repeat offences for a whole range of other crimes.

1frontier641mo

This stems from a misunderstanding of how the career-criminal mind works. They don't really care about being caught. They remember how out of the last 40 or so times they walked into Walmart and left with ~$100 in unpaid merchandise they only got caught half the time and the other half of the time they got let off with time served of 10-20 days. Either they get away with it or they gotta wait a couple weeks before they get to try again. Not a big deal either way. So much of the crime plaguing modern America is open and obvious and even caught on camera. It's just that the criminal justice system refuses to punish repeat petty offenders. What punishment do you think someone who has been convicted of stealing 15 times before should get on his 16th conviction?

[-]Sancho1mo90

Have we considered cryopreservation as an alternative solution? It could protect society from dangerous offenders without resorting to irreversible execution, while potentially costing less than long-term incarceration. If medical and rehabilitative technologies advance, this would also preserve the possibility of future reform. Worth exploring as a middle ground that addresses both societal safety and moral concerns.

5Yair Halberstadt1mo

Most people who choose cryopreservation only believe the chance of being revived is about 5 percent. I think we have to treat cryopreservation as killing someone.

[-]Shankar Sivarajan1mo61

My paraphrase of Gandalf: "Many that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do the next best thing, and deal out death in judgement to the many that live who deserve it."

[-]jmh1mo60

I'm a bit conflicted on the subject of death penalty. I do agree with the view some solution is needed for incorrigible cases where you just don't want that person out in general society. But I honestly don't know if killing them versus imprisoning them for life is more or less humane. In terms of steelmanning the case I think one might explore this avenue. Which is the cruelest punishment?

But I would also say one needs to consider alternatives to either prison or death. Historically it was not unheard of to exile criminals to near impossible to escape locations -- Australia possibly being a best example.

1satchlj1mo

Where on this planet could the USA cheaply put people instead of executing them where they 1. Have the option to survive if they try 2. Can't escape 3. Can't cause harm to non-exiled people?

2Dagon1mo

In the medium-term reduced-scarcity future, the answer is: lock them into a VR/experience-machine pod. edit: sorry, misspoke. In this future, humans are ALREADY mostly in these pods. Criminals or individuals who can't behave in a shared virtual space simply get firewalled into their own sandbox by the AI. Or those behaviors are shadowbanned - the perpetrator experiences them, the victim doesn't.

1Alexander Turok1mo

A fenced-off city that will inevitably be compared to a Holocaust ghetto.

[-]A1987dM1mo*64

> Imprisoning someone for one year in the USA costs in the order of 100,000 dollars

There surely must be some way to decrease that by *at least* a factor of 4 or so, possibly by an order of magnitude, if we wanted to? (The poverty line for a 8-person household in the contiguous US in 2025 is $54,150.) Surely that might involve treating prisoners in rather questionable ways, but still way less questionable than f---ing killing them, IMO.

Another objection I have is that [waaay too many things are considered crimes that shouldn't be](https://archive.org/details/threefeloniesday0000silv) -- what fraction of people in prison are there for reasons comparable to any of your examples?

4romeostevensit1mo

There are the predictable lobbies for increasing the price taxpayers pay for prisoners, but not much advocacy for decreasing it.

[-]YimbyGeorge1mo52

Some conclusions should be drawn from existing countries which use the death penalty well, example Singapore. Low crime is great!

[-]Dagon1mo50

In a sufficiently wealthy society we would never kill anyone for their crimes.

In a sufficiently wealthy society, there're far fewer forgivable/tolerable crimes. I'm opposed to the death penalty in current US situation, mostly for knowledge and incentive reasons (too easy to abuse, too hard to be sure). All of the arguments shift in weight by a lot if the situation changes. If the equilibrium shifts significantly so that there are fewer economic reasons for crimes, and fewer economic reasons not to investigate very deeply, and fewer economic reasons not to have good advice and oversight, there may well be a place for it.

[-]Rareș Baron1mo31

Deterrence and recidivism

At that point killing 3 million criminals to save the lives of 2.4 million

How many of those 2.4 million were murdered by recidivists? Even if we assume th... (read more)

2Viliam1mo

1Rareș Baron1mo

Fair statistical point, however in reality a vast majority of serial killers did not go above 15 victims, and the crimes they commited were perpretated before their first (and last) arrest. I do not have raw numbers, but my impression is that the number of those sentenced for one murder, later paroled, and then beginning their spree of more than 3-4, is incredibly small. Serial killers are also rare in general. Gang considerations, however, might be a larger factor here, though I still doubt it is enough to tip the scales (especially as prison gang affiliation is a factor taken into account when considering parole). 13% of homicides are gang-related, though gang members are twice as likely to re-offend (both for violent offences and not). Even if we (awkwardly) extrapolate twice as likely to re-offend to twice as many murders after parole, this still does not meaningfully change the ball-park figures. If we have 80 murderers, of which 10 are gang members, which are released (with gang members less likely to be released, mind, so this is an over-estimation), then we would have 7 homicidal recidivists and 1 homicidal gang recidivist, who commits two crimes instead of 1. Instead of 8 murders, we have 9: 12.5% remurdering instead of 10%, at most. I have fudged the numbers, but I don't think this substantially changes what I have said.

[-]Purplehermann1mo30

While I find your analysis mostly correct, I'd be strongly against weakening norms against killing people through legal institutions.

I believe this would increase the value of lawfare, as instead of lengthy drawn out jail time where an enemy could pull a reversal they are simply dead.

This would worry me at the political, ideological and private levels

2Yair Halberstadt1mo

I think lawfare tends to involve civil not criminal cases?

1Purplehermann1mo

Regardless, it doesn't have to.

2Yair Halberstadt1mo

What's a story you can suggest where this occurs? Not one from a novel, but one you can see happening?

3Purplehermann1mo

Hitler Trump - if killing people on short time lines was accepted... Girl owes guy money, gets him killed for rape. (Her friends join in) People who were canceled? I could see nasty business issues, mafias using this etc - but that sounds like a novel so we'll leave it aside

2Yair Halberstadt1mo

I would only use the death penalty where we're close to certain X actually committed the crime. That's fairly common for shoplifting and murder, but unfortunately far less common in rape (unless it's e.g. on a street with CCTV cameras). I guess for probable rape I probably wouldn't impose the death penalty and hope that they'll get caught for a violent crimes later.

1Purplehermann1mo

Just notice that systems are not stable, even if you got to decide all policy in a given point in time, policy will naturally warp and people will abuse it. If killing people, quickly etc was normal, I assume regimes would use this to stop people from unseating them. (Trump may have been killed, see the attempts to paint him as a rapist)

[-]lsusr1mo*36

But yes, some innocent people will be killed.

The important question to ask is "how many innocent people" are worth killing to achieve an end? A 2014 study estimated that 4% of death row inmates would be exonerated, had they remained under sentence of death indefinitely, which means the real proportion of innocent people getting executed is higher than 4% and we don't know how much higher.

If death sentences are expanded, then the fraction of innocent people getting executed would increase to well over 4%. I feel that that's too high, especially if 1% of ... (read more)

[-]lsusr1mo130

But executions are frequently bungled.

This isn't particularly high on my list of concerns, but there is a reason most suicide victims use a gunshot to the head if they can. It is the simplest, most reliable, and quickest way of killing someone. But it blows brains all over the wall, which makes people feel squeamish.

So instead we inject people with a lethal combination of drugs which can take hours to work, if it works at all, often leaving them in agonising pain the whole way. The solution is to just use the gun.

Like you, Nazi Germany needed to execute large numbers of mostly nonviolent people too. They originally used bullets, which seemed cheap, but that method ultimately caused psychological trauma for the people doing the mass executions. That was psychologically unsustainable for the Nazis, including the SS, so they switched to gas chambers, instead, which provided psychological comfort for their employees. I recommend you learn from their mistake and just start with the gas chambers.

5MondSemmel1mo

(Trollish reply. I'm not in favor of the death penalty.) I take your point re: that a death penalty cannot be implemented if individual executioners need to kill individual people via guns. But I'll counter that it also can't be implemented in the 21st century via gas chambers, because your executioners will realize the parallel to Nazi Germany. ("Are we the baddies?") To split the difference, how about having executioners execute people via drones armed with bullets?

5lsusr1mo

I accept this compromise. To improve your suggestion even further, I propose we gamify the drone-operating app. Utopia is within our grasp. We need only the courage to do what must be done.

[-]Jiro1mo123

The important question to ask is “how many innocent people” are worth killing to achieve an end? A 2014 study estimated that 4% of death row inmates would be exonerated, had they remained under sentence of death indefinitely,

"Exonerated" doesn't usually mean "innocent", it typically means "is guilty of something slightly lesser".

8frontier641mo

I've reviewed many of these cases and it typically means the prosecutors changed from a tough-on-crime prosecutor to a restorative justice prosecutor who's looking to get a nice media headline. The convicted man is still obviously guilty, but because they found one piece of evidence that cuts against guilt, but is in no way exonerating, they decide to let the convicted rapist/murderer/etc. go free. Best example is the Central Park 5. If any aspiring-bayesian take a look at that case they'll realize very quickly that the 5 people convicted definitely held down a woman while she was being raped. Yet for some reason they are now lauded as innocent men wrongly convicted.

[-]p.b.1mo101

If you only execute repeat offenders the fraction of "completely" innocent people executed goes way down.

The idea of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and then being executed gives me pause.

The idea of being framed for shop lifting, framed for shop lifting again, wrongfully convicted of a violent crime and then being at the wrong place at the wrong time is ridiculous.

4frontier641mo

I'll bet you $100 there is nobody in prison solely for sale of Marijuana in Washington state.

9lsusr1mo

First of all, thank you for the correction. Legalization occurred in 2012, and the statutory maximum penalty for selling marijuana[1] is four years in prison. That said, your specific bet that sounds messy to adjudicate. Consider this example: They're in prison for selling marijuana without following the established regulations. (Firearms were involved, but it's unclear me if they're officially part of the charges for which the two went to prison.) Does that count? You may say no, but I feel your stated resolution criteria leaves room for interpretation. ---------------------------------------- 1. At least, the one particular version I looked up. ↩︎

1frontier641mo

I would say this clearly falls outside my bet as I said "solely for sale of Marijuana" and this news release says, "were each sentenced today to 30 months in prison" and "pleaded guilty in November 2023 to conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana and conspiracy to commit money laundering" So really a no-brainer. Unless I can look at their sentencing agreement and it says they got time-served on the conspiracy to commit money laundering and their sentence to 30 months is solely for the conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana count. It seems like you've done some research on this topic now. Do you want to take me up on my bet? edit: Also your article is for a 30 months sentence which started back in November 2023. I'd also bet that those defendants are either released right now or are very close to it.

3lsusr1mo

I'm not taking your bet. There are many reasons for this, but a sufficient dealbreaker is that I only place bets with legibly unambiguous resolution criteria. Your proposal fails to meet my standards in that dimension. I feel that betting with you carries a significant likelyhood that you and I have a disagreement about who won the bet. That makes this bet a non-starter.

3frontier641mo

I'll let you operationalize it and give you 3 to 1 odds. edit: My main point is that a lot of people who are otherwise very smart have no idea how the criminal justice system works. They think our prisons are overflowing with people convicted of non-violent drug offenses when nothing could be further from the truth. Our prisons are overflowing with robbers, stabbers, rapists, arsonists, burglars, and murderers. That's because the media and activist groups lie and misrepresent the truth. We wouldn't ever have to execute a non-violent drug dealer to free up prison space.

2lsusr1mo

I will clarify my position: I'm not going to bet with you on any subject whatsoever, regardless of the odds. I take bets very seriously, and require as a prerequisite that I and the other person are on the same page regarding lots of peripheral details regarding bets. I feel that you and I have different implicit understandings of how bets should work. This has nothing to do with the criminal justice system, and everything to do with precision of language.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke1mo33

What do you think about exiling them to a zone where extreme criminals have to fend for themselves such as they did with Australia?

2Dagon1mo

I nominate NYC, and I assert that LA is an inferior choice for this. Source: John Carpenter/Kurt Russel movies.

1Alexander Turok1mo

Yeah a massive walled city would be cheap to patrol and run. Put it where Pelican Bay is.

-3lsusr1mo

Pro: We get a second Australia. Con: We get a second Australia.

[-]localdeity1mo20

Epistemic status: this is an attempt to steelman the case for the death penalty
...
I do not believe in vengeance or justice. I do however believe in fixing problems. And it's clear the only way to fix this problem is to put such people in positions where they cannot do anyone any harm.

Some people have complained that, when their opponents "steelman" their position, in practice it can mean they steelman a particular argument that is not their main argument. This struck me as a remarkably explicit and self-aware example of that.

I don't know what the sol... (read more)

4Viliam1mo

Steelmanning is not the same as passing the ideological Turing test. ITT is successful when your opponent agrees with you, or when your opponent cannot distinguish you from their actual allies. Steelman is successful if you, or your allies, find something useful in the ideas of your opponent. Whether your opponent approved of the result, or not. In ITT, your opponent is the judge (of how much it passes). With a steelman, you are the judge (of whether you have extracted something useful). When steelmanning, you cherry-pick the good parts, and discard the rest. When passing an ITT, you need to pass all checks. For example, an ITT of a religion is... speaking like a true believer. A steelman of religion is e.g. saying that we don't really know how the universe came to existence, and that there are some social benefits of religion.

4Richard_Kennaway1mo

Steelmanning is writing retcon fanfiction of your interlocutor’s arguments. As such it necessarily adds, omits, or changes elements of the source material, in ways that the other person need not accept as a valid statement of their views.

[-]silentbob1mo20

But what you're probably not aware of is that 0.8% of the US population ends up dieing due to intentional homicide

That is an insane statistic. According to a bit of googling this indeed seems plausible, but would still be interested in your source if you can provide it.

7lsusr1mo

It's in the right ballpack. This article based off of US Death statistics puts the number at 0.7%.

[-]Knight Lee1mo1-8

If you are a cold hearted utilitarian, the answer is no, we should not massively increase the death penalty, because it will worsen the diplomatic situation, increase racial hostilities, and move the Overton window on "killing vile people," such that assassinations, coups and other instability would feel less shocking and be more likely to succeed.

If you are a normal human, the answer is also no, because people don't deserve to die. A child who is unlucky enough to be born with bad genes or brain connections, does not deserve to be later executed when he g... (read more)

5Yair Halberstadt1mo

Do people deserve to go to prisons? Do people deserve to be punished at all? If not, and we should allow criminals to get off scott free, do people deserve to have their houses broken into, or to be threatened as they walk down the street? We cannot simply abdicate responsibility by stating that people don't deserve death. Nobody deserves anything, crime is real, we have to do something, why is the death penalty suddenly the thing that we should only do if someone deserves it?

2Yair Halberstadt1mo

Which diplomatic situation? Many countries execute criminals, and that doesn't much impact their foreign affairs. Foreign affairs is driven by things that impact other countries, not domestic affairs. Did you know that black people in the USA are more likely to advocate for a tough on crime policy? After all, most crime is intraracial, and therefore it's them who have to live with it. Or it'll move the overton window that killing people will result in a swift execution such that people are less likely to do it. Are China and Iran less stable today as a result of their liberal application of the death penalty - or is that basically completely irrelevant to their problems? This is a claim which you could argue whichever way you want depending on how you felt like it. Making assertions is not evidence.

3Knight Lee1mo

Many countries refuse extradition to the US if there is a chance of the death penalty. The problem is that people are scope-insensitive, and one wrongly executed person becomes a martyr for a long time. People are still angry about George Stinney's wrongful execution in 1944. The feeling of a lot of people is if normal people go to jail for minor things, Trump or Clinton should definitely go to jail for a long time. There is a visceral sense of unfairness that the elites get to be more vile than ordinary people who go to jail, get executed, etc. but don't face the same consequences because they do evil legally, because there is diplomatic immunity, presidential immunity, and all this stuff that your average Joe does not understand. If normal people who are vile get executed, then people will crave the blood of elites they perceive to be even more vile. Japan in the 1920s and 1930s had endless political assassinations because people had the system of morality where "vile people should be killed." Alas, you are right that we can never know which way the causality goes. I am admittedly only stating my belief without proving it. I think Singapore actually implements a system with a lot of executions and corporal punishment which you are in favor of, and they actually do have very low crime. I attribute the low crime more to their high wealth, and their other draconian policy of overwhelming surveillance (which I also disagree with but have to admit does work, maybe you can debate it next time).

[-]Afterimage1mo10

I'm curious about the purpose of this post. I think I understand the concept of steelmanning, but I’m struggling to see the specific goal here.

The post doesn’t address countries with low crime rates that don’t use the death penalty, and just seems to double down on executing vast number of criminals rather than any number of other possible options to reduce crime. Also speculating here but I imagine the impacts on social cohesion and flow on effects from ease of executions (political prisoners etc) would make the cure worse than the disease.

Is exclud... (read more)

3Yair Halberstadt1mo

Obviously alternative measures to reduce crime are good, and dovetail with this proposal. But all countries that do have low crime still use incarceration as a means of incapacitating prisoners, and this post advocates for the death penalty as a more cost affective alternative. Also note that countries with low crime almost all have homogeneous populations of a type that tend to have low crime even in other countries. Lessons do not necessarily transfer to countries with population groups with generally higher rates of crime.

1Afterimage1mo

Thanks for clearing that up, I think I was confused because it's hard to imagine putting compassionate crime prevention strategies together with a strict death penalty for repeated shoplifting. It would be far more moral and cost-effective to focus on prevention, through increased policing, economic opportunities or similar interventions. Executions and lifelong prison sentences both suffer from leaving families seperated which leads to more crime and other negative externalities many of which can only be speculated upon. For example, American culture seems to be resistant to overreach from the government. I can imagine far more civil unrest from a heavy handed execution policy than in a country such as Singapore.

[-]frontier641mo10

What you describe is the system of justice we had back 250 years ago. The whole reason for the formalistic procedures involving a jury and Judge and all these rights given to the accused were because if he was convicted then he was most likely looking at a quick public hanging. The State has to prove guilt beyond any and all reasonable doubt because there's no going back once the guy's head rolls off the chopping block. Over time however, punishments got more lenient, judges became way softer, and due to the way the appeals process and appellate courts wor... (read more)

[-]Mis-Understandings1mo10

Wait, the case for extreme costs seems to include both the crime, and the price of the reaction. If the expected cost of deterrence (that is the sum of individualized deterrence), is much greater then the expected actual harm from the crime, that seems like a market inefficiency. That is, insuring everybody against the harm, is cheaper than preventing it. (this seems like a bad policy, but it is the approach taken towards credit fraud)

That is, in this model most of the costs come from social (not market) reactions to crime. (because you cannot ... (read more)

[-]Archimedes1mo10

We would obviously have to significantly streamline the process, such that people are executed within 6 months of being caught or so.

This is one of the biggest hurdles, IMO. How do you significantly streamline the process without destroying due process? In the US, this would require a complete overhaul of the criminal justice system to be feasible.

2Yair Halberstadt1mo

Because in most cases it's very clear what happened and the court case is most legal about all the legal quibbles and mitigating factors and etc. If you don't have eyewitness evidence or similar, sure don't kill them, if they're guilty they're likely to commit another crime soon and then you'll get them. If you do, I don't really care about the quibbles.

1Archimedes1mo

I’d want something much stronger than eyewitness testimony. It’s much too unreliable for killing people without other forms of evidence corroborating it.

[-]James Camacho1mo0-1

Similar disclaimer: don't assume these are my opinions. I'm merely advocating for a devil.

If we're going for efficiency, I feel like we can get most of the safety gains with tamer measures. For example, you could cut off a petty thief's hand, or castrate a rapist. The actual procedure would be about as expensive as execution, but if a mistake was made there is still a living person to pay reparations to. I think you could also make the argument that this is less cruel than imprisoning someone for years—after all, people have a "right to life, liberty, and ... (read more)

4Jiro1mo

The idea that we can pay reparations for a mistake is bizarre even considering just widely accepted punishments. You can't imprison someone for 40 years, discover they're innocent, and "pay reparations" for the mistake--there's nothing you can pay someone to give them 40 years. Never mind paying reparations for mutilation, you can't do it for imprisonment. Also, in practice, societies which cut off the hands of thieves are not societies where justice is served even ignoring the punishments themselves. Tyrants like cutting off hands precisely because it's a punishment that can't be reversed, and you don't have to wait 40 years for it to become permanent.

1James Camacho1mo

I don't understand your objection. Would you rather go to prison for five years or lose a hand? Would you rather unfairly be imprisoned for five years, and then be paid $10mn in compensation, or unfairly have your hand chopped off and paid $10mn in compensation? I think most people would prefer mutilation over losing years of their lives, especially when it was a mistake. Is your point that, if someone is in prison, they can be going through the appeal process, and thus, if a mistake occurs they'll be less damaged? Because currently it takes over eight years for the average person to be exonerated (source). Since this only takes into account those exonerated, the average innocent person sits there much longer. I do agree that bodily mutilation can be abused more than imprisonment since you can only take political prisoners as long as you have power, but it's not like tyrants are using bodily mutilation as punishment anyway. They just throw them to the Gulags and call it a day. They don't have to wait 40 years for it to become permanent.

-1Jiro1mo

I would agree that eight years of imprisonment can be as bad or worse as mutilation. But the problem is that punishing people by mutilation has different incentives than punishing them with jail--at least among actual human punishers. When you look at the history of societies that punish people by mutilation, you find that mutilation goes hand in hand (no pun intended) with bad justice systems--dictatorship, corruption, punishment that varies between social classes, lack of due process, etc. Actual humans aren't capable of implementing a justice system which punishes by mutilation but does so in a way that you could argue is fair.

6James Camacho1mo

So, you're making two rather large claims here that I don't agree with. This seems more a quirk of scarcity than due to having a bad justice system. Historically, it wasn't just the tryannical, corrupt governments that punished people with mutlation, it was every civilization on the planet! I think it's due to a combination of (1) hardly having enough food and shelter for the general populace, let alone resources for criminals, and (2) a lower-information, lower-trust society where there's no way to check for a prior criminal history, or prevent them from committing more crimes after they leave jail. Chopping off a hand or branding them was a cheap way to dole out punishment and warn others to be extra cautious in their vicinity. Obviously it isn't possible for imperfectly rational agents to be perfectly fair, but I don't see why you're applying this only to a mutalitive justice system. This is true of our current justice system or when you buy groceries at the store. The issue isn't making mistakes, the issue is the frequency of mistakes. They create an entropic force that pushes you out of good equilibriums, which is why it's good to have systems that fail gracefully. I don't see what problems mutilative justice would have over incarcerative. We could have the exact same court procedures, just change the law on the books from 3–5 years to 3–5 fingers. Is the issue that bodily disfigurement is more visible than incarceration? People would have to actually see how they're ruining other people's lives in retribution? Or are you just stating, without any justification, that when we move from incarceration to mutilation, our judges, jurors, and lawyers will suddenly become wholly irrational beings? That it's just "human nature"? To put it in your words: that opinion is bizarre.

-3Jiro1mo

We could, but with actual humans, we won't. "By observing human beings" is not "without any justification". We know what societies that mutilate prisoners are like, because plenty of them have existed. Also, individuals don't have to "become irrational" for the ones who are already irrational to gain more influence.

1James Camacho1mo

This is where I disagree. There are only a few post-industrial socieities that have done this, and they were already rotten before starting the mutilation (e.g. Nazi Germany). There is nothing to imply that mutilation will turn your society rotten, only that when your society becomes rotten mutilation may begin.

-1Shankar Sivarajan1mo

Do you have an example in mind of a legal system that doesn't have "corruption, punishment that varies between social classes, lack of due process, etc."?

4Jiro1mo

You won't find systems with none at all, but you can easily find systems with those aspects to a significantly larger or smaller degree.