They are not "criminals" if they never committed a crime, they are people being detained based on probabilities.

There is also the issue that often times preparing to commit one crime involves committing other crimes. It's something of a scale.

Consider the following cases:

Arresting the guy who kidnapped someone.

Arresting the guy in the act of trying to kidnap someone.

Arresting the guy who set out to kidnap someone.

Arresting the guy who is preparing his home to hold a kidnapped victim and is identifying a target.

Arresting the guy who researched how to kidnap someone.

Arresting the guy who has expressed strong interest in kidnapping someone.

Which of these is wrong? I think we would generally agree the last two are, but which of the middle ones do we draw a line at?

In US law, the treatment of each is very, very different. How about: someone planned, identified a target, went to do it and had a change of heart? Innocent in the US, because, well, no crime was committed.

> How about: someone planned, identified a target, went to do it and had a change of heart? Innocent in the US, because, well, no crime was committed.

Of course, if two or more people are involved and only one has a change of heart and stops actively participating (but doesn't take active steps to foil the plan in motion) the one who backed out is still (along with all the others) guilty of conspiracy. And that's true even before anyone gets to the point where they could be individually charged with an attempt, as long as one overt act toward the criminal goal has been done, the whole group is guilty of conspiracy.

And in the US, certain acts are often criminalized specifically when done with the intent to support some other target crime which is not negated by later backing out of the target crime (and in fact allows you to be arrested and convicted when you never got further than the preparatory act.)

Right, like posession of burglar tools etc.

What happens if they are caught before they have a change of heart. Say a kid is caught 10 steps from school grounds with a weapon and intent to attack the school. Would you say they haven't committed a crime since there is still 10 more steps that they could've had a change of heart before they were on the school grounds?

What you describe is attempted kidnapping.

No, its going through some motions. If you don't make the attempt, its not an attempt. By 'change of heart' I meant they don't make contact, not that they 'let them go'.

When is he a kidnapper?

When he is A kidnapper who has yet to kidnap?

Has it had an effect on crime rates? If so, this is interesting. It means crime is predictable based on the inputs the system is measuring. It also means the Chinese AI effort is more fruitful than I expected it to be. If this is reducing crime, then we have a discussion of trade-offs. That is interesting, and potentially nuanced.

If it's the latter, however, this is not interesting and there is no reasonable discussion to be had.

>if this is reducing crimes

Every apprehension under this program is a crime by any definition other than the arbitrary declaration of an illegitimate regime.

It would be absolutely astonishing if the people apprehended were likely to illegally kidnap and hold at least 1 citizen in their basement for at least the length of time that these people are detained.

Thus it can pretty much only increase crime.

Not necessarily. If they are capturing these people because they will have committed a crime and that in and of itself is crime then its not reducing crime.

It's possible that once enough people who on balance might commit a crime are arrested or impeded, then crime will indeed decrease.

I think you've missed the point.

Even if this system works, people who have not committed a crime (yet) are innocent.

Taking an innocent person, and improsoning him against his will is a crime, pretty extreme one.

Even if this system works really well, it's hard to imagine that the crimes it prevents can be more extreme than the crimes it commits.

> Taking an innocent person, and improsoning him against his will is a crime

Every criminal justice system has to balance (1) the risk of convicting the innocent, (2) the risk of letting the true crime-committer commit additional crimes (due to not being caught or caught later), and (3) the risk of being abused. We don’t like pre-crime convictions because we believe risks 1 and 3 outweigh any gains in 2. A culture with a different balance of risks, however, could come to a different but consistent conclusion. I don’t like that conclusion. But it’s at least debatable. Putting political enemies in jail is not.

>* Has it had an effect on crime rates? If so, this is interesting*

I don't think so. You could also likely randomly detain people, and the fear you would cause may also reduce crime rates. That doesn't make it right.

To rephrase: You could define whether it is being used corruptly by measuring whether it reduces crime.

This is a loaded research question, of course, because it's studying something that we find abhorrent: Prosecuting people for crimes they haven't actually committed.

Scientifically it's super interesting. Socially and ethically it's a minefield.

> Has it had an effect on crime rates?

This is probably impossible to know, since totalitarian regimes are known for providing completely fake statistics - and it's usually not like they have one set of numbers (real), but publish another (fake), it's that the whole pipeline is hopelessly corrupt so nobody knows the real numbers. USSR was notoriously plagued by this problem - not only for crime, but also for other things like economical statistics.

Have you every lived under a totalitarian regime that uses intense surveillance?

This system is causing a chilling effect on creativity, differentiation and individualism. It forces people to hide their real thoughts and live a life of constant pretence/lies. It makes the safe-space (the creative-space) to shrink to the interior of one's head. It destroys the ability of population to protest and thus participate in the political life of the country.

You do realize this is the same regime that detains political enemies under bogus charges, assassinates them and sells their organs on the black market?

That's the point where you rule probabilities to commit a crime is an actual crime.

Using probabilities as "evidence" of a future action is the real crime.

> they are people being detained based on probabilities

probacriminals

My thought exactly. This isn't new. It's just the East German Stasi system with a little bit of technology sprinkled in.

Oh good, just the East German system.

Looks like a bigger impact on the latter, if any on the former. And in an increasingly programmable world we live in, everything becomes susceptible to the volatility of gameing for ulterior motives.