China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

Re:China using big data to detain people before crime is com... by mc32 on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @04:31PM (#16487197)

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.

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Re:China using big data to detain people before crime is com... by rayalez on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @04:40PM (#16487296)

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.

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Re:China using big data to detain people before crime is com... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @05:04PM (#16487547)

> 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.

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