[extension]

Imprisoning people without trial, for predicted future crimes, is what's unfair. Letting an algorithm make the prediction instead of a judge only punctuates the injustice.

What is a "fair" criteria to base this decision on? Is it fair to throw someone in jail because they are young, or they got layed off, or they don't have friends or family? How is any of that better than jailing them for their skin color?

These are exactly the things that justice is supposed to be blind to.

I'm rooting for the algorithms here, simply because they make the inherent injustice of pre-trial detention harder to ignore. We can convince ourselves that this injustice is somehow corrected by the presumed wisdom and compassion of a human judge. But by formalizing the logic, we have to acknowledge that we are literally throwing people in jail for plainly unfair reasons.

[quotemstr]

Is there any circumstance in which you would support detention before trial? If not, would you oppose the detention of a serial killer caught in the act? If you do support pre-trial detention in some cases, how do you distinguish these cases from those cases for which pre-trial detention is unjustified? Could such a decision scheme be "fair" in principle? What would make it fair?

[extension]

I think detention before trial is always unfair in principle, but likely unavoidable in practice. I would like to see the issue acknowledged and taken more seriously, but it's a tricky problem and I have no easy solutions to offer. Practical mitigations may be the best we can do, which I'll grant may be expensive, non-trivial to implement, and allow more criminals to roam free. Here are some vague ideas off the cuff:

* Base decisions only on things that would be relevant in a trial, like evidence and criminal history.

* Nobody should be detained just because they haven't paid bail money. If we decide that someone can be released, it should be immediate and unconditional. The court should charge no more than they can immediately collect.

* Make detention as pleasant and convenient as possible for the accused. We should have facilities specifically for this purpose that are more like hotels than prisons, at least in principle.

* Eliminate any trial delays that aren't strictly necessary, i.e. due to congestion or beurocracy.

If a serial killer is caught in the act, there would presumably be enough evidence available at the bail hearing to justify detention.

[lmm]

You could apply pre-trial detention to anyone accused of a crime, not offer bail at all. The upper classes might start to care more about speedy trials and police harassment once it became impossible for them to buy their way out of pre-trial detention.