[amy214]

Exactly, this is analogous to "sensitivity/specificity" of a test, the test is if they can be trusted to live autonomously in society

- most sensitive: arrest everyone you suspect, lots of innocents locked up - trade-off : some innocents locked up - most specific: arrest only people you are 100% sure are criminals, lots of them get let off due to lack of evidence / inability to prove

You can frame it as a moral question, lock up 100% of criminals and 1 innocent person, or 0 innocent people and only 50% of criminals.

There is a separate, more subjective argument that knowingly locking up innocents is a slippery slope that will lead to a corrupt state.

From a pure ethics standpoint, this is "fruit from the poisoned tree" i.e. doing something unethical to achieve positive result, in this case, locking up an innocent to cause crime to plummet.

One thing is for sure, if he went back up for election and got in through strong popular support, the society replied and said they support living in such an environment. If more innocents are locked up maybe the feedback would change.