[SiempreViernes]

Preventing crimes before the happen is in general just unquestionably good, about as unambiguous a moral position as being in favour of preventing heart attacks.

You might be thinking of punishing for a crime that hasn't yet been committed?

[coderenegade]

It's definitely not. The law is not, and never has been, a moral bar. A healthy legal system requires laws to be able to change over time to reflect society, and sometimes this requires that people be able to break the law.

[SiempreViernes]

Sure sure, there are unjust laws whose upholding isn't good, but this are the exceptions allowed for by using "in general" as opposed to "always".

[coderenegade]

1) The only difference between a just law and an unjust law is time. I have family members who needed to wear dog tags to drink in certain pubs because of the colour of their skin, and I'm not old. And yet such laws were widely supported (for various reasons) for a long time.

2) lazy governments often apply sweeping blanket bans and fall back to police discretion. Carrying a hammer? Technically illegal in my home country, and the police can stop you. Whether or not they have have reasonable cause to charge you is a different matter. If you look like a tradesman you probably won't be bothered, but if you don't, you're breaking the law.

3) Laws can be mutually contradictory until legally tested and a precedent is set. If you're unlucky, you could be the one who has to test it. Regulations are notorious for this.

I'm not saying that we don't want to enforce laws, because generally we do. But when and how laws are enforced requires nuance. And certainly the idea that always enforcing them is a net good is very, very far from the historical reality.

[foldr]

>> the exceptions allowed for by using "in general" as opposed to "always".

> I'm not saying that we don't want to enforce laws, because generally we do

You are in ageeement.

[coderenegade]

No, because the thread is about preventing crimes before they happen, and asserting that this is unquestionably good and an unambiguous moral position. It isn't, even if we accept that widespread enforcement of the law is generally something that we want.

[foldr]

I think the point is that preventative action against crime is unquestionably good to about the same extent that enforcing the law is unquestionably good. In both cases there are exceptions, but few would question that it’s a good thing to do in general.

[3form]

This is all nice for as long there are just _some_ unjust laws, but the means of such enforcement will inevitably be exploited by actually evil people, who given such tool will get you many, many more unjust laws not worth upholding.

[soraminazuki]

Unfortunately, "preventing crimes" means mass surveillance and racial/political profiling, in practice.

[falcor84]

Yeah, I never got Minority Report's focus on punishment. If it was a crime of passion that was prevented and will non be attempted again (according to their predictive powers) why is a punishment needed?

[Folcon]

Not just punishment, from what is implied, indefinite detention of some kind[0]

It's almost like they believe taking people out of the gene pool will eventually eliminate crimes of passion

I miss my slap drones

-[0]: Weird hibernation future prison: https://www.reddit.com/r/CineShots/comments/1gk5ffn/minority...

[barrkel]

It's not actually. Think about it for a moment and you'll see life is full of tensions between preventing crimes and freedom / utility.

It's most obvious on the roads. Few non-commercial vehicles will limit your speed to the national maximum. Wouldn't a strict interpretation of your opinion imply speed governors?

[jmye]

> Wouldn't a strict interpretation of your opinion imply speed governors?

Shouldn't we have them, if we generally agree that speed limits are good? If not, why have speed limits at all?

Would it not be better to physically limit your speed to 20mph in school zones, for instance? What "freedom" is being limited, in that case?

(Let's ignore stupid edge cases: sure you could need to get to the hospital - in that case you should call an ambulance. The availability and expense of that service is irrelevant to the question, here.)

[SiempreViernes]

Mindful that laws aren't perfect, I left space for exceptions in my statement.

In any case, I am not obsessed with cars so I find thinking of the particulars in your example simply too boring to contemplate, and the general objection that not all laws are perfect is likewise uninteresting.

[psychoslave]

That’s confounding crime and will to hurt, be it oneself or other people, as well as confounding ethical and legal assessment.

Under Nazi government laws, resistance fighters were of course considered criminals. Actually there was effectively a form of "thought crime." The regime did not require actual criminal actions to punish individuals—mere suspicion of disloyalty, lack of enthusiasm for the regime, or even passive resistance was enough to be arrested, imprisoned, or executed.

https://www.normandy1944.info/underground-resistance-movemen...

https://study.com/academy/lesson/gestapo-definition-holocaus...

[SkyBelow]

That entirely depends upon the cost of preventing them. At no cost, sure.

But nothing is ever free. So what is the cost.

<insert a villain who determines destroying all life is the best way to stop all future harm>

There is also the consideration of if a crime being a crime is just. Consider crimes that use to be on the book that we now consider horrible things to have outlawed or even crimes that are still on the books but not enforced because we reject them.

For example, some places us to make it a crime for kids to play pinball. Is preventing kids from playing pinball, even if it came at no cost, an unquestionably good thing?

For a sufficiently bad crime, at sufficiently low costs, preventing it is good. But those two factors are both very big questions, directly challenging the notion of "unquestionably good".

[ryanackley]

Preventing crime is good but there are tradeoffs that most people find unacceptable.

We could track people’s movements without AI. We could implement curfews and have 24x7 police checkpoints. Would you consider it worth it if it reduced crime? Most people would not I’m guessing

[butlike]

You have a trolly problem hiding in here. A man is set to steal 5 loaves of bread to save 5 starving people, but the crime is prevented before it happens. The 5 people end up starving to death. Is the end justified, or should the person have been allowed to steal the bread?

[xnorswap]

> Preventing crimes before the happen is in general just unquestionably good

Is that satire?

In a world where as if by magic all crimes are prevented, then there is total power in the hands of those who define what a crime is, including being able to label protest as a criminal act.

Complete crime prevention is a totalitarian police state.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if by magic

The problem is the means not the ends. This magic doesn’t exist. In practice is authoritarian surveillance.

If we could kiss a mushroom and bias the universe’s dice such that crime just…wouldn’t happen, yes, that would be good, though it would also open up a plot hole of consequences we, in the real world, don’t need to worry about in general.

[shaky-carrousel]

It won't be good, as the definition of what's a crime and what is not changes due to political reasons (read corruption).

[SiempreViernes]

But to object to the statement made you need to think most laws are substantially wrong, not simply that some laws are problematic.

[sebastiennight]

What you're missing is that it is enough for one single law to be problematic.

If we had a complete, utopian set of amazing laws that provide happiness to all, and I add just one law : "All citizens have to agree with every edict, statement or choice of SiempreViernes. Expressing disagreement or doubt is a crime, punishable by exile, lynching or lifetime imprisonment."

All of a sudden this society just became a nightmare. Yes the majority of people can probably still live an OK life, but that single law has a gigantic downstream effect on happiness, stress levels of all, and life expectancy of free thinkers.

Now add the idea that you're able to perfectly prevent crime, and you now have a totalitarian surveillance panopticon in place to prevent me from even writing any doubts into my personal journal.

[onraglanroad]

Not most, maybe just one.

Consider a Schindler's List type scenario. It's a crime to help a Jew escape. Now mostly I believe in the rule of law and if I broke a law because I thought it was justified in that particular circumstance I would accept my punishment.

But in that scenario, accepting my punishment would mean I couldn't help others.

[JumpCrisscross]

Sure, which is why there is no such magic without surveillance. Which is why the hypothetical is silly.

[KaiserPro]

> Is that satire?

are you projecting your fears?

The general point of society is that there is a collective agreement that people should live by a set of rules, and if you step outside of those rules, you will be punished.

It could be simple as someone telling you off for being rude, all the way up to prison for a huge transgression.

As ever with all things human, life exists on a spectrum. on the one had you have complete anarchy, where you are on your own with no redress from others, to complete cult like rigidity, where you have no agency.

However putting barriers up in the way to stop people easily committing crime (ie locks, drink driving bans, drivers license, restrictions on what items you can call miracle cures) are noble and mostly uncontroversial. It only really becomes a controversy when it either causes hardship, or more likely it means that people who are currently profiting from a morally grey action will lose money.

[inigyou]

The agreement must not be perfectly enforced. Human judgement is necessary, which means not only the judges and prosecutors, but also the low chance that the system becomes aware of non-problematic violations in the first place.

[KaiserPro]

Yes, I think we agree on this.

Infact I would go so far to say that it requires a constant introspection to evolve society to adapt to its current environment. This would be impossible in a "perfectly" enforced system, or even a vaguely rigid one.

[butlike]

Have you considered that putting locks on things reminds people crime is possible, thus reintroducing the low-hanging fruit of opportunistic petty theft and creating a situation where the cure (locks) is exacerbating the disease (theft)?

The locks, the speed limits, the restrictions all remind one of how they're being limited; not by their own ability but rather an extrinsic force. I'm sure that this can breed subconscious resentment. I'd question if this is ultimately a good thing at all, but it IS hard to imagine a world without locks

[butlike]

Crime is a matter of necessity. If people's needs are being met, fully and completely, there would be no crime.

[boppo1]

lol they made a movie about this called minority report.

[soraminazuki]

Also Psycho-pass explores the concept in depth.