Mati_Roy's Shortform

Mati_Roy

This is a special post for quick takes by Mati_Roy. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

I can pretty much only think of good reasons for having generally pro-entrapment laws. Not any kind of traps, but some kind of traps seem robustly good. Ex.: I'd put traps for situations that are likely to happen in real life, and that show unambiguous criminal intent.

It seems like a cheap and effective way to deter crimes and identify people at risk of criminal behaviors.

I've only thought about this for a bit though, so maybe I'm missing something.

x-post with Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10158763751484579

6Viliam6y

Aren't there already too many people in prisons? Do we need to put there also people who normally wouldn't have done any crime? I guess this depends a lot on your model of crime. If your model is something like -- "some people are inherently criminal, but most are inherently non-criminal; the latter would never commit a crime, and the former will do use every opportunity that seems profitable to them" -- then the honeypot strategy makes sense. You find and eliminate the inherently criminal people before they get an opportunity to actually hurt someone. My model is that most people could be navigated to commit a crime, if someone would spend the energy to understand them and create the proper temptation. Especially when we consider the vast range of things that are considered crimes, so it does not have to be a murder, but something like smoking weed, or even things that you have no idea they could be illegal; then I'd say a potential success rate is 99%. But even if we limit ourselves to the motte of crime; let's say theft and fraud, I'd still say more than 50% of people could be tempted, if someone spent enough resources on it. Of course some people are easier to nudge than others, but we are all on the spectrum. Emotionally speaking, "entrapment" feels to me like "it is too dangerous to fight the real criminals, let's get some innocent but stupid person into trouble instead, and it will look the same in our crime-fighting statistics".

1Mati_Roy6y

uh, I didn't say anything about prisons. there are reasons to identify people at high risk of committing crimes. and no, it's not about catching people that wouldn't have committed crimes, it's about catching people that would have committed crimes without being caught (but maybe I misused the word 'entrapment', and that's not what it means) [...] Well, that's (obviously?) not what I mean. I elaborated more on the Facebook post linked above.

Well, that's (obviously?) not what I mean.

I agree, but that seems to be how the idea is actually used in real life. By people other than you. By people who get paid when they catch criminals... which creates an incentive for them to increase easy-to-solve criminality rather then reduce it, as long as they find plausibly deniable methods to do it.

In theory, if you could create "traps" in a way that does not increase temptation (because increased temptation = increased crime), for example on a street already containing hundred unlocked bikes y... (read more)