In general making classification more sensitive will increase your false positive rate, and making it less sensitive will increase your false negative rate. Neither is preferable! The question is whether you consider the cost of a false positive or negative to be higher… I think most would argue that a false negative is far worse if that allows a child/children to be harmed. Consequently, if you are erring on the side of convicting more people, you should also err on the side of “not maiming those people” because the chances are some of them are innocent.
you should also err on the side of “not maiming those people” because the chances are some of them are innocent.
This was more or less my point, though frankly I don’t know that I totally agree that a false negative is “far worse”. Getting a false conviction as a child sexual offender is practically a death sentence in prison, and even if it’s not, it’s certainly enough to ruin that persons life forever. We’re talking about an actual human here. I’m really not sure what it is about children that make people so perfectly OK with throwing away the lives of scores of adults just to keep one child from harm.
Mind you, I’m not advocating that we should let all offenders go free for the sake of keeping any innocents out of prison, but personally I’d rather let several guilty men go free for a crime than see one innocent person have their lives ruined purely due to the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the incompetence of our justice system. Though I recognize that that’s no doubt a controversial opinion. Especially as no one ever believes that they themselves will be falsely convicted of something.
The idea is that one guilty man is capable of harming far more innocent people. You don’t want innocent people harmed because of false accusations, but you’re okay with 'several guilty mentioning free to avoid that, even though those several men will likely end up reoffending and harming more innocent people/children? Obviously there has to be a balance…
In general making classification more sensitive will increase your false positive rate, and making it less sensitive will increase your false negative rate. Neither is preferable! The question is whether you consider the cost of a false positive or negative to be higher… I think most would argue that a false negative is far worse if that allows a child/children to be harmed. Consequently, if you are erring on the side of convicting more people, you should also err on the side of “not maiming those people” because the chances are some of them are innocent.
This was more or less my point, though frankly I don’t know that I totally agree that a false negative is “far worse”. Getting a false conviction as a child sexual offender is practically a death sentence in prison, and even if it’s not, it’s certainly enough to ruin that persons life forever. We’re talking about an actual human here. I’m really not sure what it is about children that make people so perfectly OK with throwing away the lives of scores of adults just to keep one child from harm.
Mind you, I’m not advocating that we should let all offenders go free for the sake of keeping any innocents out of prison, but personally I’d rather let several guilty men go free for a crime than see one innocent person have their lives ruined purely due to the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the incompetence of our justice system. Though I recognize that that’s no doubt a controversial opinion. Especially as no one ever believes that they themselves will be falsely convicted of something.
The idea is that one guilty man is capable of harming far more innocent people. You don’t want innocent people harmed because of false accusations, but you’re okay with 'several guilty mentioning free to avoid that, even though those several men will likely end up reoffending and harming more innocent people/children? Obviously there has to be a balance…