I was raised as a liberal Quaker. I’ve never accepted the anarchist line of, “it’d all be fine if we just didn’t have a coercive state”, but I have thought a lot about how we could reduce the ethical toll of enforcing order. Moving away from ‘punishment’ towards ‘prevention and curing’ bad behavior. Where possible, using technology-enabled probation (a partial loss of privacy and freedom of movement) rather than imprisonment. Using improved technology and training to reduce need/probability for police violence. Focus on inventing new ways to keep both criminals and police safe, while still allowing police to be effective. What about police dogs with special training and tooth-guards which allowed them to disarm and restrain people without injuring them? This gets around asking a police officer to risk their life to disarm an armed suspect. Enforce traffic violations with traffic cameras which take video recordings based on AI-detection of unsafe driving, which then get flagged for human review. Similarly, lots of AI-monitored CCTV in public spaces, which can trigger police response for ongoing violent incidents.
Could we figure out a way for individuals to be compensated for anonymously identifying as ‘at risk’ for committing a particular sort of crime, and receiving anonymous preventative treatment? (e.g. a pedophile being able to easily get sexual desire suppressant treatment if they so chose. Or being allowed to sign themselves up for permanent technological probationary monitoring to prevent themselves from giving in to temptation, and in return being granted unlimited access to AI-generated porn catered to their desires...)
Lots of ways the justice system needs reform also.
For example, juries should be independent samples, each jury member unable to see or interact with the other jury members. Ideally, they should be viewing a recording so that anything ‘stricken from the record’ literally never gets seen by the jury. They should vote on verdict, with ‘majority wins’. They should have to pass a simple nationally approved test about some basic aspects of responsibility of a juror to qualify for jury duty (obviously in my ideal, this test wouldn’t be jerry-mandered to discriminate against certain groups). Ideally, they’d also have to pass a test proving they’ve understood the details of the case they are judging to a sufficient extent, but the juror should be able to fast-forward, 2x speed, and rewind the recording as they wish. Lawyers/plaintiffs shouldn’t be allowed to review and dismiss potential jurors or even know anything about the jurors.
Another example: fines should be used less (they’re a type of punishment), and when used should be proportional to the wealth of the accused (otherwise you are punishing poor people more than rich).
I was raised as a liberal Quaker. I’ve never accepted the anarchist line of, “it’d all be fine if we just didn’t have a coercive state”, but I have thought a lot about how we could reduce the ethical toll of enforcing order. Moving away from ‘punishment’ towards ‘prevention and curing’ bad behavior. Where possible, using technology-enabled probation (a partial loss of privacy and freedom of movement) rather than imprisonment. Using improved technology and training to reduce need/probability for police violence. Focus on inventing new ways to keep both criminals and police safe, while still allowing police to be effective. What about police dogs with special training and tooth-guards which allowed them to disarm and restrain people without injuring them? This gets around asking a police officer to risk their life to disarm an armed suspect. Enforce traffic violations with traffic cameras which take video recordings based on AI-detection of unsafe driving, which then get flagged for human review. Similarly, lots of AI-monitored CCTV in public spaces, which can trigger police response for ongoing violent incidents.
Could we figure out a way for individuals to be compensated for anonymously identifying as ‘at risk’ for committing a particular sort of crime, and receiving anonymous preventative treatment? (e.g. a pedophile being able to easily get sexual desire suppressant treatment if they so chose. Or being allowed to sign themselves up for permanent technological probationary monitoring to prevent themselves from giving in to temptation, and in return being granted unlimited access to AI-generated porn catered to their desires...)
Lots of ways the justice system needs reform also.
For example, juries should be independent samples, each jury member unable to see or interact with the other jury members. Ideally, they should be viewing a recording so that anything ‘stricken from the record’ literally never gets seen by the jury. They should vote on verdict, with ‘majority wins’. They should have to pass a simple nationally approved test about some basic aspects of responsibility of a juror to qualify for jury duty (obviously in my ideal, this test wouldn’t be jerry-mandered to discriminate against certain groups). Ideally, they’d also have to pass a test proving they’ve understood the details of the case they are judging to a sufficient extent, but the juror should be able to fast-forward, 2x speed, and rewind the recording as they wish. Lawyers/plaintiffs shouldn’t be allowed to review and dismiss potential jurors or even know anything about the jurors.
Another example: fines should be used less (they’re a type of punishment), and when used should be proportional to the wealth of the accused (otherwise you are punishing poor people more than rich).
Yes, there’s a lot of ideas worth considering here.