Methinks you vastly underestimate how game-able such a system would be. On the most obvious side, both the wealthy customer and the insurance company must necessarily price insurance based not on the probability of criminal acts, but on the probability of being caught for criminal acts. This vastly reduces the cost of insurance for a wealthy criminal, but likely not for a poor one.
Moreover, your system is essentially saying that everyone should by default be locked up unless they can exceed some approved-of threshold for safety. Who sets this threshold? Who prices crimes? While our current system may offer unfair sentences or criminalize activities that should be legal, at least you can avoid dealing with the system by following the rules. In the one you propose, you can’t; you’re in prison if whoever sets up the rules decides you exceed some rather arbitrary threshold.
I admit the idea is clever, but it seems extremely unlikely that any detailed system structured around it would generate a society that a significant number of people would find more desirable to be born into.
Methinks you vastly underestimate how game-able such a system would be. On the most obvious side, both the wealthy customer and the insurance company must necessarily price insurance based not on the probability of criminal acts, but on the probability of being caught for criminal acts. This vastly reduces the cost of insurance for a wealthy criminal, but likely not for a poor one.
Moreover, your system is essentially saying that everyone should by default be locked up unless they can exceed some approved-of threshold for safety. Who sets this threshold? Who prices crimes? While our current system may offer unfair sentences or criminalize activities that should be legal, at least you can avoid dealing with the system by following the rules. In the one you propose, you can’t; you’re in prison if whoever sets up the rules decides you exceed some rather arbitrary threshold.
I admit the idea is clever, but it seems extremely unlikely that any detailed system structured around it would generate a society that a significant number of people would find more desirable to be born into.
That’s unfortunate. Who wants to guess how a poor criminal will manage to pay for insurance?