Good points all around.

@wirehead-wannabe​​: I don’t think sending people to prison for marijuana is a good idea. There are less stringent options available (fines? mandatory D.A.R.E.?), but “whether these rehab/deterrence techniques are worth the cost is, obviously, a matter of debate.”

However, there are cases where “arresting people before they’ve actually done anything wrong” seems reasonable. @serinemolecule mentions DUIs: a 0.20 driver hasn’t hurt anyone yet, but has a high risk of doing so. The justice system deems it acceptable to preemptively punish him in order to prevent this harm.

(Technically, selling nuclear weapons is a victimless crime.)

The same logic is used against marijuana users. Your average manbunned Boulder resident is not going to become El Chapo, but people who sell marijuana by the ton often have a shady past/present/future. Our punishments increase commensurate with the kilogram.

And if you agree with the justice system that “risky people” should be punished based on their risk, you may find yourself agreeing to some ugly disparities.

@ranma-official: Let me officially state that I do not endorse long prison sentences at hellscapes.



However, are you sure that they don’t prevent recidivism? If you’re sentenced to life in prison, you will not be able to perform Grand Theft Auto.

In a semi-ideal world—i.e. ignoring the way prison hardens criminals—you should give a unlikely-to-rehabilitate defendant a longer sentence, both increasing the deterrent dose and preventing a few more years of potential crime.

(A lighter example: you should give a heavier fine to a text-and-driver who shows no remorse; the fine isn’t going to have much effect on the already repentant.)

@alexanderrm​​​: Fine, there are other reasons the government punishes victimless crimes. Like keeping a high IQ, sober workforce—except that’s still lopsided, note that white-collar jobs don’t get drug tested. Also, to kill good vibes and immanentize the eschaton, but that goes without saying.

And yes, my argument is exactly “utilitarianism disproportionately punishes those who are most likely to commit crimes [even if those people have done nothing wrong except have the wrong demography].” If you’re cool with that, vote Nixon ‘68.

@jbeshir​: The first part of your argument is, essentially, “Humans are not very good at utility calculations.” I agree. But it seems like you’re throwing the baby out with the water utility. Consider the legal distinction between first degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. It’s hard to find a convincing deontological reason for distinguishing between them: “Thou shalt not kill, unless thou art really mad.” But utilitarianism resolves this easily: the guy who Dexters his homicide is more likely to do bad stuff in the future.

Do you disapprove of all context-dependent sentences? Should someone on his tenth offense be punished the same as someone on his first?

If you stick to your guns and claim that all such distinctions are naive, fair, but this is the naive utilitarianism that is actually being used by the courts today, and this is the logic behind its use. Write a letter to Congress.

You and @misanthropymademe​​​ are both correct: it was sloppy of me to say that the harm of public distrust is impossible to calculate. (Although I imagine “the cost of public distrust specifically due to sentencing disparities between privileged and not-privileged” would be a doozy for Wolfram.)

To clarify: I didn’t write this essay to defend the current system, nor to uphold it as an exemplar of utilitarian thought. I wrote it to explain the logic behind otherwise opaque injustices, a logic which seems to stem from (perhaps imperfect) utilitarianism.



Moving forward—my gestalt is that some degree of context-dependent sentencing is necessary, but that our current justice system allows far too much leeway. Most real crimes should be deontologically fixed to their punishment; most victimless crimes should not be punished.

If anyone has a better solution, I would be pleased to hear it.