Scott Alexander cited the superiority of police deterrence over prison as an argument that lets the discussion sidestep the retribution issue.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judge as of 2024-12-10, against criminology evidence. True: the research literature broadly supports the view that more police (more certain apprehension) reduces crime more per unit of cost or effort than longer or more frequent imprisonment (e.g. Nagin's 'certainty over severity' reviews, Chalfin & McCrary). Mostly true: the evidence mostly supports it, with notable caveats (e.g. it depends on margins and context, or incapacitation effects are still significant). Mixed: the evidence is genuinely split or strongly context-dependent. Mostly false: the claim is stated as established, but the research is inconclusive or only narrowly supports it. False: the evidence shows that prison reduces crime more effectively than police deterrence.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
-
E1 Deterrence in the Twenty-first Century: A Review of the Evidence Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University (Research Showcase @ CMU), by Daniel S. Nagin · 2013
“The evidence in support of the deterrent effect of the certainty of punishment is far more”
-
E2 Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature Aaron Chalfin (University of Cincinnati) and Justin McCrary (UC Berkeley, NBER) · 9 May 2014
“Evidence in favor of deterrence effects is mixed.”
-
E3 Economic Perspectives on Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System Council of Economic Advisers, Executive Office of the President (US) · April 2016
“The same spending on police would decrease crime rates by 5 to 16 percent (or 440,000 to 1.5 million”
-
E4 Deterrence in the Twenty-first Century: A Review of the Evidence Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University (Research Showcase @ CMU), by Daniel S. Nagin · 2013
“The evidence in support of certainty’s deterrent effect pertains almost exclusively to”
Reasoning
The quoted evidence does not compare police with prison: the Nagin quotes are cut off (E1, E4), Chalfin and McCrary call deterrence evidence mixed (E2), and the CEA quote gives only a police-spending estimate with no incarceration figure to compare it against (E3). The evidence therefore does not settle whether police deterrence is superior to prison.
Cite this claim
Scott Alexander, “Scott Alexander cited the superiority of police deterrence over prison as an argument that lets the discussion sidestep the retribution issue.” (said 10 December 2024). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_4aff2a96abd6, method 0.1.0+8bea457b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_4aff2a96abd6
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Scott Alexander
-
Mostly true
“There’s this thing where through history, people have been really reluctant to admit an AI is truly intelligent.”
Through history, people have been reluctant to admit an AI is truly intelligent.
-
Mostly true
“Since most of the benefits of prison come from incapacitation rather than deterrence, we should expect this to have limited effect”
Most of the benefits of prison come from incapacitation rather than deterrence.
-
Resolved true
“I do think solitary might be more expensive”
Solitary confinement for prisoners might be more expensive than standard imprisonment.
-
Resolved true
“I (following Roodman) gave two conclusions in my cost-benefit analysis - one that counted the suffering by prisoners themselves, and one that didn’t.”
-
Mostly true
“I started this essay by pointing out that, despite what geographical and cultural distance would suggest, the Nazis’ outgroup was not the vastly different Japanese, but the almost-identical German…”
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.