[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by ThereminVox

At the risk of sounding dismissive or cynical, is that really so different from any law enforcement system?

Presumption of innocence is an absolutely core element of the law enforcement system of our country (Canada). I can't speak that much to other countries, but I'm pretty sure it's the same way in the U.S. I'm also not aware of any significant deviation from this in either Europe or Australia or Japan. So presumption of innocence seems to be a core element of the law enforcement systems of most modern 1st world nations.

The Sibyl system does away with that because it's not even determining innocence or guilt in any one particular case. What it's doing is essentially playing the odds. One could be completely innocent of ever committing a serious offense, and still get locked up on mere potentiality alone. That is rather different from any law enforcement system that I'm personally familiar with.

Laws against theft don't take into account how impoverished an offender might be, and violent actors can't use a broken home life to excuse themselves.

Of course laws don't. If they did, you'd be giving carte blanche to the impoverished or "people from broken homes" to commit crimes just because they're impoverished or "people from broken homes". For laws to have any real value, people must be equal before them. Personal factors can (and should) factor into sentencing, but it shouldn't factor into determining innocence or guilt. Either somebody committed a crime or they didn't.

If a person steals my wallet, the impact on me is the same regardless if that thief is a poor beggar from a broken home or a wealthy man. Either way, I'm out a wallet, and all the contents in it. Either way, I've been robbed and I've been wronged. And it's important for society to provide deterrence against such criminal behavior, and that's where fines and jail sentences come into play.

How likely a criminal is to re-offend is often taken into account in decisions regarding incarceration. The psycho-pass quantifies this likelihood of such violations ahead of the first offense. Is that worse? In a sense, perhaps, but it seems to me either way you're making decisions about a person's fate based on your best available guess of what might happen in the future.

The difference is with a criminal in the real world, we already know he's capable of committing a crime because he's done it once already (presumably, at least; this is the case if he actually is guilty and wasn't wrongfully convicted). So the key is (amongst other things) the criminal demonstrating remorse over his criminal act, and also demonstrating a commitment to not do anything like it again. And that is something that we can try to ascertain over time.

With a criminal in the world of Sybil, he may have committed no crime at all, so there might be nothing for him/her to feel remorse over. In fact, that raises a tough question, in my mind: How do you rehabilitate a criminal who's not actually a criminal? What exactly do you rehabilitated him/her to?