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Rideout's avatar

Ah, the folksy Andy Griffith / John Wayne model of policing, or taken to more absurd lengths dirty harry. I suspect you are right, many people are probably ok with bending the rules for a just outcome.

One mechanism I've been toying with, but haven't quite identified a form I find satisfactory is some sort of metered discretion. Rather than living with discretion that can be both misused or used well, or crafting ever finer rules, we could try to grant a kind of budget, or impose a cost that would allow discretion, but have a penalty applied to misuse (or any use).

In the extreme, the Israeli "Necessity Defense" provides one path. In general torture is illegal, but in the extremely-unlikely case of imminent threat, it could lawfully be used to overt disaster. But rather than proscribing an approved approach, it is still illegal in general, the agents responsible would still needed to be tried. But there is a path toward proving justification for exoneration. And intent is not enough, the facts also must be on the on the side of those that applied force. So the agents not only need not only being the threat of the scenario and benefit of using such a tool, but also being willing to prove it court to the point of their peril if they cannot.

Toward another direction, you have weregild systems. Could we tie, say, pensions to non-criminal ("lawful but awful") scenarios? Or a 3-strikes type system? (maybe implemented as number of complaints/timeframe). Could credit be gained somehow as well?

Toward the crazy, could you have a "use of force" tokens that get cached-in like mothers-day-footrub vouchers?

But really all this is beside the point, we should be looking at ways to prevent the need for force.

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Rideout's avatar

How much of that is the exception that proves the rule? The wealthy/powerful can field legal teams to counter. But those with lower means accept the plea-bargain, or out-of-court-settlement. In both cases the truth of matter is less relevant than the ability to apply pressure and costs. Isn't that the core issue?

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