human
If poor people commit more crimes, why don't we just jail them before they've committed any?
assistant
The legal definition of crime is "an act committed in violation of a law and punishable by law". To me, that implies that a person must be aware of what the law says, and make an active choice to disobey that law. That means I think people shouldn't be imprisoned just for their actions, but only for their decisions. I don't see a clear way to do that if we don't let people know about the laws in the first place. Maybe we could allow people to be aware of a very limited set of laws, that don't affect them, and are based on cooperation and coexistence rather than competition. If we do that, we could have some guidelines on what the laws would be, and there wouldn't be an unfair surprise for people when they're breaking the law.