PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE THE SAME WAY
It appears that prison does not have an effect on the global result.
The incapacitating periods appear compensated by increased activity
once the bird is out of the cage. This hard will to comply with the
program and the schedule makes the criminal forecastable. His past
activity contains the information to map the future one, in the same
sense a segment of the trajectory of a bullet can be used to calculate
the previous part and the following part.
Marchetti then proceeds to suggest that limited prison sentences for
theft and minor crimes should be abolished. Confinement is ineffective
in protecting society because offenders usually “catch up” with accelerated
criminality as soon as they are out of prison. He also thinks that
detaining people in prisons as corrective action is too expensive and
consequently an inefficient way of spending taxpayers’ money. A better
use of the money would be to compensate the victims, thus treating
crime as something like other social misfortunes.
At my first opportunity I argued with Marchetti on this issue. My
understanding of competitive growth tells me that natural processes reflect
an equilibrium between opposing forces, and that a criminal career
would “aim” at a higher plateau had there been no deterrents whatsoever.
Fear of a jail sentence certainly helps suppress the expression of
criminal impulses. Marchetti agreed with me, but he had an answer
ready: “Why not something like old-fashioned thrashings?” he suggested.
“They could serve as a deterrent, and they cost far less than
prison sentences.”
Endless criticisms would certainly be sparked by such arguments.
Yet there is a moral to this story, and it should be acceptable to most
people. The matching of S-curves to criminal careers—and the ensuing
forecasts—can only be done after a sizable portion of one’s criminality
has already been realized. From the point of view of a natural growth
process, this time is too late for effective corrective action. The continued
growth of a tree that has already reached a fair fraction of its final
height is more or less secured. Measures to really combat criminality
effectively should be taken before a person establishes him or herself as
a criminal.
“Programmed” criminality is not restricted to individuals. In the
case of creativity and innovation we have seen similarities between
individual and aggregate cases (companies and nations). A company
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