I think part of the problem, as you've nicely discussed, pgg, is that we necessarily need to include the discussion about cost - financial cost - to society.
So, you can't have it both ways.
If you are going to talk about cost, then you need to look at what value each individual provides to society. In my opinion, there is no value to arresting and putting someone in jail for having, say, a pot plant in their house grown for their own personal use that's perhaps found incidentally when the police respond to a report of a burglary at that home.
That person may be a tax-paying, highly-functioning member of society and the "cost" to society of prosecuting them and potentially sticking them in jail, not just the court and legal costs as well as what it costs to put and keep them in jail, should be added to removing someone from a productive, contributing, tax-paying life in society for what is tantamount to a victimless crime.
On the other hand, there are what Karl Marx called the "lumpenproletariat". Because Marxist theory couldn't adequately account for and explain away this cohort of society - nor motivate them to meaningfully contribute to it, this became a large part of the reason why Marxism - and widely implemented Socialism - was deemed unable to ever work. These people provide no benefit to society - and incur tremendous cost to the same.
I once overheard a trauma surgeon say angrily to a cop in the trauma bay one time, "Next time finish the job!" At the time, I was horrified.
It took me years to finally understand what he meant. It was after I took care of a patient, a drunk ex-convict running from the police on his bicycle, who'd been struck by a police car and subsequently smacking his head on the windshield.
The patient had a moderate amount of intraparenchymal brain bleeding, a pneumothorax, and a broken wrist. He was in his early 40's, and had spent his entire life in and out of prison, for things ranging from petty crimes to actual felony assault on a woman.
He was in our ICU (where I was in residency), and cussed and swore the entire time he was there. He spit on nurses. He constantly was trying to get out of bed. He had fulminant, full-blown delirium tremens (which was treated), he was intubated and extubated twice, and had a chest-tube reinserted after it was pulled out.
In total, he spent about 17 days in the hospital, telling staff on each floor he went to how he was either going to kill them or sue them, before finally leaving AMA.
I would estimate, in total - including two trips to the OR, that he probably racked-up between $85,000-$95,000 in charges while he was there. Forget about the fact that he robbed us of resources and the potential for another patient to get a bed.
What did I want to do?
I wanted to find the cop that ran into this guy and give him a little lecture. The substance of this lecture would have been the following...
"Look, I understand that you were probably, in the heat of the moment, pretty pissed off at this guy. He probably, I dunno, flipped you the bird or something, and then started running away on his bike. And, on some level, I bet it felt really good - and you felt justified by the law and whatever else going through your mind at the time - to run him over. What you actually accomplished, however, was the ultimate 'f*ck you' to scores of doctors, nurses, and technicians in the hospital who had to clean-up your misplaced and ineffective little 'behavioral modification' exercise. So, next time, why don't you let this P.O.S. go on his merry way, or put your foot all the way down on the accelerator and finish the job."
We, as a society, have been paying - on so many different levels - for this kind of shenanigans for far too long.
-copro
