alt Hacker News> I’ve heard this argument in the context of capital punishment, and I find it incredibly unconvincing.
This is more or less a false dichotomy.
Capital punishment is by definition irreversible, so mistakes aren't tolerable.
Being arrested is legally and reasonably far more correctable with few lasting consequences: we can absorb these mistakes in the rare events they occur.
Any law-enforcement also non-reversible. Do false positives get their years of life back? No. And there is far less scrutiny on that (see DA deal and all that).
Capital punishment just takes all of them instead of few-to-tens of percent of a life (often the most valuable years).