September 30, 2004

Good behavior

I think if I ever go to prison, I'm gonna have to shoot for time off for good behavior. That really seems like the way to go. I'm not saying I'd be the warden's pet or anything. It's not that I would completely sell myself out. I'm just saying, I'm already pretty well behaved in normal society. Its not hard to imagine that in a society of prisoners my already decent behavior would seem amazingly good. The standards aren't exactly very high in prison. The problem is that it's hard to fit in at prison when one is well-behaved. I imagine its hard to go an entire sentence, shortened or not, without getting into a single knife fight or inmate uprising. I mean, if I spend all my time in the prison library without causing any trouble, I might as well be wearing a sign that says "Please make me your bitch." Since I am a huge nerd, I have come up with an equation for making tough prison decisions. The parameters are:
  • ts - The amount of prison time saved by getting out early for good behavior (measured in years)
  • ugb(t) - A function which, given an amount of time (in years), outputs the amount of utility (in some arbitrary unit, say, utils) I could obtain in that amount of time.
  • pb - The probability that I will be made someone's bitch if I try for good behavior.
  • pnb - The probability that I will be made someone's bitch if I don't try for good behavior.
  • ub - The utility of being someone's bitch (this is almost surely a negative number)

With all these parameters, the equations are the following:
U1 = pb * ub + ugb(ts)
U2 = pnb * ub

U1 represents the expected utility of trying for good behavior, while U2 represents the expected utility of not trying for good behavior. If U1 is higher than U2, than I should try for the good behavior. Of course, the crux of these equations are the probabilities. If there is not much difference between pb and pnb, this means that I stand the same chance of being someone's bitch either way. In this case, I might as well go for good behavior. If there is much greater chance of being someone's bitch because of good behavior, well then maybe I should think about just waiting it out. Of course, this is a simple model. If you have any extensions that would make it more accurate, let me know. And if you think that this is disturbing, you should see the parameters I left out. Posted by mill1991 at September 30, 2004 10:27 AM | TrackBack

Comments

I have a question for Tim that I don't think was ever settled--are girls disturbed if you are dancing with them and they can feel your bulge?

Posted by: Dick Frisky at September 30, 2004 06:24 PM

I have a question for Tim that I don't think was ever settled--are girls disturbed if you are dancing with them and they can feel your bulge?

Posted by: Dick Frisky at September 30, 2004 06:25 PM

Tim -
This is a well thought out hypothesis, however, it may very well be a moot point. Many states are going to "truth in sentencing". What this means, is you serve what you are sentenced. Wisconsin is one such state which is moving towards this, not sure what MN is doing? However, good behavior might get you something else of utility, say another piece of bread at dinner or maybe a extra episode of Star Trek before bed.
Wapner, J

Posted by: Judge Wapner at October 1, 2004 05:29 PM
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