9 ms·

Want to end mass incarceration? Stop blindly reelecting your local prosecutor

182 points by iamjeff 10y ago

m3rc 10y ago
The people who really control your day to day life are these people, the local legislators and executives. Way more people need to vote and vote intelligently in their local elections
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  The funny thing is that local and federal politics has been reversed from what I'd consider the desirable order. I think the federal government should be filled up with starry-eyed idealists and the local government should be run by pragmatic conservatives. But for some reason we've got the conservatives in power at the federal level and at the local level, at least where I live, the most useless hippies you've ever met. I don't know how it got to be that way.
carsongross 10y ago
Want people to participate in local elections? Stop federalizing politics.
- cwbrandsma 10y ago
  That is no match for the general population's apathy. Seriously, "you can lead a horse to water" applies pretty strongly here.
  - redwards510 10y ago
    I firmly believe if voting were made as easy and satisfying as hitting a "Like" button, we would have astronomical "turnout" rates. However, I can't get over two problems with that. The ease of hacking and the failure of our democracy to create secure, open-source digital voting (see: Diebold) and the inability to prevent vote-stealing. Think about if on voting day, your employer demanded to use your phone to cast a vote using your account or you'd be fired.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > The ease of hacking and the failure of our democracy to create secure, open-source digital voting (see: Diebold) and the inability to prevent vote-stealing. For the former, we could have verifiable votes: you get a anonymous token, and can look up your vote on a public register by that token. The only problem with that approach is that it makes voter coercion (forcing someone to vote a given way) somewhat easier. However, many states already allow absentee ballots, and some (such as Oregon) do all voting by mail with no "polling booth" option, which has exactly the same property. So, personally, I'd suggest entirely electronic voting, verifiable votes via anonymous tokens, public lists of votes (so anyone can re-run the voting algorithm to check the result), and strong laws against voter coercion (so that employer you mentioned would get prosecuted).
- deelowe 10y ago
  Local governments severely lack the funding and resources needed to engage with the community like they should. It's really sad, but by the time the fed and state take their cut, there's not much left for the city or county.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    That's exactly right. When I'm God Emperor Dictator, we invert the taxation rates at the federal and local levels.
  - sidlls 10y ago
    It's not like the federal and state governments dictate taxation and revenue (entirely), take their cut and leave the rest with local governments. Local governments can raise revenue with various kinds of taxes independently of rates and schedules at the Federal or State level. The real reason local governments typically lack resources for truly local needs is that the most vocal locals tend to be NIMBY typea and anti-tax types.
    - deelowe 10y ago
      You've clearly never worked in local government if you think it's that easy.
    - deelowe 10y ago
      You've clearly never worked in local government if you think it's that easy.
rayiner 10y ago
This is a great article. The DOJ needs to get more involved in keeping state and local policing in line. The civil rights lawsuit filed against Ferguson, MO, earlier this year is a good start. Long-term, getting rid of elected prosecutors and judges at the state level would be a huge help.
- IpV8 10y ago
  This would mean more power residing in the federal government. Do we really need more power to be centralized? It seems to me that the fed is already a bit over their heads. What we need is educated voters and more alternatives to prison. We also need a more reasonable trial system; how can a low income defendant hire a decent lawyer? I think that there are things that the fed can do to better the situation, but butting in to states' jurisdiction is a slippery slope. The Ferguson suit is a case of 'good because it aligns with my beliefs'. What if the fed stepped in and did the opposite?
  - Retric 10y ago
    From what I have seen Federal is less corrupt than state, and state is less corrupt than Local. So, in terms of justice we are probably better off centralizing it. Honestly, I suspect the only reason for local cops is they will actually enforce the little rules like what time of day people can put out their trash cans.
  - wfo 10y ago
    According to what I understood from the article, a trial is not even relevant. Lawyers are barely relevant. A prosecutor threatens someone with a life-destroying extreme sentence, and they take the short plea term. Confess to this crime you may have committed or we will destroy you. End of story. No trial, no long discussion, your lawyer will advise you to take the deal because facing 30 years in prison for a minor offense is a very real possibility. The cops will lie in court and be believed, forensic science will be fabricated, it's just not worth the risk. Federal or state.
    - fisherjeff 10y ago
ginko 10y ago
Coming from a country with non-elected state attourneys and compulsory prosection the American approach to this seems rather weird. Wouldn't electing prosecutors essentially make them politicians?
- dansze 10y ago
  Afaik the idea behind elected prosecutors and judges is to make sure that the law represents what the people want, since a prosecutor or judge that fails to convict when the people want a conviction won't get re-elected. So yes, they are politicians, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing. Of course, being north of the border, I'm not exactly versed in American state politics.
  - stryk 10y ago
    I believe that's the idea, yes. However it's very easy to see that it doesn't actually work that way. Unseating an incumbent candidate in local governments is damn near impossible, barring "scandals" or obvious extremes (but not even then, depending on the area we're talking about).
  - ginko 10y ago
    But isn't it up to the legislative branch to make/amend laws? Why elect the judiciary branch, which is only supposed to interpret those laws?
    - droopyEyelids 10y ago
      This is actually a big deal in America and a fundamental change in how our government operates. Your idea is right, but since the 1960s judicial authority has grown in a way that increases their responsibility to the point where they're almost legislators themselves.
    - Amezarak 10y ago
      Because there's a lot of different ways to interpret laws, judges have a fair amount of flexibility in sentencing, and elected judges aren't by default just cronies of whoever appointed them.
squozzer 10y ago
85 percent [of prosecutors] ran unopposed in general elections. I would speculate the remaining 15 percent were assistant running against their boss -- which even in America, is a huge career gamble.
falsestprophet 10y ago
"One of the most baffling aspects of the US criminal justice system is that incarceration rates continued to rise even after crime began dropping in the 1990s. If crime was dropping, it stands to reason that there should have been fewer criminals to lock up." That isn't necessarily correct. Crime rates and prosecution aren't directly coupled. It could be that we are simply incarcerating a larger proportion of criminals. Chicago, for example, had a murder clearance rate of 26% in 2015 compared to the national average of 64%. There is clearly an opportunity (a need in my opinion) to incarcerate more murderers especially in Chicago even though the murder rate has been decreasing in recent years.
spacemanmatt 10y ago
Stop re-electing any prosecutor.
rch 10y ago
Open data initiatives might lead to apps that help keep people informed about local politics. I'd like to see city council votes when I check the weather in the morning, for instance.
- moosey 10y ago
  Unfortunately, for a huge percentage of people, it won't be seen if it doesn't show up on a facebook feed.
Brendinooo 10y ago
Voting for a prosecutor or judge is tough to do, speaking from experience. I tend to rely on outside authorities for this sort of thing - namely, the local papers' endorsements. The lack of data mentioned in the article is a big deal. Another thing that's probably underrated in a lot of districts is the lack of competition. Where I live, if you're not a Democrat, you don't really get a relevant primary vote for people on the municipal or county level. The article notes that "85 percent ran unopposed in general elections", but many of those might have had a much tougher primary fight, which excludes the other party and independents.
- ravenstine 10y ago
  Voting for judges is also in conflict with the notion that they are supposed to be impartial. Maybe we should change the system so that judges aren't elected by the public, but they can be ousted by the public.
  - Brendinooo 10y ago
    I don't know if it's possible to avoid impartiality these days, if it was ever possible. The Merrick Garland nomination speaks to this. Recall votes would be just as motivated by politics; they'd just be more favorable to incumbents.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  >namely, the local papers' endorsements By which it is meant, the recommendation of whatever mega-millionaire owns the paper.
  - Brendinooo 10y ago
    If I had better, more unbiased ways to get information, I'd happily take them. At least endorsements are in the editorial section, so you know what you're getting. Pittsburgh has a right-leaning paper and a left-leaning paper, so if they both endorse the same candidate that's pretty telling to me.
ravenstine 10y ago
Democracy as a whole is kind of illusory at this point; the world has grown to such a scale and the general public so distracted that they often can't make valid decisions at the polling booth because they are so disconnected from the issues. In the old days, there were only so many things people had to understand before they were given a vote and, while those issues were more impactful on everyday life, they were also less complicated. Today, the real issues have gotten complicated and nuanced, but the average human IQ and curiosity level has not caught up. As a result, we are handed lots of small and barely-relevant decisions to give us that illusion of choice, both for practical reasons and to shut us up. Local elections certainly have more impact on one's life, and really aren't hard to understand, but life is too good for most people to care enough. And, with people more infantilized than ever, the more they want surrogate mommies and daddies to make the tough decisions for them, just as their own parents did for them in childhood. So, when we are handed a piece of paper so we can say who we want to be our surrogate parents, most of us say "meh" and vote for the incumbents because, well, we have our smart phones, TV, Starbucks, and gourmet restaurants, so the current politicians can't be doing that bad, right?
- wellpast 10y ago
  Grassroots campaigns (Sanders, Trump) this election cycle raised general awareness of a lot of important issues. I'm not sure the fundamental issues are any more complicated today than they were yesterday. We need more grassroots activism, not cynicism.
- zanny 10y ago
  This is why direct democracy doesn't work, and it is also why representative democracy is good. We have just gotten ourselves into a position where decades of "let the people decide" has led to your ballot including a dozen citizen choices you do not care about. In a saner world, we would be focusing on the representative part of the republic - why am I directly electing judges, magistrates, and prosecutors when it would be significantly better to select representatives to make all these electoral choices for me? Political parties have become a bad proxy for true representation. People just start voting party line and the powers that be love that kind of model - it means great persons cannot rise independent of them, and it means you can blame the bad on the individuals but the success on the party as a whole. And party affiliation has always been a horrible proxy for effective leadership. Instead, we are in a situation where our "representatives" are representing millions of people individually, while we vote for dozens of esoteric local elections for things that aren't particularly representative. What we should have is much more localized elections of representatives that then make such bureaucratic appointment decisions themselves, including for the higher levels of government beyond them. IE, you can have a representative for every 3 thousand rather than 3 million people, and that representative will join a local council that appoints the judges, city council, higher level reps, etc.
electic 10y ago
The issue here is win rate. Ask any lawyer or prosecutor and they take pride in that win rate and how many people they have "put away". To get that rate up, they often go after the poor and people who have committed petty crimes while ignoring real white-color and blue-collar crime because it is laborious to prosecute. If you want to lower the rate, you have to lower the industry incentives for this type of thinking.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
astazangasta 10y ago
1. I love how this bilthely leads with, "The electoral process is thoroughly corrupt, here's George Soros pushing money through the system to pursue his agenda," and then jumps aboard the train of said agenda with no further questions asked. Good lord, you want us to participate in THIS? Par for the course for Vox. 2. As the article itself makes clear, prosecutors are actors who will respond to whatever incentives we create for them. The evidence and arguments in THIS VERY ARTICLE undercut the notion that we should focus on the role of the local prosecutor, who is basically just a law enforcement officer, and rather focus on changing the laws to reflect the already-shifted moral substrate. 3. Why doesn't Vox ask us to focus on changing the laws? Our only role in their vision is as fodder - herd voters responding to the signals of a billionaire-funded campaign to harry local prosecutors (to what end? who should we elect instead, and why would they act differently?). This, again, is in line with my (limited) understanding of the Vox perspective - "Trust the experts to figure it out, just nod and sign your name here." We, the vox populi, would obviously never be involved in the actual construction or framing of laws. Just vote.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
_petronius 10y ago
Growing up in Tennessee, the practice of electing low-level judicial positions like prosecutors and local judges always seemed like a bad idea. Incompetent or corrupt judges who apply the law in bad or farcical ways create real harm and grief[0][1]. Appointments don't prevent incompetence or corruption, but at least it uncouples local popularity or a lack of voter knowledge from deciding who ought to have the authority to apply the law. It seems like vetting experienced lawyers who have a real understanding of not only what the law is, but also how it should be applied, as happens in the UK[2] can't help but produce a more legally sound criminal justice system at the very least. But then, I suppose it depends on your priorities. If holding judges accountable to the electorate's sense of justice is a higher priority than holding them accountable to what the law actually is, then this is a fine system. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/tennessee-judge-messiah-martin https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/tennessee-judg... [1]: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/crime-courts/dcs-campbell-judge-took-children-from-their-homes-without-legal-grounds-2a7cd13e-fd20-604d-e053-0100-367048301.html http://www.knoxnews.com/news/crime-courts/dcs-campbell-judge... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Appointments_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Appointments_Commissi...
jomamaxx 10y ago
Stop electing members of the Judiciary to begin with, and implement a better system of oversight. Hopefully that has as much local input as national.
VT_Drew 10y ago
Want to end mass incarceration? End the war on drugs. The vast majority of inmates are non-violent drug offenders.
stcredzero 10y ago
This is a good reminder. I should check up on my local prosecutor's position on "innocent until proven guilty." This is not directly enshrined in the US Constitution. Rather, it is inferred from several places. Apparently, this leaves some room for local jurisdictions to soften or abrogate this principle for the sake of enforcement/deterrence.
rdtsc 10y ago
> Over the past few days, news has trickled out that liberal billionaire George Soros has poured millions of dollars into local election campaigns against "tough on crime" Because of lack of education, awareness, care and time, along with the easy with each elections (especially local and state) can be manipulated, we are left at the discretion of benevolent billionaires to fight for us. I remember first becoming aware of this issues after watching Hot Coffee documentary. There is a large part there around how corporate interests can easily manipulate state Judicial branches -- by sponsoring judges which are more favorable to them (in that case it was capping maximum damages people could win during corporate settlements on appeal, and yes, lawyers knew to always appeal). > But that's not the case in much of the country, where prosecutors don't file records that would explain why, for example, they pursued prison time instead of probation for a defendant. "We don't really know why prosecutors do what they do," Pfaff said. I think aside from padding the stats and pleasing voters with "tough on crime", there is a very good reason for prosecutors to prosecute more. It helps prison guard unions (keeps them employed), private prisons, state prisons (cheap labor). Each one of those interests can spare a good amount of cash to sponsor the "right" prosecutor. It is like a long term investment. In fact, they'd be stupid not to do it.
moron4hire 10y ago
For local elections, I make a point of always voting against the incumbent.

182 points by iamjeff 10y ago

m3rc 10y ago

The people who really control your day to day life are these people, the local legislators and executives. Way more people need to vote and vote intelligently in their local elections

honkhonkpants 10y ago
The funny thing is that local and federal politics has been reversed from what I'd consider the desirable order. I think the federal government should be filled up with starry-eyed idealists and the local government should be run by pragmatic conservatives. But for some reason we've got the conservatives in power at the federal level and at the local level, at least where I live, the most useless hippies you've ever met. I don't know how it got to be that way.

carsongross 10y ago

Want people to participate in local elections? Stop federalizing politics.

cwbrandsma 10y ago
That is no match for the general population's apathy. Seriously, "you can lead a horse to water" applies pretty strongly here.
- redwards510 10y ago
  I firmly believe if voting were made as easy and satisfying as hitting a "Like" button, we would have astronomical "turnout" rates. However, I can't get over two problems with that. The ease of hacking and the failure of our democracy to create secure, open-source digital voting (see: Diebold) and the inability to prevent vote-stealing. Think about if on voting day, your employer demanded to use your phone to cast a vote using your account or you'd be fired.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > The ease of hacking and the failure of our democracy to create secure, open-source digital voting (see: Diebold) and the inability to prevent vote-stealing. For the former, we could have verifiable votes: you get a anonymous token, and can look up your vote on a public register by that token. The only problem with that approach is that it makes voter coercion (forcing someone to vote a given way) somewhat easier. However, many states already allow absentee ballots, and some (such as Oregon) do all voting by mail with no "polling booth" option, which has exactly the same property. So, personally, I'd suggest entirely electronic voting, verifiable votes via anonymous tokens, public lists of votes (so anyone can re-run the voting algorithm to check the result), and strong laws against voter coercion (so that employer you mentioned would get prosecuted).
deelowe 10y ago
Local governments severely lack the funding and resources needed to engage with the community like they should. It's really sad, but by the time the fed and state take their cut, there's not much left for the city or county.
- carsongross 10y ago
  That's exactly right. When I'm God Emperor Dictator, we invert the taxation rates at the federal and local levels.
- sidlls 10y ago
  It's not like the federal and state governments dictate taxation and revenue (entirely), take their cut and leave the rest with local governments. Local governments can raise revenue with various kinds of taxes independently of rates and schedules at the Federal or State level. The real reason local governments typically lack resources for truly local needs is that the most vocal locals tend to be NIMBY typea and anti-tax types.
  - deelowe 10y ago
    You've clearly never worked in local government if you think it's that easy.
  - deelowe 10y ago
    You've clearly never worked in local government if you think it's that easy.

rayiner 10y ago

This is a great article. The DOJ needs to get more involved in keeping state and local policing in line. The civil rights lawsuit filed against Ferguson, MO, earlier this year is a good start. Long-term, getting rid of elected prosecutors and judges at the state level would be a huge help.

IpV8 10y ago
This would mean more power residing in the federal government. Do we really need more power to be centralized? It seems to me that the fed is already a bit over their heads. What we need is educated voters and more alternatives to prison. We also need a more reasonable trial system; how can a low income defendant hire a decent lawyer? I think that there are things that the fed can do to better the situation, but butting in to states' jurisdiction is a slippery slope. The Ferguson suit is a case of 'good because it aligns with my beliefs'. What if the fed stepped in and did the opposite?
- Retric 10y ago
  From what I have seen Federal is less corrupt than state, and state is less corrupt than Local. So, in terms of justice we are probably better off centralizing it. Honestly, I suspect the only reason for local cops is they will actually enforce the little rules like what time of day people can put out their trash cans.
- wfo 10y ago
  According to what I understood from the article, a trial is not even relevant. Lawyers are barely relevant. A prosecutor threatens someone with a life-destroying extreme sentence, and they take the short plea term. Confess to this crime you may have committed or we will destroy you. End of story. No trial, no long discussion, your lawyer will advise you to take the deal because facing 30 years in prison for a minor offense is a very real possibility. The cops will lie in court and be believed, forensic science will be fabricated, it's just not worth the risk. Federal or state.
  - fisherjeff 10y ago

ginko 10y ago

Coming from a country with non-elected state attourneys and compulsory prosection the American approach to this seems rather weird. Wouldn't electing prosecutors essentially make them politicians?

dansze 10y ago
Afaik the idea behind elected prosecutors and judges is to make sure that the law represents what the people want, since a prosecutor or judge that fails to convict when the people want a conviction won't get re-elected. So yes, they are politicians, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing. Of course, being north of the border, I'm not exactly versed in American state politics.
- stryk 10y ago
  I believe that's the idea, yes. However it's very easy to see that it doesn't actually work that way. Unseating an incumbent candidate in local governments is damn near impossible, barring "scandals" or obvious extremes (but not even then, depending on the area we're talking about).
- ginko 10y ago
  But isn't it up to the legislative branch to make/amend laws? Why elect the judiciary branch, which is only supposed to interpret those laws?
  - droopyEyelids 10y ago
    This is actually a big deal in America and a fundamental change in how our government operates. Your idea is right, but since the 1960s judicial authority has grown in a way that increases their responsibility to the point where they're almost legislators themselves.
  - Amezarak 10y ago
    Because there's a lot of different ways to interpret laws, judges have a fair amount of flexibility in sentencing, and elected judges aren't by default just cronies of whoever appointed them.

squozzer 10y ago

85 percent [of prosecutors] ran unopposed in general elections. I would speculate the remaining 15 percent were assistant running against their boss -- which even in America, is a huge career gamble.

falsestprophet 10y ago

"One of the most baffling aspects of the US criminal justice system is that incarceration rates continued to rise even after crime began dropping in the 1990s. If crime was dropping, it stands to reason that there should have been fewer criminals to lock up." That isn't necessarily correct. Crime rates and prosecution aren't directly coupled. It could be that we are simply incarcerating a larger proportion of criminals. Chicago, for example, had a murder clearance rate of 26% in 2015 compared to the national average of 64%. There is clearly an opportunity (a need in my opinion) to incarcerate more murderers especially in Chicago even though the murder rate has been decreasing in recent years.

spacemanmatt 10y ago

Stop re-electing any prosecutor.

rch 10y ago

Open data initiatives might lead to apps that help keep people informed about local politics. I'd like to see city council votes when I check the weather in the morning, for instance.

moosey 10y ago
Unfortunately, for a huge percentage of people, it won't be seen if it doesn't show up on a facebook feed.

Brendinooo 10y ago

Voting for a prosecutor or judge is tough to do, speaking from experience. I tend to rely on outside authorities for this sort of thing - namely, the local papers' endorsements. The lack of data mentioned in the article is a big deal. Another thing that's probably underrated in a lot of districts is the lack of competition. Where I live, if you're not a Democrat, you don't really get a relevant primary vote for people on the municipal or county level. The article notes that "85 percent ran unopposed in general elections", but many of those might have had a much tougher primary fight, which excludes the other party and independents.

ravenstine 10y ago
Voting for judges is also in conflict with the notion that they are supposed to be impartial. Maybe we should change the system so that judges aren't elected by the public, but they can be ousted by the public.
- Brendinooo 10y ago
  I don't know if it's possible to avoid impartiality these days, if it was ever possible. The Merrick Garland nomination speaks to this. Recall votes would be just as motivated by politics; they'd just be more favorable to incumbents.
whamlastxmas 10y ago
>namely, the local papers' endorsements By which it is meant, the recommendation of whatever mega-millionaire owns the paper.
- Brendinooo 10y ago
  If I had better, more unbiased ways to get information, I'd happily take them. At least endorsements are in the editorial section, so you know what you're getting. Pittsburgh has a right-leaning paper and a left-leaning paper, so if they both endorse the same candidate that's pretty telling to me.

ravenstine 10y ago

Democracy as a whole is kind of illusory at this point; the world has grown to such a scale and the general public so distracted that they often can't make valid decisions at the polling booth because they are so disconnected from the issues. In the old days, there were only so many things people had to understand before they were given a vote and, while those issues were more impactful on everyday life, they were also less complicated. Today, the real issues have gotten complicated and nuanced, but the average human IQ and curiosity level has not caught up. As a result, we are handed lots of small and barely-relevant decisions to give us that illusion of choice, both for practical reasons and to shut us up. Local elections certainly have more impact on one's life, and really aren't hard to understand, but life is too good for most people to care enough. And, with people more infantilized than ever, the more they want surrogate mommies and daddies to make the tough decisions for them, just as their own parents did for them in childhood. So, when we are handed a piece of paper so we can say who we want to be our surrogate parents, most of us say "meh" and vote for the incumbents because, well, we have our smart phones, TV, Starbucks, and gourmet restaurants, so the current politicians can't be doing that bad, right?

wellpast 10y ago
Grassroots campaigns (Sanders, Trump) this election cycle raised general awareness of a lot of important issues. I'm not sure the fundamental issues are any more complicated today than they were yesterday. We need more grassroots activism, not cynicism.
zanny 10y ago
This is why direct democracy doesn't work, and it is also why representative democracy is good. We have just gotten ourselves into a position where decades of "let the people decide" has led to your ballot including a dozen citizen choices you do not care about. In a saner world, we would be focusing on the representative part of the republic - why am I directly electing judges, magistrates, and prosecutors when it would be significantly better to select representatives to make all these electoral choices for me? Political parties have become a bad proxy for true representation. People just start voting party line and the powers that be love that kind of model - it means great persons cannot rise independent of them, and it means you can blame the bad on the individuals but the success on the party as a whole. And party affiliation has always been a horrible proxy for effective leadership. Instead, we are in a situation where our "representatives" are representing millions of people individually, while we vote for dozens of esoteric local elections for things that aren't particularly representative. What we should have is much more localized elections of representatives that then make such bureaucratic appointment decisions themselves, including for the higher levels of government beyond them. IE, you can have a representative for every 3 thousand rather than 3 million people, and that representative will join a local council that appoints the judges, city council, higher level reps, etc.

electic 10y ago

The issue here is win rate. Ask any lawyer or prosecutor and they take pride in that win rate and how many people they have "put away". To get that rate up, they often go after the poor and people who have committed petty crimes while ignoring real white-color and blue-collar crime because it is laborious to prosecute. If you want to lower the rate, you have to lower the industry incentives for this type of thinking.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

astazangasta 10y ago

1. I love how this bilthely leads with, "The electoral process is thoroughly corrupt, here's George Soros pushing money through the system to pursue his agenda," and then jumps aboard the train of said agenda with no further questions asked. Good lord, you want us to participate in THIS? Par for the course for Vox. 2. As the article itself makes clear, prosecutors are actors who will respond to whatever incentives we create for them. The evidence and arguments in THIS VERY ARTICLE undercut the notion that we should focus on the role of the local prosecutor, who is basically just a law enforcement officer, and rather focus on changing the laws to reflect the already-shifted moral substrate. 3. Why doesn't Vox ask us to focus on changing the laws? Our only role in their vision is as fodder - herd voters responding to the signals of a billionaire-funded campaign to harry local prosecutors (to what end? who should we elect instead, and why would they act differently?). This, again, is in line with my (limited) understanding of the Vox perspective - "Trust the experts to figure it out, just nod and sign your name here." We, the vox populi, would obviously never be involved in the actual construction or framing of laws. Just vote.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

_petronius 10y ago

Growing up in Tennessee, the practice of electing low-level judicial positions like prosecutors and local judges always seemed like a bad idea. Incompetent or corrupt judges who apply the law in bad or farcical ways create real harm and grief[0][1]. Appointments don't prevent incompetence or corruption, but at least it uncouples local popularity or a lack of voter knowledge from deciding who ought to have the authority to apply the law. It seems like vetting experienced lawyers who have a real understanding of not only what the law is, but also how it should be applied, as happens in the UK[2] can't help but produce a more legally sound criminal justice system at the very least. But then, I suppose it depends on your priorities. If holding judges accountable to the electorate's sense of justice is a higher priority than holding them accountable to what the law actually is, then this is a fine system. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/tennessee-judge-messiah-martin https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/tennessee-judg... [1]: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/crime-courts/dcs-campbell-judge-took-children-from-their-homes-without-legal-grounds-2a7cd13e-fd20-604d-e053-0100-367048301.html http://www.knoxnews.com/news/crime-courts/dcs-campbell-judge... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Appointments_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Appointments_Commissi...

jomamaxx 10y ago

Stop electing members of the Judiciary to begin with, and implement a better system of oversight. Hopefully that has as much local input as national.

VT_Drew 10y ago

Want to end mass incarceration? End the war on drugs. The vast majority of inmates are non-violent drug offenders.

stcredzero 10y ago

This is a good reminder. I should check up on my local prosecutor's position on "innocent until proven guilty." This is not directly enshrined in the US Constitution. Rather, it is inferred from several places. Apparently, this leaves some room for local jurisdictions to soften or abrogate this principle for the sake of enforcement/deterrence.

rdtsc 10y ago

> Over the past few days, news has trickled out that liberal billionaire George Soros has poured millions of dollars into local election campaigns against "tough on crime" Because of lack of education, awareness, care and time, along with the easy with each elections (especially local and state) can be manipulated, we are left at the discretion of benevolent billionaires to fight for us. I remember first becoming aware of this issues after watching Hot Coffee documentary. There is a large part there around how corporate interests can easily manipulate state Judicial branches -- by sponsoring judges which are more favorable to them (in that case it was capping maximum damages people could win during corporate settlements on appeal, and yes, lawyers knew to always appeal). > But that's not the case in much of the country, where prosecutors don't file records that would explain why, for example, they pursued prison time instead of probation for a defendant. "We don't really know why prosecutors do what they do," Pfaff said. I think aside from padding the stats and pleasing voters with "tough on crime", there is a very good reason for prosecutors to prosecute more. It helps prison guard unions (keeps them employed), private prisons, state prisons (cheap labor). Each one of those interests can spare a good amount of cash to sponsor the "right" prosecutor. It is like a long term investment. In fact, they'd be stupid not to do it.

moron4hire 10y ago

For local elections, I make a point of always voting against the incumbent.