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> lawyers make a lot of money on defending AND putting people to prison for stupid things The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by run
by jaredklewis 8y ago
> lawyers make a lot of money on defending AND putting people to prison for stupid things
The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless.
To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. The median pay for public prosecutors with with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $81,500. For public defenders (who handle roughly 80% of all felony cases [1]), the median pay for someone with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $62,550. Oh, these fat, fat cats in criminal justice! And if anyone here thinks the work life balance in SV companies leaves something to be desired, I encourage you to read about the bat-shit hours that the average criminal attorney puts in. 20 hours of overtime a week would not raise any eyebrows.
And basically those salaries are not affected by caseload. Whether 100 or 50 people go to prison makes no financial difference to lawyers on either side. Some prosecutors have bonuses contingent on conviction rate or volume, but such agreements are rare and when they do exist, the bonuses are never contingent on sentencing, so there would be no incentive to send people to prison. There is no equivalent for defense attorneys.
And all of the above just speaks to your claim's stunning lack of circumstantial evidence, to say nothing of the lack of actual evidence that lawyers are intentionally putting more people in prison to make money.
The US justice system is rife with problems. But the idea that a root cause of those problems is lawyers trying to make more money just doesn't make sense.
1. http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html
- simonsarris 8y ago> The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless. That's strange of you to say. Haven't lawyers conspired to do just that before? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal > To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. Is it not well understood that people who are less highly remunerated are more prone to seeking out illegal sources of additional funds? This is the justification for extremely high ministerial salaries in Singapore - to avoid such corruption.
- jaredklewis 8y agoIt was certainly a disturbing case, but let's review the point we are discussing (as raised by the parent): whether the high incarceration rates in the US are in part the result of lawyers systematically profiting from the criminal justice system. Are you really making the argument that lawyers all across the US are systematically making deals such as the ones that took place in Luzerne County, therby leading to high incaceration rates? Do we have evidence to lead us to believe that the kind of deals found in Luzerne County are widespread? Honestly, I find the suggestion preposterous. The criminal justice system in the US is in dire need of reform and it's infuriating that discussions of said reform are often distracted by these kinds of baseless conspiracy theories. If you ask me, the US's world leading incarceration rates probably have much more to do with the outsized sentence lengths, drastically underfunded public defense funds, mandatory sentencing requirements, lack of due prosecutorial discretion, overcharging and abuse of plea bargains, and insane drug legislation to name a few things. Oh, but that's so complicated. It's probably just all those greedy criminal lawyers. /s