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It is but it is extremely rare. These are systemic problems, caused by the construction of the system itself and not due to bad actors. One problem is to have

It is but it is extremely rare. These are systemic problems, caused by the construction of the system itself and not due to bad actors. One problem is to have a successful suit against wrongful imprisonment, you have to prove intent. If somebody accidentally imprisoned you acting in good faith, the idea is that people make mistakes. There is automatic protection built into the system to allow prosecutors and LE to do their jobs. If there wasn't intent but the job they did was sloppy, it becomes a very grey area because then you have to define "sloppy". Everybody's sloppy to some degree or another, so the courts have set a high bar here (IANAL, just what I've read). The second problem is that laws and punishments are set in isolation, as if they were dealing with an ideal citizen who just broke one law. If you've got a job, a car, and savings and then you forget to pay your car insurance, a hefty fine isn't a big deal. If, however, you're poor and have to drive without insurance just to have a job and eat, then the laws were not set up with you in mind. It's not malice by one person that causes this. It's apathy among dozens of people all with different slices of the problem. It's not clear who would be the person responsible or who would have the supervisory authority over all of these people to prevent it even if the system were in place to find restitution.

thechao 8y ago
I understand the situation as described. I do feel that many Americans (including myself) would be happier without intent: the imprisonment of a free person is a fundamental violation of constitutional rights and, regardless of intent, is a wrong, which should lead to compensation.
- hvidgaard 8y ago
  That would be a fair take on it. If you wrongfully imprison anyone, they get compensation. If all evidence points to them, but they was found not guilty, then they were wrongfully imprisoned and the intent and "why" doesn't really matter to that person.
  - CamTin 8y ago
    This has its own potential problems. Prosecutors might be under even more pressure to get convictions or plea bargains, since the alternative, if somebody is already arrested and awaiting trial, is that their bosses (ultimately elected officials) have to shell out public money for a wrongful imprisonment case. Not saying the idea doesn't have merit, but all the moving parts and bizarre incentives of this system make it very hard to make adjustments without having 2nd or 3rd order effects that may be even worse than what we have.
    - refurb 8y ago
      Being held in jail prior to a decision of guilty/not guilty wouldn’t be wrongful imprisonment.
      - bdhess 8y ago
        Why not? How can this thread make sense in the context of the article otherwise?
        refurb 8y ago
        Based on the article, I'd say the problem is the fact it took 6 months for the court to actually hear the case. People have a right to due process.
      - mannykannot 8y ago
        It is not that straightforward in the US, as the issue is really whether pre-trial detention is being used as a way to circumvent the speedy trial clause of the 6th. amendment.
    - EvilEndures 8y ago
      Prosecutors already only take cases they think they can win via plea bargain. Part of why convinction rates are so high is Prosecutors ignore any case they might lose or the defendant can afford a quality lawyer who might cast reasonable doubt on the verdict. I doubt repayment for wrongful imprisonment would make that worse.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  I agree. It's horribly broken and only by getting somebody to pay will there be enough incentive to fix it and keep it fixed. But it is a tricky wicket. You would have to go after the governmental authority, local, state, or federal. Those authorities are usually protected by the ones above them. Assuming you could go after them, their argument will probably be something like "We don't completely control the entire system you are holding us responsible for." This also is controlled by the next level up. So there are at least two major structural problems: protection by the next level up and dozens of people in various other governmental units contributing to the problem. The social worker hired by the state that says the father who broke a local law is a flight risk is not somebody the local government has any control over. The state or federal government requires that folks like this be an important part of administrating law, yet local governments don't manage them. You end up beating local governments up for nothing -- and the problem doesn't change since they couldn't do anything about it in the first place. Oddly enough, if you continue to pressure these folks, the only thing they can do is let a bunch of people go, some of which are actually violent folks who need to be locked up. Do that enough and they'll replace your local government with one that doesn't do that. I really wish this problem was simpler than it appears to be. It's a terrible situation.
- ataturk 8y ago
  The article is total SWJ crap. I have worked in the legal biz, have relatives who are attorneys. 99.9% of the people who come through the courst are guilty. The courts are extremely lenient with sentencing unless there are extenuating circumstances. In my state, bail is offered to all by law, even the most dangerous offenders (who then often go out and re-offend, including committing murders). If anything, the system isn't tough enough. People who can't make bail and stay in jail? You have to realize that that is the only jail time they will see for often very violent crimes. The system is a mess, yes, but it is not as unjust as depicted in that article. I keep hearing all these comparisons to China and think that is also so tone deaf. China is a place of no justice whatsoever. Any serious crimes in China result in a sentence of a bullet in the back of the head. There is seriously no comparison to US justice, even the worst jurisdictions. Let me explain something else while I'm here, too: The US wouldn't have so much damn crime had the liberals not insisted upon allowing so many millions of illegal immigrants into the country. That act alone was reprehensible and so far beyond the pale of ethical governance. The breach of public trust by those looking to import humans as a political weapon is astounding. They don't care about the plight of those people, they just want to jam up the system and thereby break it, which has worked quite well.
- 1024core 8y ago
  > is a fundamental violation of constitutional rights That's one thing I don't understand: why isn't violation of Constitutional Rights a crime in itself? I mean, speeding by 10mph on a road with noone around gets you at least a ticket; but violating someone's rights? Nothing. Of course, by definition, this can be done only by government actors, but I still feel that there should be a price to pay even for government actors when they violate the fundamental law of the land.
deckiedan 8y ago
If the system is broken/to blame, then the system should be sued. What if the state had to pay compensation in cases of "honest" mistakes? Then the state would start having to try harder to not let innocents get imprisoned.
- dustingetz 8y ago
  Read 48 Laws of Power to understand why it doesn't work like that. The constitution, checks and balances, regulations etc are an attempt to engineer the natural forces of power into more productive directions, but, "there are no hard lines in nature", and all attempts to engineer hard lines will show strain at the limits, for example this square wave is actually a sum of curves: https://archive.cnx.org/resources/0d187381962fb659307c2847763ed0cb374827f2/fourier4.png https://archive.cnx.org/resources/0d187381962fb659307c284776... "A would-be reformer who wants to improve social welfare by changing people's behavior to a better equilibrium must take care to identify a social plan that is in fact a Nash equilibrium, so that nobody can profit by unilaterally deviating from the plan." Meyerson – full quote here: http://www.dustingetz.com/:web-3.0/ http://www.dustingetz.com/:web-3.0/
wongarsu 8y ago
Establishing guilt and intent doesn't seem like a good approach here, or at least it shouldn't be the usual approach. Wrongful imprisonment should trigger an automatic payout from the institution imprisoning you. Then allow a court case to establish if the case deserves a higher than normal payout because of the specific circumstances. If these payouts are large enough they create pressure to both solve systematic problems and to punish individuals who cause abnormally high rates of wrongful imprisonment.
- testvox 8y ago
  Or it motivates institutions to never find anyone to be wrongly imprisoned.
rayiner 8y ago
EDIT: Since OP was apparently talking about pre-conviction jailing, my comment was non-responsive to his point, and likely yours as well.
- bdhess 8y ago
  Your information/links are about the wrongly convicted, but TFA is about accusals.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    But OP’s question is about “wrongful imprisonment.”
    - zazen 8y ago
      OP does use the word "imprisonment", but I think it's possible he's actually asking about pre-trial incarceration. OP says he's from Europe, and a lot of countries don't have the jail/prison distinction as in the USA.
      - Svip 8y ago
        We do actually (»varetægtsfængslet« in Danish), but I forgot the appropriate term in English. I thought given the context that we were talking about bails, I didn't have to be specific.
        rayiner 8y ago
        Ah ok. I was confused by your question because while the distinction between pre-conviction "jail" and post-conviction "prison" is not always followed in English, "wrongful imprisonment" as a phrase almost always refers to wrongful conviction + imprisonment.
        tialaramex 8y ago
        I don't know the phrase "Wrongful imprisonment" but I'd assumed "Unlawful imprisonment" which is a crime and I'd associate it not with people who were wrongly _convicted_ because their conviction means imprisoning them was lawful, rather I'd associate it with situations where someone's freedom is taken away by some process other than the due process of law. If you're wrongly convicted the conviction must be overturned, whereupon you're innocent and will be freed by normal operation of the law (assuming you didn't also commit some other crime for which you're imprisoned) As example of what I'd think of as "unlawful imprisonment" there are problems in the UK with wives brought from countries where women, especially poor women, aren't treated very well - who are sometimes basically used as household slaves. The law against unlawful imprisonment doesn't require that they be chained up or in a locked room or anything, even a strong psychological coercion to remain ("You are my wife! You mustn't leave the home without my express permission") could be enough to make this unlawful. Or you'll sometimes get people taking the law into their own hands, somebody catches a shoplifter and decides to put him in the walk-in fridge to "teach him a lesson" - that sort of thing. Again, that's a crime.
gamblor956 8y ago
One problem is to have a successful suit against wrongful imprisonment, you have to prove intent. That's not true at all. Who told you that? Wrongful imprisonment suits generally depend on the state's laws. Some states provide for damages, some (mostly in the East/South) do not. Intent of the prosecutor or police is irrelevant--what matters is that the person wrongfully accused has been shown not to have committed the crime. Most defendants that win wrongful imprisonment settlements were generally tried by prosecutors utterly convinced that they defendants had actually committed the crime, with no malicious intent.

thechao 8y ago

I understand the situation as described. I do feel that many Americans (including myself) would be happier without intent: the imprisonment of a free person is a fundamental violation of constitutional rights and, regardless of intent, is a wrong, which should lead to compensation.

hvidgaard 8y ago
That would be a fair take on it. If you wrongfully imprison anyone, they get compensation. If all evidence points to them, but they was found not guilty, then they were wrongfully imprisoned and the intent and "why" doesn't really matter to that person.
- CamTin 8y ago
  This has its own potential problems. Prosecutors might be under even more pressure to get convictions or plea bargains, since the alternative, if somebody is already arrested and awaiting trial, is that their bosses (ultimately elected officials) have to shell out public money for a wrongful imprisonment case. Not saying the idea doesn't have merit, but all the moving parts and bizarre incentives of this system make it very hard to make adjustments without having 2nd or 3rd order effects that may be even worse than what we have.
  - refurb 8y ago
    Being held in jail prior to a decision of guilty/not guilty wouldn’t be wrongful imprisonment.
    - bdhess 8y ago
      Why not? How can this thread make sense in the context of the article otherwise?
      - refurb 8y ago
        Based on the article, I'd say the problem is the fact it took 6 months for the court to actually hear the case. People have a right to due process.
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      It is not that straightforward in the US, as the issue is really whether pre-trial detention is being used as a way to circumvent the speedy trial clause of the 6th. amendment.
  - EvilEndures 8y ago
    Prosecutors already only take cases they think they can win via plea bargain. Part of why convinction rates are so high is Prosecutors ignore any case they might lose or the defendant can afford a quality lawyer who might cast reasonable doubt on the verdict. I doubt repayment for wrongful imprisonment would make that worse.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
I agree. It's horribly broken and only by getting somebody to pay will there be enough incentive to fix it and keep it fixed. But it is a tricky wicket. You would have to go after the governmental authority, local, state, or federal. Those authorities are usually protected by the ones above them. Assuming you could go after them, their argument will probably be something like "We don't completely control the entire system you are holding us responsible for." This also is controlled by the next level up. So there are at least two major structural problems: protection by the next level up and dozens of people in various other governmental units contributing to the problem. The social worker hired by the state that says the father who broke a local law is a flight risk is not somebody the local government has any control over. The state or federal government requires that folks like this be an important part of administrating law, yet local governments don't manage them. You end up beating local governments up for nothing -- and the problem doesn't change since they couldn't do anything about it in the first place. Oddly enough, if you continue to pressure these folks, the only thing they can do is let a bunch of people go, some of which are actually violent folks who need to be locked up. Do that enough and they'll replace your local government with one that doesn't do that. I really wish this problem was simpler than it appears to be. It's a terrible situation.
ataturk 8y ago
The article is total SWJ crap. I have worked in the legal biz, have relatives who are attorneys. 99.9% of the people who come through the courst are guilty. The courts are extremely lenient with sentencing unless there are extenuating circumstances. In my state, bail is offered to all by law, even the most dangerous offenders (who then often go out and re-offend, including committing murders). If anything, the system isn't tough enough. People who can't make bail and stay in jail? You have to realize that that is the only jail time they will see for often very violent crimes. The system is a mess, yes, but it is not as unjust as depicted in that article. I keep hearing all these comparisons to China and think that is also so tone deaf. China is a place of no justice whatsoever. Any serious crimes in China result in a sentence of a bullet in the back of the head. There is seriously no comparison to US justice, even the worst jurisdictions. Let me explain something else while I'm here, too: The US wouldn't have so much damn crime had the liberals not insisted upon allowing so many millions of illegal immigrants into the country. That act alone was reprehensible and so far beyond the pale of ethical governance. The breach of public trust by those looking to import humans as a political weapon is astounding. They don't care about the plight of those people, they just want to jam up the system and thereby break it, which has worked quite well.
1024core 8y ago
> is a fundamental violation of constitutional rights That's one thing I don't understand: why isn't violation of Constitutional Rights a crime in itself? I mean, speeding by 10mph on a road with noone around gets you at least a ticket; but violating someone's rights? Nothing. Of course, by definition, this can be done only by government actors, but I still feel that there should be a price to pay even for government actors when they violate the fundamental law of the land.

deckiedan 8y ago

If the system is broken/to blame, then the system should be sued. What if the state had to pay compensation in cases of "honest" mistakes? Then the state would start having to try harder to not let innocents get imprisoned.

dustingetz 8y ago
Read 48 Laws of Power to understand why it doesn't work like that. The constitution, checks and balances, regulations etc are an attempt to engineer the natural forces of power into more productive directions, but, "there are no hard lines in nature", and all attempts to engineer hard lines will show strain at the limits, for example this square wave is actually a sum of curves: https://archive.cnx.org/resources/0d187381962fb659307c2847763ed0cb374827f2/fourier4.png https://archive.cnx.org/resources/0d187381962fb659307c284776... "A would-be reformer who wants to improve social welfare by changing people's behavior to a better equilibrium must take care to identify a social plan that is in fact a Nash equilibrium, so that nobody can profit by unilaterally deviating from the plan." Meyerson – full quote here: http://www.dustingetz.com/:web-3.0/ http://www.dustingetz.com/:web-3.0/

wongarsu 8y ago

Establishing guilt and intent doesn't seem like a good approach here, or at least it shouldn't be the usual approach. Wrongful imprisonment should trigger an automatic payout from the institution imprisoning you. Then allow a court case to establish if the case deserves a higher than normal payout because of the specific circumstances. If these payouts are large enough they create pressure to both solve systematic problems and to punish individuals who cause abnormally high rates of wrongful imprisonment.

testvox 8y ago
Or it motivates institutions to never find anyone to be wrongly imprisoned.

rayiner 8y ago

EDIT: Since OP was apparently talking about pre-conviction jailing, my comment was non-responsive to his point, and likely yours as well.

bdhess 8y ago
Your information/links are about the wrongly convicted, but TFA is about accusals.
- rayiner 8y ago
  But OP’s question is about “wrongful imprisonment.”
  - zazen 8y ago
    OP does use the word "imprisonment", but I think it's possible he's actually asking about pre-trial incarceration. OP says he's from Europe, and a lot of countries don't have the jail/prison distinction as in the USA.
    - Svip 8y ago
      We do actually (»varetægtsfængslet« in Danish), but I forgot the appropriate term in English. I thought given the context that we were talking about bails, I didn't have to be specific.
      - rayiner 8y ago
        Ah ok. I was confused by your question because while the distinction between pre-conviction "jail" and post-conviction "prison" is not always followed in English, "wrongful imprisonment" as a phrase almost always refers to wrongful conviction + imprisonment.
        tialaramex 8y ago
        I don't know the phrase "Wrongful imprisonment" but I'd assumed "Unlawful imprisonment" which is a crime and I'd associate it not with people who were wrongly _convicted_ because their conviction means imprisoning them was lawful, rather I'd associate it with situations where someone's freedom is taken away by some process other than the due process of law. If you're wrongly convicted the conviction must be overturned, whereupon you're innocent and will be freed by normal operation of the law (assuming you didn't also commit some other crime for which you're imprisoned) As example of what I'd think of as "unlawful imprisonment" there are problems in the UK with wives brought from countries where women, especially poor women, aren't treated very well - who are sometimes basically used as household slaves. The law against unlawful imprisonment doesn't require that they be chained up or in a locked room or anything, even a strong psychological coercion to remain ("You are my wife! You mustn't leave the home without my express permission") could be enough to make this unlawful. Or you'll sometimes get people taking the law into their own hands, somebody catches a shoplifter and decides to put him in the walk-in fridge to "teach him a lesson" - that sort of thing. Again, that's a crime.

gamblor956 8y ago

One problem is to have a successful suit against wrongful imprisonment, you have to prove intent. That's not true at all. Who told you that? Wrongful imprisonment suits generally depend on the state's laws. Some states provide for damages, some (mostly in the East/South) do not. Intent of the prosecutor or police is irrelevant--what matters is that the person wrongfully accused has been shown not to have committed the crime. Most defendants that win wrongful imprisonment settlements were generally tried by prosecutors utterly convinced that they defendants had actually committed the crime, with no malicious intent.