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The justice system does the best it can with the information it has. It is far from perfect. It makes horrible mistakes all the time. The problem, of course, is

The justice system does the best it can with the information it has. It is far from perfect. It makes horrible mistakes all the time. The problem, of course, is improving it without knock-on effects making it worse. There are huge swaths of people doing the work required to make it better, every day. It's not as easy as turning a dial from "bad" to "good"

yieldcrv 3y ago
and none as effective as this one person too many cooks in the kitchen
razeh 3y ago
No. When it comes to evaluating forensic evidence lawyers are, by training, too process oriented to solve the problems. Ask a prosecutor what the error rate is for fingerprints or DNA evidence and you’ll get a blank stare. They don’t even try to measure it.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  You're telling me no defense lawyer thinks about arguing the evidence is unreliable or are you just saying the prosecution throws everything they can find at their side of the case? The former seems extremely hard to believe (lest you're about to become the greatest defense lawmaker of all time due to wisdom shared in a short HN comment) and the latter seems to be evidence of the system working both well and as designed, not evidence it's badly faulty.
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    > latter seems to be evidence of the system working both well and as designed Prosecutors in America have one goal: close the case. At any cost, close the case. They are not interested in justice. They are not interested in finding the one who actually committed the crime. They are interested in closing the case. If that is “working as designed”, then we need to change the design.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Sure, but the accused should have a lawyer who is screaming about anything that is unreliable.
      - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
        Have you seen the caseloads of public defenders?
      - razeh 3y ago
        There’s no practical way for a defense lawyer to find out what the error rate is for, say, a state lab. Occasionally organizations can do this, for example the innocence project figured out that the FBI’s hair analysis was bogus for decades (https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-testimony-on-microscopic-hair-analysis-contained-errors-in-at-least-90-percent-of-cases-in-ongoing-review https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-testimony-on-mic...).
    - zamadatix 3y ago
      And the opposite is true of the defense. The result is a 3rd party gets to hear all of the evidence either side could come up with and weight the outcome based on all of that instead of 2 interested parties trying to figure it out themselves. There are of course ways to improve the legal system, more equal access to quality representation is my preferred improvement regardless of system, but you can't just look at one element of the system in isolation and declare the whole concept bad. That's "The CPU produces waste heat so we need to remove it completely" type logic where you find one thing that sounds unambiguously bad and ignore that it could be a symptom of great net positive function of that thing. Doesn't mean it's perfect either, just means it needs more than a shallow dismissal.
- paiute 3y ago
  A lot of doctors are process oriented as well. Which is fine most of the time. But I was similarly disturbed when a specialist had zero clue what the approx half life of one of the primary drugs they use was. There was a situation that didn’t fit the book and i just looked it up for them on the spot. They didn’t like me.
sneak 3y ago
If the current functioning is it doing "the best it can", the whole thing should be burnt to the ground.
- dylan604 3y ago
  to be replaced with what? i'm all for making changes that are an improvement, but just burning it to the ground for the sake of it with no end game is not an improvement
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    At this point, I would not be surprised if having two judges per case, randomly selected from the community, from parents who have successfully had at least three children leave the nest while still remaining on speaking terms, was a more reliable method of justice.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      isn't an even number of judges ripe for uselessness?
  - sneak 3y ago
    A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason would be much preferable to the atrocities that are the current criminal justice systems in most of the global west (and especially of course the United States).
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      Interesting and unusual perspective - we have the one person in this thread who supports wildly expanding the death penalty. Unless the person above is, of course, an anarchist who has no answer for what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian Mitchell. I would say that as imperfect and heavily flawed as our system is, "Perfect is the enemy of good."
boomboomsubban 3y ago
There are also huge swaths of people actively trying to make it worse, that's what the FBI did (does?) for years when it knowingly pushed junk forensics. Or what basically every prosecution does, when it knows that the science behind some things isn't airtight but still presents it in the best possible light to get a conviction.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  > junk forensics Fiber analysis (e.g. carpets)
marcus_holmes 3y ago
It's not a justice system, it's a Law and Order system: It's not designed to deliver justice, it's designed to resolve disputes relatively cheaply, while allowing for spending more money to get better results.

yieldcrv 3y ago

and none as effective as this one person too many cooks in the kitchen

razeh 3y ago

No. When it comes to evaluating forensic evidence lawyers are, by training, too process oriented to solve the problems. Ask a prosecutor what the error rate is for fingerprints or DNA evidence and you’ll get a blank stare. They don’t even try to measure it.

zamadatix 3y ago
You're telling me no defense lawyer thinks about arguing the evidence is unreliable or are you just saying the prosecution throws everything they can find at their side of the case? The former seems extremely hard to believe (lest you're about to become the greatest defense lawmaker of all time due to wisdom shared in a short HN comment) and the latter seems to be evidence of the system working both well and as designed, not evidence it's badly faulty.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  > latter seems to be evidence of the system working both well and as designed Prosecutors in America have one goal: close the case. At any cost, close the case. They are not interested in justice. They are not interested in finding the one who actually committed the crime. They are interested in closing the case. If that is “working as designed”, then we need to change the design.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Sure, but the accused should have a lawyer who is screaming about anything that is unreliable.
    - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
      Have you seen the caseloads of public defenders?
    - razeh 3y ago
      There’s no practical way for a defense lawyer to find out what the error rate is for, say, a state lab. Occasionally organizations can do this, for example the innocence project figured out that the FBI’s hair analysis was bogus for decades (https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-testimony-on-microscopic-hair-analysis-contained-errors-in-at-least-90-percent-of-cases-in-ongoing-review https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-testimony-on-mic...).
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    And the opposite is true of the defense. The result is a 3rd party gets to hear all of the evidence either side could come up with and weight the outcome based on all of that instead of 2 interested parties trying to figure it out themselves. There are of course ways to improve the legal system, more equal access to quality representation is my preferred improvement regardless of system, but you can't just look at one element of the system in isolation and declare the whole concept bad. That's "The CPU produces waste heat so we need to remove it completely" type logic where you find one thing that sounds unambiguously bad and ignore that it could be a symptom of great net positive function of that thing. Doesn't mean it's perfect either, just means it needs more than a shallow dismissal.
paiute 3y ago
A lot of doctors are process oriented as well. Which is fine most of the time. But I was similarly disturbed when a specialist had zero clue what the approx half life of one of the primary drugs they use was. There was a situation that didn’t fit the book and i just looked it up for them on the spot. They didn’t like me.

sneak 3y ago

If the current functioning is it doing "the best it can", the whole thing should be burnt to the ground.

dylan604 3y ago
to be replaced with what? i'm all for making changes that are an improvement, but just burning it to the ground for the sake of it with no end game is not an improvement
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  At this point, I would not be surprised if having two judges per case, randomly selected from the community, from parents who have successfully had at least three children leave the nest while still remaining on speaking terms, was a more reliable method of justice.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    isn't an even number of judges ripe for uselessness?
- sneak 3y ago
  A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason would be much preferable to the atrocities that are the current criminal justice systems in most of the global west (and especially of course the United States).
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    Interesting and unusual perspective - we have the one person in this thread who supports wildly expanding the death penalty. Unless the person above is, of course, an anarchist who has no answer for what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian Mitchell. I would say that as imperfect and heavily flawed as our system is, "Perfect is the enemy of good."

boomboomsubban 3y ago

There are also huge swaths of people actively trying to make it worse, that's what the FBI did (does?) for years when it knowingly pushed junk forensics. Or what basically every prosecution does, when it knows that the science behind some things isn't airtight but still presents it in the best possible light to get a conviction.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
> junk forensics Fiber analysis (e.g. carpets)

marcus_holmes 3y ago

It's not a justice system, it's a Law and Order system: It's not designed to deliver justice, it's designed to resolve disputes relatively cheaply, while allowing for spending more money to get better results.