5 ms·

> How about for those factually innocent of the charges they face? For them, I'm ok leaving the punishment at _1x_. :) You're not being realistic. Structuri

by shasta 11y ago

> How about for those factually innocent of the charges they face? For them, I'm ok leaving the punishment at _1x_. :) You're not being realistic. Structuring the court system so that the most expensive option to the public is also the option with best expected outcome for the one selecting options is obviously inefficient. And an inefficient justice system is a bad justice system. Many of the problems with the justice system today stem from lack of funding and you're just proposing to make the situation much worse.

nickff 11y ago
>"You're not being realistic. Structuring the court system so that the most expensive option to the public is also the option with best expected outcome for the one selecting options is obviously inefficient. And an inefficient justice system is a bad justice system." You have to define what you mean by efficiency before you can declare that one system is more efficient than another. I agree that the post you are replying to proposed an expensive system, but it may be more efficient if your efficiency metric takes time spent by innocent people in jail into account as a cost.
- shasta 11y ago
  If your metric is time spent in jail by innocent people, then the optimum is obvious: don't prosecute anyone.
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    That's absolutist, too. If we define a goal of 'zero jailed innocent people', even accepting it as a goal we can likely only ever asymptotically approach, then it shows an impedance mismatch between how to attain this, and the motivations of prosecutors which are not the same, but rather typically, 'show a high and increasing rate of convictions to show a toughness of crime'. This is not to say that all prosecutors are railroading sociopaths, of course not. But there is a valid question in the sense of "should a prosecutors role be to a) see the guilty punished, or b) to see the most convictions?".
    - shasta 11y ago
      I don't disagree with any of this. My objection with this entire subthread has been the assertion that plea deals violate rights. I find that crazy. When presented with the facts of a case, a good prosecutor and defense attorney will be able to reasonably assess probabilities for the possible verdicts. Hammering out a plea that's around the average outcome can be beneficial to everyone.
      - FireBeyond 11y ago
        I think there should be some onus on the prosecution to show (beyond grand jury levels) some more grounds that they'd reasonably win a case before being allowed to offer a plea deal. Obviously there's a threshold - how do you do so without a 'mini trial' of sorts (which I get is part of the purpose of the grand jury)? And where the plea deal is initiated by the defendant, then this is waived. I'm not outright against plea deals. But I do think they are massively overused here in the US, and there needs to be some safeguards that you're not shoehorning someone into something, just to get anything.
FireBeyond 11y ago
No, there's a middle ground. We are also removing people of their liberty. The wholesale use of plea deals (which elsewhere in the world are not allowed, or massively limited) is driven by multiple, flawed priorities: 1) the re-election of DAs and / or prosecutors, and; 2) the desire to minimize the cost of prosecuting cases, with a lack of acknowledgement of the massive disparity in power and little to no concern for those steamrolled in the name of such efficiencies. Many of today's problems with the justice system do indeed stem from funding issues, but rarely on the prosecutorial side. Instead you have overworked, underpaid public defenders who may many times only meet their clients just before opening statements, even on more complex trials. Leaving aside the question of zealotry in things like The Innocence Project, many of these cases have issues related to defense ineptitude, not (just) prosecutorial misconduct or misguidance. And by ineptitude, I don't mean active or otherwise incompetence (though there are certainly instances of this), but instead, details and problems that slipped through the cracks because a defendants counsel was too unfamiliar, too overworked to be able to provide the best or necessary defense. Tales abound of missed submission dates, witnesses not interviewed or called, and the like. If there's funding issues to be found, it's this, rather than 'how do we make the prosecution's life easier/better?'.
- hga 11y ago
  There's also just way too much crime for our English common law based system to handle properly, with a jury trial and all. Without going back to original details like executing those convicted of real felonies, which we're too soft to do as of now, not to mention our police/judicial complex is simply not that trustworthy, the current plea bargaining system is probably the best we can do. And there's the minor detail that US crime has dropped dramatically from its recent peak; per the thesis of Arrest Proof Yourself, without a steady diet of "the clueless" being run through the system on petty crimes at worst, many police units and courthouses would have to lay off people, and that wouldn't do.
- shasta 11y ago
  My proposal of a 2:1 cap on sought sentence to plea sentence makes the prosecution's life harder, not easier. I think I was pretty clear that I find the present situation with 20:1 ratios wrong. But I'm troubled by the apparent consensus here that offering plea deals violates a defendant's rights. I find that thinking in terms of rights isn't even helpful. Think in terms of outcomes. You seem to believe that a bigger portion of the pie should be shifted to public defenders from prosecutors. Fine, I'm not arguing that you're wrong, but the money comes from the same pot. Having an incentive to spare the public the cost of a trial when the defendant acknowledges his own guilt is common sense.

by shasta 11y ago

nickff 11y ago

>"You're not being realistic. Structuring the court system so that the most expensive option to the public is also the option with best expected outcome for the one selecting options is obviously inefficient. And an inefficient justice system is a bad justice system." You have to define what you mean by efficiency before you can declare that one system is more efficient than another. I agree that the post you are replying to proposed an expensive system, but it may be more efficient if your efficiency metric takes time spent by innocent people in jail into account as a cost.

shasta 11y ago
If your metric is time spent in jail by innocent people, then the optimum is obvious: don't prosecute anyone.
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  That's absolutist, too. If we define a goal of 'zero jailed innocent people', even accepting it as a goal we can likely only ever asymptotically approach, then it shows an impedance mismatch between how to attain this, and the motivations of prosecutors which are not the same, but rather typically, 'show a high and increasing rate of convictions to show a toughness of crime'. This is not to say that all prosecutors are railroading sociopaths, of course not. But there is a valid question in the sense of "should a prosecutors role be to a) see the guilty punished, or b) to see the most convictions?".
  - shasta 11y ago
    I don't disagree with any of this. My objection with this entire subthread has been the assertion that plea deals violate rights. I find that crazy. When presented with the facts of a case, a good prosecutor and defense attorney will be able to reasonably assess probabilities for the possible verdicts. Hammering out a plea that's around the average outcome can be beneficial to everyone.
    - FireBeyond 11y ago
      I think there should be some onus on the prosecution to show (beyond grand jury levels) some more grounds that they'd reasonably win a case before being allowed to offer a plea deal. Obviously there's a threshold - how do you do so without a 'mini trial' of sorts (which I get is part of the purpose of the grand jury)? And where the plea deal is initiated by the defendant, then this is waived. I'm not outright against plea deals. But I do think they are massively overused here in the US, and there needs to be some safeguards that you're not shoehorning someone into something, just to get anything.

FireBeyond 11y ago

No, there's a middle ground. We are also removing people of their liberty. The wholesale use of plea deals (which elsewhere in the world are not allowed, or massively limited) is driven by multiple, flawed priorities: 1) the re-election of DAs and / or prosecutors, and; 2) the desire to minimize the cost of prosecuting cases, with a lack of acknowledgement of the massive disparity in power and little to no concern for those steamrolled in the name of such efficiencies. Many of today's problems with the justice system do indeed stem from funding issues, but rarely on the prosecutorial side. Instead you have overworked, underpaid public defenders who may many times only meet their clients just before opening statements, even on more complex trials. Leaving aside the question of zealotry in things like The Innocence Project, many of these cases have issues related to defense ineptitude, not (just) prosecutorial misconduct or misguidance. And by ineptitude, I don't mean active or otherwise incompetence (though there are certainly instances of this), but instead, details and problems that slipped through the cracks because a defendants counsel was too unfamiliar, too overworked to be able to provide the best or necessary defense. Tales abound of missed submission dates, witnesses not interviewed or called, and the like. If there's funding issues to be found, it's this, rather than 'how do we make the prosecution's life easier/better?'.

hga 11y ago
There's also just way too much crime for our English common law based system to handle properly, with a jury trial and all. Without going back to original details like executing those convicted of real felonies, which we're too soft to do as of now, not to mention our police/judicial complex is simply not that trustworthy, the current plea bargaining system is probably the best we can do. And there's the minor detail that US crime has dropped dramatically from its recent peak; per the thesis of Arrest Proof Yourself, without a steady diet of "the clueless" being run through the system on petty crimes at worst, many police units and courthouses would have to lay off people, and that wouldn't do.
shasta 11y ago
My proposal of a 2:1 cap on sought sentence to plea sentence makes the prosecution's life harder, not easier. I think I was pretty clear that I find the present situation with 20:1 ratios wrong. But I'm troubled by the apparent consensus here that offering plea deals violates a defendant's rights. I find that thinking in terms of rights isn't even helpful. Think in terms of outcomes. You seem to believe that a bigger portion of the pie should be shifted to public defenders from prosecutors. Fine, I'm not arguing that you're wrong, but the money comes from the same pot. Having an incentive to spare the public the cost of a trial when the defendant acknowledges his own guilt is common sense.