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Comment by ProCicero | Hacker News Reader

When you work with the assumption that police usually only arrest a person when they have strong evidence that person actually committed the crime, it's not that surprising.

Whether that is a good working assumption to begin with is another debate.

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It's a poor assumption that violates due process and presumption of innocence. Applying the assumption makes our current justice system act in the manner that is similar to some of the original complaints of American revolutionaries about British colonial rule.

I think there are two distinct questions that you are co-mingling. The first is, do police only arrest (and prosecutors charge) people when they have strong evidence that they committed the crime? I think the answer is, "Yes, most of the time, in many districts" - but not all of the time, and not in all districts.

The second question is, "Should the court system act like the police only arrest guilty people"? And the answer is, absolutely not.

From your answer, I guess that you only cared about the second question. But the first question is the one raised by ProCicero, and is also an important question.

No the question of due process applies to who, how, and when the police decide to arrest people too. They should be expected to strongly apply due process and the presumption of innocence too. It's too easy to give police and prosecutors a pass on misbehavior if we characterize their primary responsibilities as focused on catching the criminals.

And then the police operate on the assumption that in ambiguous cases they should err on the side of catching the potential criminal and let the courts sort it out.

While a bit off topic, this is how it happens in Japan. They will only prosecute cases with a high probability of successful prosecution. It’s one of the reasons their success rate is in the high nineties. Of course in some cases they also use coerced confessions that are facilitated by extended detentions without access to lawyers.

But also lots of serious crimes get swept under the rug because they will not prosecute with only flimsy evidence.

Most people unwittingly commit lots of crimes.

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