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Looking at it from the outside (Europe) I am always surprised when some investigation occurs after some documentary or other media event instead of when the crime occurred (Cosby, R Kelly).

Same thing happens in Europe too. Two cases I can think of in my country are Jonathan Jacob and Jozef Chovanec. Both investigations only started rolling when someone leaked recordings of what happened in their cells to the media. The government has very few incentives to investigate their own, that's why media is an invaluable part of democracy.

That is also why media is one of the first targets of most "electoral" autocracies. This can be seen in European countries like Hungary and Turkey where independent media has more or less disappeared, and they are massively attacked by other governments like Poland.

Furthermore, that is why public broadcasting is a primary target of populist/far-right campaigns in most other countries too: their propaganda focuses on the unpopular "unjustified" broadcast fees, while they really want to get rid of these largely independent stations, and replace them with commercial competitors that are controlled by media moguls instead of democratic structures.

I'm always sad to see the negative stand against all the media on forums like here or reddit.

From my central European perspective, (serious) media are so incredibly important for our society and democracy.

I understand that the USA has somewhat more independent and strong public institutions than us and can rely on them, but still.

As an American, I say that the media IS important. That’s why its all too frequent bias and sloppiness is so problematic.

Where I live, false or exaggerated headlines are the norm. Scary headlines are lucrative! If we can’t depend on the media to do its job right, then who does that function?

Agreed. I happen to be very critical of the media and I think the media is an invaluable institution. These aren’t contradictory statements, I criticize because I care (however cliche that may sound). I share the media’s political biases for the most part—I’m a liberal—but that the whole of the mainstream media (and academia, etc) is so uniformly, overtly, and explicitly biased in the same direction is IMO one of the drivers for our national division and for right-wing mistrust in our national institutions.

And yes, I know all of the rhetorical defenses for a propagandist media (“no one is perfectly neutral so why bother trying?”, “you have to choose between the progressive narrative and literal Naziism”, etc).

Why is fox, the largest tv news channel, never allowed to count as mainstream?

Sinclair and Murdochs empire (the two most consumed sources of media in the us) both skew heavily right.

Given that the media in Europe is chock-full of lies and/or accidental falsehoods (depending on your outlook on life), I'm really interested in why you think it's important (other than as a tool for mass manipulation, for which I'd say we may almost have invented more effective tools depending on how you scope 'media').

It's important because it uncovers crime and corruption, asks politicians and institutions tough questions and keeps them in check.

The situation in Hungary has gone really south once there was no strong independent media outlet left. Poland is following a similar path.

That one isn’t an American phenomenon, that happens here in Australia too to some extent

Is there a justice system anywhere in the world that actually does state-driven financial punishment on police to disincentivize false arrest? (E.g. all costs stemming from a false arrest being taken as treble damages from the department and awarded to the innocent accused, automatically, without the accused having to bother to sue?)

I suppose the difference is that in most other places in the world there would be no 'costs stemming from a false arrest' (I mean direct costs if you exclude things like the opportunity cost of lost time, and the damages/stress inflicted, etc).

In Germany you are compensated for a wrong arrest. (Base rate is 25€ per day, which isn't much, but you can claim additional reimbursements with some paperwork and help from your (state paid) lawyer)

that would punish justice systems for making mistakes, which if they are an honest system they are already being punished for because of course a mistake is the system being inefficient.

The purpose of awarding damages for false arrests is to punish malicious false arrests, or mistakes so egregious that we might as well consider them malicious, which some systems are more prone to than others.

As the justice system does have a lot of power - like arresting people - of course mistakes should be punished to some extend. And those people making those mistakes, usually have little concerns over the efficiency of the justice system.

fiat rules that do not handle things on a case by case basis are particularly prone to perverse incentives.

There's no need for that when no one profits from a false arrest or false conviction. Civil asset forfeiture, bail loan firms, for profit prisons, breathtakingly expensive phone calls and all sorts of other scams are pretty much unheard of anywhere else and we honestly can believe what we are reading when we see these .

Add mugshot sites recently discussed on HN to the list [1]. Who would have guessed shit like this can even exist?

All those scams have to stop being dirty little secrets, there needs to be public outrage built around it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27153800

> There's no need for that when no one profits from a false arrest or false conviction.

You underestimate the power of racism, homophobia and other things that drive some people, plus the feeling of having power over other people (and also, if a crime has been committed, the drive to make culprits out of innocents if police cannot find the real ones).

Sure, the US has some amazingly broken systems that seem to foster endemic corruption, but even without them it’s not enough to guarantee that a police force behaves appropriately (we just had a case in france where at least two people have done 1.5 years and 4 years in detention based on a made-up testimony forced by police officers caught on video, and the police unions and the far-right are still screaming that justice is too lenient and the liberation is a scandal).

I don’t understand how this would work. Is the idea that racists know about these scams and vote to protect them legally? I didn’t know about these and I consider myself pretty informed, while I (unsurprisingly) haven’t met any informed racists.

No doubt racism is real (especially in the criminal justice system), but it feels like Occam’s Razor would favor the “incentives” argument here.

I was just answering the parent by saying that no, police do not need to have financial incentives to make up cases and lock up innocents; and therefore there stills needs to be a way to punish corrupt police officers and departments even if those incentives do not exist.

Obviously financial incentives are a key motivator for many people in forces as well, I was only saying that this can happen even if there is no money to make.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. No doubt racism can explain arrests and undue charges, but the context of the thread is about institutional extortive practices (bail loans, etc). So we still need “financial incentives” to explain these extortive practices.

There is a lot of information out there on this topic. But I will try to summarize my understanding of what goes on in the USA.

There is institutional racism in our system. These are laws from long ago, that stick around due to inertia. They end up punishing POC more. When changing these laws comes up for debate, it's not that hooded KKK stand up and protect them, it's that the laws been around for decades. The laws don't affect the majority white population. They are defended uses words like, lazy, poor, criminals, bad part of town...Those words don't tend to bring to mind white middle class people. Then the laws stick around. Or new laws are pass using the same methods.

You don't have to say racist things in the US in order to defend racist laws. There are a myriad of code words you can use instead. Also, many people don't realize just how racist we are as a culture. The Christian church in America has deep racism issues.(read White Too Long by Robert P. Jones)

The US population has been raised by generations of racists so we just literally don't see it anymore. It doesn't affect the majority, so it isn't an issue. Each time a problem is brought up, it's usually dismissed out of hand. We love our victim blaming, our blind eyes, our justifications, and our fear.

Yes, there are massive incentives and money to be made in the criminal justice system. But they only exist because of who they are keeping down. And why don't we care about the ones being kept underfoot?

I don't doubt these things are true to some degree in the abstract, but I don't understand how precisely these things apply to the specific extortive practices discussed above. Are you claiming that these practices have racist roots (I don't know and I'm not challenging; I just can't tell what if anything you're implying)? Are you claiming that these practices are maintained because of some ongoing racist attitudes which don't appear to be racist because "most Americans are so racist they don't perceive racism" or some such? What are the specific hypothetical mechanics at play here?

Racism, indifference, otherizing, victim blaming, self re-enforcing cycles/punishments(https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/charles-blow-how-..., is a great example of how we pile on fines)

If you want me to point to a single person or law I can't. There are hundreds of them, but very few of them written today are based on the color of your skin, the politicians got wise to that. If you really want to dive into this topic. Then I suggest reading a book or article that covers the topic of racism in America today. Preferably written by a POC.

I've read a lot about it, and much of it has the same problem as your earlier comment--it's too vague to confer any kind of understanding. To be quite clear, I don't actually doubt that there is a prejudice against people of color in the criminal justice system; however, most of the "anti-racist" literature with which I'm familiar doesn't posit a testable model for how the system works to perpetuate injustice, and without said testable model there's no hope for solutions.

> Preferably written by a POC.

I'm not a big fan of using race as a proxy for academic authority.

What do you mean by, 'it's too vague to confer any kind of understanding'

It's not enough to characterize every disparate outcome as "systemic racism" and then to "fight systemic racism". We need to talk about what are the specific unjust factors that contribute to these disparities and identify solutions to combat them.

An example of putting forth a concrete, actionable model and proposing a solution might be (and note that this is only an example):

* jurors are more likely to convict a black defendant than a white defendant

* we believe that jurors see racial disparities in crime committance and project them onto defendants

* to combat this, we might try promoting cultural integration to reduce the racial disparities in crime committance as well as advocating for colorblind antiracism so jurors are less likely to see a defendant as a token of his race

The important thing is that the example (1) puts forth a testable model for how the system works and (2) proposes solutions based on that model. You may find yourself disagreeing with our hypothetical model, and that's fine. Note that you can even debate it because it's testable (you can probably conceive of data which rebut it). This is in contrast to esoteric debates about systemic racism, which seem more religious in nature than useful for combatting unjust disparities.

But this is great right? What you just wrote? I'm confused now. Is this what you wanted me to say? This is why I point you to research books or articles. Or even follow actual politicians on what work they are doing. I'm not going to have this. I'm a software developer removed from the issue mostly.

But if you know that black people are more likely convicted than a white person(they also get longer sentences for the same crimes), then why are you asking as if you don't know. Overall, you've ended up raising more questions than answering...

> But this is great right? What you just wrote? I'm confused now. Is this what you wanted me to say?

I don't know how to parse this. What are you trying to communicate here?

> This is why I point you to research books or articles.

I'm pretty widely-read on this subject, and yet there is no indication that this is converging on something useful.

> Or even follow actual politicians on what work they are doing

If the literature isn't forthright, why would a politician be different? Who are the honest, forthright politicians to whom I should be listening?

> But if you know that black people are more likely convicted than a white person(they also get longer sentences for the same crimes), then why are you asking as if you don't know.

I'm not asking whether black people are more likely to be convicted or not, I'm asking what utility there is in framing the problem with esoterics.

> Overall, you've ended up raising more questions than answering...

Right, I'm asking a question, and explicitly not positing any answers, so of course I'm raising more questions than answers.

95% of trials don't go to a jury

To be fair, jury trials look medieval for people who come from a country where judges are professionals. And plea deals, don't even get me started.

Genuine question: what countries are you referring to? Also, I'm unfamiliar with any philosophy that posits that jury trials are lesser to judge trials. Isn't the whole point of trial by jury that juries are less likely to be partial than judges ("professionalism" doesn't stop a judge from being corrupt or from a classist selection bias in which judges are chosen from the upper echelons of society and thus biased accordingly)? No doubt there are tradeoffs between judges and juries, I just thought the consensus was "juries are fairer".

The way jury trials are portrayed in American media -selection bias of jurors, prosecutor deciding what evidence and significantly limiting the power of juries - I rather prefer the way it's done in European countries (and in Latin American ones like mine which copy Europe usually).

Ah, the system is really simple.

Since 1964 at least it is.

Some rich white men convinced a majority of American whites anything is better than "handouts" to people of color. They can and do rely on this majority to vote themselves into ruin if that's the price for people of color to get nothing. Instead of living in prosperity together, Americans vote to live in poverty together if that's what it takes. It's astounding.

By any measure, the United States by now is a failed state because of this. Hard to believe but it is.

> If you want me to point to a single person or law I can't. There are hundreds of them

I'd think someone would need to find and make a list of those laws and problems, and ways to explain to the voters how those laws are unfair against POC. And how the laws should be changed, maybe removed, many of them?

For a change to happen, there needs to be concrete specific steps of problems and things to actually do

(I'm not saying that you or anyone here should do this, just that some people, somewhere, needs to? I'd guess/think that BLM has gotten started a bit? Eg de funding the police, maybe that's one concrete thing to do, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police)

Some policemen beat up people of color, just because those policemen think it's fun. (Not only in the US)

Putting it on the officers is bad. They then tend to lean back and not take the personal risk.

You need clear guidance about when they have to arrest somebody and when not. And only secondary a system where abuse can be punished.

Personal risk? Law enforcement in the US is not as dangerous an occupation as their unions would like you to believe. And it's not like police are preventing crime. They're like janitor who come along after the crime has been committed.

> ...state-driven financial punishment on police...

You need to stop thinking that punishment works. Punishing people, like with dogs, rarely serves any purpose beyond "feeling of justice".

Such "feelings of justice" don't tend to make the world a better place.

I'm no expert, but if you remove perverse incentives and train officers to resolve conflicts without violence, then you'll probably get very far.

Prosecuting police officers is a difficult way to change policing culture.

If punishment doesn't work (and it doesn't) then we don't need prisons and jails as they currently exist, nor do we need police as they currently exist. There's no point to improving the police. Get rid of the punishment angle to policing, then give all the non-punishment jobs that police do to people who are far, far more qualified to handle them than the police are. Then you have essentially no police, so there's no need to improve them.

> And, unless you happen to have a suitcase full of cash with you

Oh, and if you are carrying a suitcase full of cash, expect it to be seized under asset forfeiture laws. Apparently carrying large sums of cash is evidence of criminality.

> Apparently carrying large sums of cash is evidence of criminality.

It's not even large sums of cash, people have had what amounts to a part-time paycheck at minimum wage seized because they made the mistake of having it on their person while they drove a car.

FWIW, I wouldn't say that nobody is talking about it. In the county where I live, the new county prosecutor moved to eliminate cash bail on his first day in office: https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2021/01/washtenaw-count...

IIRC the US is one of only two countries where it is legal to take money to post bail for someone you don't know (the other one is the Philippines).

> Unless you happen to have a suitcase full of cash with you

That would definitely not help you.

It's a mess on many many levels.

Sorry. If you have a briefcase full of cash that is definately going to be confiscated and you'll have to sue to try to get it back.

Also bail firms act as their own personal police. Old law dictates that the bail firm can seize you wherever you're at if you don't show up. So instead of actual police you get unidentified guys with guns and tasers breaking down doors without a warrent. Even if it's not your place.

> US justice system is probably more corrupt than some African countries, yet nobody is even talking about it.

Plenty of people talk about this. It's a lack of listening that's the problem.

And you felt the need to create a throwaway account, which already speaks enough about the state of affairs in the US.

we just talked about it. saw it in the news a few days back too

> US justice system is probably more corrupt than some African countries...

Nice to know African countries are a symbol and the pinnacle of dysfunction and corruption.

That's something at least.

There are literal league tables of corruption, and many African countries do not do well on them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index). It's not a simple case of tracking corruption either - the CPI is sometimes used to determine whether or not someone has broken international law trading with a country's government (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act).

The US is the most corrupt because it has the high incarceration rate on the planet except Seychelles. Prisoners are almost exclusively men who are minorities or poor.

Like the Reagans, the greater society doesn't care about anything unless it affects them. So, they're perfectly fine with degrading, exploitative warehousing and slavery of humans for profit.