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Comment by Jiejeing | Hacker News Reader

> 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).

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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)

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