The world would be a much better place if more people realized this.
If the system doesn't have the resources to give every accused criminal a fair trial, then either you're making too many criminals, the system doesn't have enough resources, or both. Bypassing trials is just a way to cover your ears and shout "la la la" to ignore the problem.
Yes, yes there is. We start with the most victimless crimes (drug possession for personal consumption) and go from there.
Police unions will fight it. Prison unions will fight it. The court system will fight it. Nevertheless, it must be done.
Did I not call that out enough? My apologies if so. Stop wasting time prosecuting what doesn't provide value in prosecuting.
There's really no reason why diffuse harms should not be criminal while focused ones should (arguably, diffuse harms are less able to be addressed by individual action through the civil justice system, so outside of focused harms where the victim is unable to pursue action after the crime, like murder, diffuse harms are the most important for government to address directly.)
OTOH, there's often a lot more disagreement over whether what some people perceive as a diffuse harm actually is a harm.
For example, dumping mercury into a major river causes extremely diffuse harm, but I'd never describe it as a "victimless crime."
In the other direction, smoking weed in private harms nobody except the smoker. The harm is so focused it doesn't even touch anyone besides the offender. Yet this is almost the canonical example of "victimless crime."
It's not about diffuse harm, it's about whether anyone was harmed at all besides the accused.
This is precisely the point that is contention. The entire argument for prohibiting marijuana is that this is, in fact, not the case, and that, through a number of indirect channels, people "smoking weed in private" harms others throughout society in a variety of ways.
Obviously, as I said, there is considerable disagreement about whether this is, in fact, the case, (and, also, as to whether, even if it is, prohibition mitigates or exacerbates these harms, and as to whether, in any case, prohibition is an ethically-acceptable response even if the harms exist and prohibition mitigates them.)
But it certainly is not the case that those who support prohibition generally agree that the crimes are "victimless" that those opposed to prohibition describe that way.
Lots of what I would call "victimless crimes" are outlawed because of what the proponents of criminalization see as focused harm. Prostitution, for example, is seen as either harming the prostitute, or harming the patron's family. For drugs, it's often considered that the harm is focused on the user, not diffuse.
And again, lots of crimes with diffuse harm are generally agreed on to not fall into the "victimless" category, like dumping toxic materials.
There is some truth to this for some drugs, but not even close to most.
My point is just that there is no connection, as far as I can see, between crimes which some people as presenting diffuse harm, and crimes which other people see as being victimless. All combinations are not only present but common.
>In the other direction, smoking weed in private harms nobody except the smoker. The harm is so focused it doesn't even touch anyone besides the offender. Yet this is almost the canonical example of "victimless crime."
It's true that this doesn't directly harm anyone. However, if the smoker is doing this 'illegally' (without a medical license, not in WA or CO, etc) and didn't grow it, he/she is participating in and supporting an illegal drug market via increased demand. If the smoker weren't participating, it would reduce the demand that drives smugglers and the horrific things in Mexico.
It is rather looking at the overall picture of "What are the consequences of allowing weed to be bought/sold/grown. Is there harm in it?" The whole infrastructure, not just the end user.
Increasing resources for holding trials is also not terribly difficult and doesn't require any sort of overhaul. It's just a problem of money, and not a big one. Just for a random example, it looks like the courts account for about 0.3% of my local county budget and about 1% of my local state budget. We could literally increase court resources by a factor of 10 with only a modest increase in taxes to fund it.
It might be that there's something inefficient in the trial process that holds no weight on "fairness". I'm not a legal expert by any means, so it may not be the case, but it seems as though it's a possibility.
On the other hand, if you can get the number of accused criminals down to a reasonable level, it wouldn't matter too much if there was waste in the smaller number of trials.
No doubt the problem can be attacked from many directions.
How do we address this?
One emerging solution employs advanced AIs to pore over the reams of evidence in order to better inform lawyers of the legal situation. I can imagine extrapolating this particular methodology far enough into the future such that the entire process subsequent to arrest (processing, pre-trial hearing, trial and sentencing) might be automated to the degree that it could be accomplished within minutes instead of months.
What would society look like if we had such an "efficient" judicial system?
That's a potentially terrifying possibility. It may be that we'd end up incarcerating orders of magnitude more people; a dystopian reality. How would we then rein in such a powerful system? I have no idea.
Not just that, though -- it also comes from the inherent inefficiencies in trying to recover exactly what happened from any given situation in which the question of whether a crime was committed.
We could start recording everything that happens, but... that's also a potentially terrifying possibility.
You're in luck! Facebook, Google, and many of the wonderful, selfless people who post on HN are already working on that... or at least defending others' "right" to do so if they aren't doing it themselves.
Various entities are tracking who you know, who you sleep with (http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/blog/ubers-deleted-rides-of-gl...), what your face looks like, what your friends' faces look like (thanks, photo tagging enthusiasts!), who you talk to, what you say to them, when you say it, where you go (thanks to various wonderful sources, including ALPR companies like Vigilant), how long you stay there, what you eat, what you wear, what you watch, what you listen to, where you move your mouse while viewing websites, who your doctor is, what medications you take, what the symptoms of that last rash you had were, what your political views are, what you read, where you work, how many steps you took today, what websites you visit, and about 30,000 other bits of data... just to keep you safe!
The future is so amazing! I don't know what I would do without a customized advertising experience(tm). Such a drastic improvement over life in the past where people were so bored of advertisements that they chose to avoid watching them! What none of us knew at the time was that we really just wanted to see more relevant advertisements more often, while giving up our privacy for the corporations' greater good! I sleep much more soundly after a solid day of being bombarded with advertisements that teach me to be a better consumer!
80% of property crime goes unsolved, so unless you legalize vandalism and theft there are going to be criminals.
But wait. He specifically exempted police unions from his busting legislation, didn't he?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/02/18/sc...
> To help close the state’s $283 million budget shortfall this year, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) plans to skip a $108 million debt payment scheduled for May.
> By missing the May payment, Walker will incur about $1.1 million in additional interest fees between 2015 and 2017. The $108 million debt will continue to live on the books; Walker’s budget proposal for 2015-2017 will pay down no more than about $18 million of the principal.
> In March last year, Walker signed a $541 million tax cut for both families and businesses. At that point, Wisconsin was facing a $1 billion budget surplus through June 2015, the Journal Sentinel reported.
The elected official's opponent in the following election simply runs a "JOHN SMITH IS SOFT ON CRIME, JOHN SMITH IS BAD FOR US AND OUR FAMILIES" campaign, and people who think public-sector unions are the devil will still vote for the opponent, because now you're pressing their bias (which is in favor of "tough on crime, lock 'em all up and throw away the key").
It's basically the same as setting up your conditions to take advantage of short-circuit evaluation. You don't put the time-consuming and resource-hungry part first.
Were there even the slimmest chance of acquittal, few defendants would utter that phrase without there being either a benefit to owning up, or an extra penalty for not doing so. This is what plea bargaining and TICs are for.
If there's a suspicion of false confession, meaning that the suspect may not be the offender, that should normally be sorted out before court, so that the correct offender is tried for the correct offence (e.g. wasting police time if voluntary, or some kind of intimidation/coercion offence if not)?
How? Court is the process for sorting that out and assessing whether there is doubt, and the extent of that doubt.
> If there's a suspicion of false confession, meaning that the suspect may not be the offender
Are you assuming that this represents a minority of cases? Who has to suspect that the accused is not really guilty, a jury of his peers?
In reality it becomes a punishment for demanding a fair trial.
Oh man, that's so wrong. Even where there is a LARGE change of acquittal, many choose a plea bargain because they cannot afford a good attorney or because the prosecutor is threatening them with something crazy like 40 years for downloading a movie. Would you take the risk of 40 years, knowing you're innocent? Do you have enough faith in a jury to put the rest of your life in their hands? I doubt it.
That said, I don't believe it's very difficult to make an ethical and legal case against the concept of plea bargaining in the first place. I would argue it's very important to a free society to waste everyone's time proving that an accused person is guilty, and that not doing so violates the sixth amendment and fundamental human rights.
But we should not reward them for doing so. Never should a person be presented with a choice between a certain lesser punishment, or a fair trail and a potential greater punishment. That's the "bargain" in "plea bargain," and it's completely reprehensible.
You say, "few defendants would utter that phrase without there being either a benefit to owning up, or an extra penalty for not doing so." That's exactly how it is! A plea bargain isn't just, "we both know you did it, so just confess and let's skip all the lawyers and stuff." It's always, "We both know you did it, so confess and we'll let you out early. If you insist on taking this to trial then we will throw the book at you." A lot of innocent people will take the plea when faced with that choice.
Not every crime needs to go to trial, but every accused criminal needs to have the right to a trial without being punished for exercising that right. If you remove the punishment then you'll no longer have plea bargains, just pleas.
I think that a partial measure towards reforming plea bargains would be to require the police to present their evidence for the court to review before entry of a plea. This creates a public record that somebody could investigate in the future. There could also be a provision that if exculptatory evidence is revealed in the future, the plea can be rescinded.
The other issue is police overcharging crimes. For example, suppose you, in a fit of pique, cut your roommate's arm with a knife. Not cool; that's aggravated assault. But the police then charges you with attempted second degree murder -- or even first degree (eg, premeditated). Now your defense attorney has to work hard just to get your charges down to a reasonable level; the agg assault you should have been charged with in the first place. This is what a huge majority of plea bargaining is about; not getting away with it, but getting the charge down to something that describes your actual offense.
(Source: longtime criminal defense nerd)
By the 70s crime had skyrocketed and it was clear that they had gone too far. But instead of issuing a mea culpa and reexamining past rulings, the various courts started allowing prosecutors to claim broad new powers and take extremely aggressive tactics.
By this point there's no real way to fix it. The legal system is based strongly on precedent. It can't just undo major rulings of the past and replace the with something sane.
sounds exactly like the point where a major fix must be done. Life changes faster and faster. The precedent system was great in 15th century when things look pretty much the same like in the 14th or 13th century.
Any claim that court ruler enabled crime is highly debatable. Factors causing increases and decreases in crime rates are difficult to pin-point.
One argument is returning Vietnam veterans lead to the increase in violent crime - post-war eras have a history of being associated with crime-increases from the return of veterans habituated to violence.
Um, so? Then we need to allocate more resources to prosecute cases.
If I am falsely accused, I want my day in court. And I want it to be fair. The current system has problems on both fronts.
The problem is that there's no way for anyone else to determine a priori if your accusation is false or true. That's what the whole presumed innocent until proven guilty thing is about.
In reality, if you are accused AT ALL, you want your day in court and you want it to be fair. Even if you had committed a crime, if the police did something they're not supposed to that needs to get sussed out in court and you should go free.
Half the point of a trial is to make sure that nothing unfair is done by the investigators (police, prosecutor, etc). This is to keep their power in check so that they'll follow the rules. Otherwise it could get mighty tempting to fudge something a little bit "because we KNOW this is the guy!" and "we need to do the right thing."
> The legal system is based strongly on precedent. It can't just undo major rulings of the past and replace the with something sane.
Sure it can; major court rulings have been overturned by later courts, and, even if courts won't do that, the law which they were interpreting when they made the rulings (including the Constitution) can be changed, rendering the old rulings moot.
But that's just the anarchist in me speaking.
They just forget it as soon as the news media present whatever is the current horror story.