(04-05-2019, 01:38 PM)Caldrac Wrote: (04-05-2019, 01:14 PM)TJBender Wrote: In theory, but criminal justice is deeply flawed by its reliance on forensic evidence and experts--neither of which is as infallible as it seems, by the disproportionate amount of resources dedicated to prosecution vs. public defenders, by the so-called "jury consultants" who cost $100K+ to study potential jurors and tell prosecutors and high-paid defense attorneys alike how to choose and strike the right jurors, by the inherent difficulty in finding jurors who are truly unaware of the case (and not lying if they say they are) in the internet age...shall I go on? The criminal justice system needs reform as badly as several other painfully broken areas of government. Until that reform happens, you're going to continue to see low-income minorities disproportionately sentenced to death.
Even if you take every single minority out of the prison system it's still overcrowded with non-minorities. The criminal justice system will never be reformed properly because it's too profitable for private corporations to maintain. I just think it's funny that race came into the topic. I wasn't aware this was over race. Granted. I didn't give two [BLEEP] to read the article. So shame on me I guess?
At any rate. I agree. Our justice system is massively flawed. And it's too easy for some people to throw that little typical "Well...it's sure as hell better than X, Y & Z's country's system" nugget. Yeah, we know. And we all get that. That still doesn't mean we should kick our feet up and allow it to grow into a stagnant, privatized cash cow for corporations to literally milk to death on a daily basis.
I think we'll slowly see it reformed in bits in pieces though. As long as states keep pushing for the decriminalization and legalization of certain substances, and by certain substances I mostly mean good old Marijuana. I think we'll start seeing a steep decline in arrests and so forth. As I feel that's apart of the issue.
Of course we have the Opioid epidemic in our country that needs to be cleaned up as well. You can't bash people and throw them in a hole or cell because some [BLEEP] Doctor decided it was a cool idea to write a dangerously strong drug prescription to a patient for any random reason whether justifiable or not. It's just wrong.
And then when the insurance can't cover it anymore they turn to street drugs to keep up with it. There's a lot of messy [BLEEP] going on systematically in our country. We should be the Gold standard for process and system improvement. We should be the Gold standard for education and criminal justice as well.
Not the scapegoat. We can all dream though I suppose.
Eh, it wasn't intended to be a race card. I don't think there are many in the criminal justice system who still wake up and ask themselves how many Negroes they're going to sentence to death that day, it's just more symptomatic. Middle and upper class individuals can find a way to afford experts and all kinds of forensic studies to "prove" their innocence, or at least "prove" that there were circumstances which should lessen their penalty. Middle and upper class individuals in this country definitely skew white. On the other side of things, lower-income individuals usually have to rely on underfunded public defenders, or low-rent attorneys who are three days out of law school and have huge dreams and tiny track records. They're not going to get the same kind of defense simply because they can't afford it. The lower-income group in this country tends to be minority. That's all.
You'll find me in agreement on pretty much everything else.
