s/justice/legal/

I have similar feelings, but I don't see the US and the USSR legal systems as remotely similar.

The US system requires a much greater amount of complicity and culpability of citizens and elected officials. We, the citizens, are completely culpable for the entire system. Our elected representatives (for whom we are responsible for curtailing) have given police+prosecutors:

* far too many tools+laws to invade our liberties, * detain us with insufficient evidence, * interrogate us with mentally coercive techniques, * provide a massive asymmetry to legal information, * allow the poorest of us to rot in jail awaiting trial * incentivize those charged with crimes to settle pre-trial 98% of the time * too much credibility in the mind of juries

and governments underfund the public defender's offices to the point that they are essentially just a tool of the prosecution to help make plea deals faster.

I agree with everything you've said about problems with the justice system, but I've never been given the option to vote otherwise, state or local. Both parties are happy with this way of doing justice. Until we get a viable third party, this will never change. The two parties we have now made it awful difficult to get a third viable party.

We may be responsible for curtailing them, but we have no ability to do so. It's great in theory, but in current day practice, we can't do much about it.

They are slightly different. In the ex-USSR the police regularly torture people to extract confessions. Not "just" by extra beatings but stuff like putting a gas mask on them and cutting off the air supply until they pass out or confess. They even have cutesy names for the torture proceedures. The gas mask one for example is called "slonik" (baby elephant).

I've read stories of police beating confessions out of people in the US. It's probably not as common and not as creative as it was in the USSR, but it does happen.

I'm not saying the US is as bad, but the fact that is approaching the old USSR is pretty damn scary.

I would be willing to bet that police beatings in the US are lower then they have ever been.

I could see that as true, especially compared to the civil rights era. It's still a despicable thing that shouldn't happen in the US and just goes to show the current US and the former USSR aren't nearly as far apart as they should be.