http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_gideon_revolu...
Because not much political upside to helping criminal defendants exists, many jurisdictions end up with a perennial funding problem ... In both cases, the committee heard about extreme funding shortfalls, excessive caseloads and insufficient pay.
After years of cuts, his budget was down from $9 million to about $6 million, and he had just eight investigators for 21,000 cases per year.
This matters because the majority of defendants—a 2014 study put it at 80 percent—use some kind of indigent defense. That means most Americans charged with a crime are at risk of bad outcomes partly caused by the quality of representation that they can afford.
Yet following it in an heavily corrupt organization means you find yourself doing very dirty stuff to get recognized by your peers, oversee and facilitate corruption to get buy in from your superiors, and crush weaker people to stand on top where you’ll get more power.
In the event you yourself get crushed in this process, the only trace you’ll leave in the world will be dirty things you didn’t agree with in the first place and actually strived to change.
I wonder how much that approach bares fruits when it comes to really shitty organizations.
I've thought about this more in the political realm, so it may not apply as cleanly in the justice system. We know that public pressure works in politics because they depend on voters to keep voting them in. The only way to stave off a slide into conformity is to hold people accountable for behaving the way they said they would during a campaign. It's not an easy answer since it requires a lot more public participation, but I think we have been lulled into believing that these institutions are self-maintaining once set up, and that is clearly not the case. A few honest and caring people just entering the justice system are going to have a hard time of it. Millions of people outside the system shouting loudly and unceasingly about its abuses have a better shot at causing changes.
Out of curiosity, are there good examples of fundamental/systemic flaws -- where it's not that the system needs to be fixed, it's that a new system is needed -- being fixed by people working within the system? The success rate of violent, armed revolution is low, but it has produced some concrete successes (e.g., the existence of the US and more generally the fall of monarchy).
If the Confederacy had succeeded in seceding, it would have been a very similar revolution - the state governments on down would remain intact, with just a little bit at the top being rearranged. I'm not sure I could name a third, similar armed revolution off the top of my head; most of the ones I'm familiar with involve charismatic outsiders burning down the existing institutions and starting over fresh.
I believe this is formally called the "SLC Punk Maneuver"
There's a reason judges impose gag orders which violate people's right to free speech. They're OK with violating peoples constitutional rights to serve their own self interests.
Who bells the cat?
What it boils down to: post civilly and substantively or not at all. Put differently: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
I realize that it's hard to separate a tone that makes the mdoerators unhappy and content that makes the moderators unhappy (I didn't read the comment above as unsubstantive or uncivil at all!) but you gotta play by their rules.
(Or, I guess, burn HN down and start a new one that isn't subservient to capital. I'll join.)
In the meantime, HN is merely one specific kind of community, and it has specific rules which, if people want to participate, they have to follow. Those rules are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They're not hard to follow for anyone who wants to.
Ok, so we burn the system to the ground. Then what? Crown bitJericho king?
It's such a silly mindset. Do what we currently do in US or anarchy. There are over hundred other countries on earth and significant fraction of them is doing way better than USA in most aspects.
Adopting something more akin to European style democracy (which is what I assume you're mostly referring to) is already possible within the US system. That it hasn't been done yet isn't evidence of corruption within that system, but of the culture of the US simply not wanting it.
You need really a lot of disregard of previous system and power to make any significant changes. You'd need either revolution or invasion. Obama inaptitude shows that the system can't be touched from within even by smart person in position of highest legal power.
Anarchic theories are premised on the idea that everyone would act as individuals and treat each other equally, but that's not what happens. People naturally form alliances, tribes, religious groups or out and out criminal gangs.
The prosecutorial assumption of infallibility is just one symptom of a wider malaise. IMHO what America needs to appreciate, as a nation, is that it's nothing special. It's just big and therefore powerful, but it really doesn't have any special moral status or exceptional ethical immunity. You see the ideological belief that it does throughout American History from Manifest Destiny to America First, both the isolationist movement of the 40s and today.
America is a great nation, yes. It's a bastion of democracy, true. But it's a very long way from moral infallibility. There's the perception that e.g. Europe is a corrupt den of elites, born from America's struggle for independence from and conflicts with European Monarchies such as England and Spain, but it's ludicrously out of date. The American allergy against Communism is a symptom of this. At it's root communism and socialism is about individual freedom and a caring society, but communism got infected with totalitarianism early on. Individual communists have often been as shocked and appalled by Soviet excesses as anyone else. George Orwell, who wrote Animal Farm and 1984 as critiques of Stalinism was himself as communist, but the distinction between Communists like Orwell and ones like Trotsky is lost on American ideological anti-communism. You really can have a fair and caring society, and real meaningful individual freedoms. They're not absolute, utterly opposed principles and in fact they need each other. You can't have guarantees of real individual freedom without a society that cares about making that guarantee and takes actual steps to protect it. Even Ayn Rand accepted welfare support when she needed it. You can't have a well functioning system of state care and support for individuals without individual freedoms to hold that system to account and drive change when it's needed.
What makes change in the justice system so hard, as in other areas, is this assumption of ideological purity in the American system, mainly by American Republicans I have to say. As a British lifelong Conservative voter I find this hard to cope with but in the post-Reagan era I find very little common ground between myself and mainstream Republicanism these days. It's a bit bewildering realy.
A comic book character, you say? Let me quote V for Vendetta, Chapter Five, Versions, second half:
[Scene: Roof of the Old Bailey (building of the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales) in London. V stands beside the large statue of Madam Justice which adorns the top of its dome, and acts out a… conversation of sorts:]
Hello, dear lady.
A lovely evening, is it not?
Forgive me for intruding. Perhaps you were intending to take a stroll. Perhaps you were merely enjoying the view.
No matter. I thought that it was time we had a little chat, you and I.
Ahh… I was forgetting that we are not properly introduced.
I do not have a name. You can call me V.
Madam Justice… this is V.
V… this is Madam Justice.
Hello, madam justice.
“Good evening, V.”
There. Now we know each other. Actually, I’ve been a fan of yours for quite some time. Oh, I know what you’re thinking…
“The poor boy has a crush on me… an adolescent infatuation”
I beg your pardon, Madam. It isn’t like that at all.
I’ve long admired you… albeit only from a distance. I used to stare at you from the streets below when I was a child.
I’d say to my father, “Who is that lady?” and he’d say “That’s Madam Justice.” And I’d say “Isn’t she pretty.”
Please don’t think it was merely physical. I know you’re not that sort of girl. No, I loved you as a person. As an ideal.
That was a long time ago. I’m afraid there’s someone else now…
“What? V? For shame! You have betrayed me for some harlot, some vain and pouting hussy with painted lips and a knowing smile!”
I, Madam? I beg to differ! It was your infidelity that drove me to her arms!
Ah-ha! That surprised you, didn’t it? You thought I didn’t know about your little fling. But I do. I know everything!
Frankly, I wasn’t surprised when I found out. You always did have an eye for a man in uniform.
“Uniform? Why, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was always you, V. You were the only one…”
Liar! Slut! Whore! Deny that you let him have his way with you, him with his armbands and jackboots!
Well? Cat got your tongue?
I thought as much.
Very well. So you stand revealed at last. You are no longer my justice. You are his justice now. You have bedded another.
Well, two can play at that game!
“Sob! Choke! Wh-who is she, V? What is her name?”
Her name is Anarchy. And she has taught me more as a mistress than you ever did.
She has taught me that justice is meaningless without freedom. She is honest. She makes no promises and breaks none. Unlike you, Jezebel.
I used to wonder why you could never look me in the eye. Now I know.
So goodbye, dear lady. I would be saddened by our parting even now, save that you are no longer the woman that I once loved.
Here is a final gift. I leave it at your feet.
[V places on the ground a heart-shaped package wrapped with a bow, bows deeply, then leaves.]
[A large fiery explosion destroys the dome and the statue is toppled. V watches the fire from a distance.]
The flames of freedom. How lovely. How just. Ahh, my precious Anarchy…
“Oh beauty, ’til now I never knew thee.”
How can you still live there?
I have had three encounters with law enforcement, the first ended in similar fashion to this story. I was charged with a crime I didn't commit which happened to occur on video.
After 18-months, and threats of serious felony charges, I refused to accept a plea. I asked my lawyer if it was illegal to plead guilty to a crime I didn't commit and he said it was.
The prosecutor then says, "the state moves to drop the case citing lack of evidence". Again, the crime (theft) was recorded on videotape and two other guys I didn't know clearly stole the items involved. I won but the court wouldn't actually let me win.
Another time I was caught in an unfortunate incident where a security guard pushed me into a street. I was tackled, tasered, later choked, threatened to be killed and then powerslammed head first on concrete by Detective of the Year, Glenn A. Ritchie, of the Broward County Sheriff's Office.
Ritchie charged me with non-violent misdemeanors and then a day later, alleged felonies in a contradictory and clearly false 2nd police report. I spent 34-days in jail until the charges were non-filed but not until the felony was refiled as a misdemeanor, sent to the wrong address, resulting in a still standing capias warrant for my arrest.
The system is flawed. People who work in the courts, especially in major cities, are not to be celebreated but derided. It's an insane system of high bails, boilerplate plea deals and cold indifference.