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).
No doubt racism is real (especially in the criminal justice system), but it feels like Occam’s Razor would favor the “incentives” argument here.
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?
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.
> Preferably written by a POC.
I'm not a big fan of using race as a proxy for academic authority.
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.
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 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...
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.
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)
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.
All those scams have to stop being dirty little secrets, there needs to be public outrage built around it.
You need to stop thinking that punishment works. Punishing people, like with dogs, rarely serves any purpose beyond "feeling of justice".
Such "feelings of justice" don't tend to make the world a better place.
I'm no expert, but if you remove perverse incentives and train officers to resolve conflicts without violence, then you'll probably get very far.
Prosecuting police officers is a difficult way to change policing culture.
You need clear guidance about when they have to arrest somebody and when not. And only secondary a system where abuse can be punished.
The purpose of awarding damages for false arrests is to punish malicious false arrests, or mistakes so egregious that we might as well consider them malicious, which some systems are more prone to than others.