Cato has an article that, apropos of the recent dust-up between Tulsi Gabbard and Kamala Harris, explores several ways in which prosecutors can go wrong. "While these practices are legal and widespread, they are also immoral."
Because our county DA is such a controversial figure, I read the article with heightened interest. People tell me she is very bad about over-charging, but apparently her courtroom skills are low enough that what often happens is that the jury rebels.
She got a mistrial declared against her last week for trying to infect the jury with information about a prior unrelated offense. To make matters worse, the defendant was never convicted of or even charged with the unrelated offense. It came up only because the police tried to question him about it while he was in custody. The prosecutor's approach was to demand, on re-re-cross, whether it was true that he had refused to answer the police's questions on the subject. That was enough for the judge, who takes the 5th Amendment seriously.
Prosecutor's threaten a class of minor offenders with an offer they dare not refuse: Plea guilty and take a deal for probation and/or time served in county -- or go to trial and risk prison [where you will be beaten, raped, and probably murdered by evil-doing mother-rapers, father-stabbers, and father-rapers all much bigger, meaner, better-networked into the prison-gang system, and with such long sentences, and such little chance of parole, they have no incentive for good behavior anyway.]
tl:dr -- prosecutors use PRISONERS to threaten SUSPECTS. And it's not an idle threat.
Prisons, like public schools, are so poisoned by their worst members their primary mission for their ordinary clientele can never be accomplished. Order and discipline can't be maintained. Everyone knows it. And nothing changes.
That's quite a critique. What do you propose we do instead of prison? I'm eager to find an alternative. Corporal punishment? Capital punishment? Exile?
" ... alternative. Corporal punishment? Capital punishment? Exile?"
Yes, yes and yes. Among other things.
Prioritizing, (1) capital punishment must be restored at the very least for anyone convicted of a capital crime who has no prospect of release AND commits any serious act of violence while in custody. What other deterrent is there? We can't let him (her?) die of old age, resurrect him, and keep him incarcerated "for life" all over again. A sentence of life without prospect of parole is already a compromise. A renegade forfeits MY mercy, at least.
Institutionalized sympathetic care for the mentally ill. From mid-last-century on, we've hoped that surgery or pharmacy or talk-therapy could help the ill heal themselves. In rare cases, one or another of those approaches will work. In other cases, we have thrust ill people into confusing environments with no social support. We were wrong to do so and we must stop doing so in future. Even a "leper colony" is better than letting lepers starve, injure themselves, and endanger others. "The State Home for the Incurably Insane" sounds like Lovecraft, yes. The power of love. Help them, don't punish them, don't cast them aside. But also, don't put the rest of the citizenry at risk from the predictable mistakes of the mentally ill.
For any government institution, (public schools being another prime example) management tends toward "empire building" of larger and larger facilities with more and more subordinate layers of bureaucracy. (With higher pay for those at the peak of the pyramid.) It is always argued that large infrastructure provides "economies of scale". In fact, collecting large numbers of human beings reduces people to mobs, herds, packs and gangs -- and treating the aggregations as stereotypes, averages, trend lines, and data fields. When we put young minor offenders into such a population we might as well call the process a felon-factory. Behaviors worsen rather than improve and individuals, for their own survival, become gang members. Instead our society needs to build lots more small prisons, let a few small cadres of guards run their own shows, learn about their prisoners as individual people, and treat the facility like family-run business. Shut down the mega-building prisons and put most of the paper-pushers in the prison system back into some sort of private, capitalist, productive employment.
I am sorry to suggest that the many small prisons of my idealized system will be segregated. By ethnicity, language, sex, urban/rural origin ... A doctrine of "separate but equal" must be strictly enforced (Brown v Board of Education notwithstanding) such that nobody perceives the brown jail to be better or worse than the black jail or the pink jail. But maintaining a vibrant, diverse, tolerant, mutually supportive community is difficult (or maybe impossible) even among clever gifted privileged populations like college campuses. Groups of people who have demonstrated, been convicted of, failing social participation skills can't be reasonably expected to get along with those very much unlike themselves. If we don't intentionally segregate to form socially-desired communities, the prisoners will default into forming undesirable gangs of their own devising.
Prisons should be there to protect inmates from crazy mobs and vigilantes that tend to be paranoid survivalists. Kill on sight pardon can do that. When the rest of the world is more dangerous, no need for as many guards. Prison cos are already private. Expand it to ngos like the lds or amish. Full on volunteers. Divide and conquer, segregate, give them useful work, preach a religiouals control system. Need to control humans? Religion not prison is the master. Some will become enlightened saint if only a kensei.
Have groups compete for rss. X. Sprts instead of gangs. Thunderdome. Winner gets pardon and cash. Gets the most dangerous mofos out, not in solitary. Those need to be exiled or sent with a bounty to see if they can survive the hunt. When your bounty is so high even hardened crims think about turning you in, you have to be insanely fearsome to counter that. Those burn out. When they do, send them to the amish. Or some other compat group.
Excellent, and sobering article.
ReplyDeleteBecause our county DA is such a controversial figure, I read the article with heightened interest. People tell me she is very bad about over-charging, but apparently her courtroom skills are low enough that what often happens is that the jury rebels.
ReplyDeleteShe got a mistrial declared against her last week for trying to infect the jury with information about a prior unrelated offense. To make matters worse, the defendant was never convicted of or even charged with the unrelated offense. It came up only because the police tried to question him about it while he was in custody. The prosecutor's approach was to demand, on re-re-cross, whether it was true that he had refused to answer the police's questions on the subject. That was enough for the judge, who takes the 5th Amendment seriously.
Prosecutor's threaten a class of minor offenders with an offer they dare not refuse: Plea guilty and take a deal for probation and/or time served in county -- or go to trial and risk prison [where you will be beaten, raped, and probably murdered by evil-doing mother-rapers, father-stabbers, and father-rapers all much bigger, meaner, better-networked into the prison-gang system, and with such long sentences, and such little chance of parole, they have no incentive for good behavior anyway.]
ReplyDeletetl:dr -- prosecutors use PRISONERS to threaten SUSPECTS. And it's not an idle threat.
Prisons, like public schools, are so poisoned by their worst members their primary mission for their ordinary clientele can never be accomplished. Order and discipline can't be maintained. Everyone knows it. And nothing changes.
That's quite a critique. What do you propose we do instead of prison? I'm eager to find an alternative. Corporal punishment? Capital punishment? Exile?
ReplyDelete" ... alternative. Corporal punishment? Capital punishment? Exile?"
ReplyDeleteYes, yes and yes. Among other things.
Prioritizing, (1) capital punishment must be restored at the very least for anyone convicted of a capital crime who has no prospect of release AND commits any serious act of violence while in custody. What other deterrent is there? We can't let him (her?) die of old age, resurrect him, and keep him incarcerated "for life" all over again. A sentence of life without prospect of parole is already a compromise. A renegade forfeits MY mercy, at least.
I could go on a few thousand words ...
Feel free. I’d like to hear your ideas more fully.
ReplyDeleteOn prison reform:
ReplyDeleteInstitutionalized sympathetic care for the mentally ill. From mid-last-century on, we've hoped that surgery or pharmacy or talk-therapy could help the ill heal themselves. In rare cases, one or another of those approaches will work. In other cases, we have thrust ill people into confusing environments with no social support. We were wrong to do so and we must stop doing so in future. Even a "leper colony" is better than letting lepers starve, injure themselves, and endanger others. "The State Home for the Incurably Insane" sounds like Lovecraft, yes. The power of love. Help them, don't punish them, don't cast them aside. But also, don't put the rest of the citizenry at risk from the predictable mistakes of the mentally ill.
For any government institution, (public schools being another prime example) management tends toward "empire building" of larger and larger facilities with more and more subordinate layers of bureaucracy. (With higher pay for those at the peak of the pyramid.) It is always argued that large infrastructure provides "economies of scale". In fact, collecting large numbers of human beings reduces people to mobs, herds, packs and gangs -- and treating the aggregations as stereotypes, averages, trend lines, and data fields. When we put young minor offenders into such a population we might as well call the process a felon-factory. Behaviors worsen rather than improve and individuals, for their own survival, become gang members. Instead our society needs to build lots more small prisons, let a few small cadres of guards run their own shows, learn about their prisoners as individual people, and treat the facility like family-run business. Shut down the mega-building prisons and put most of the paper-pushers in the prison system back into some sort of private, capitalist, productive employment.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to suggest that the many small prisons of my idealized system will be segregated. By ethnicity, language, sex, urban/rural origin ... A doctrine of "separate but equal" must be strictly enforced (Brown v Board of Education notwithstanding) such that nobody perceives the brown jail to be better or worse than the black jail or the pink jail. But maintaining a vibrant, diverse, tolerant, mutually supportive community is difficult (or maybe impossible) even among clever gifted privileged populations like college campuses. Groups of people who have demonstrated, been convicted of, failing social participation skills can't be reasonably expected to get along with those very much unlike themselves. If we don't intentionally segregate to form socially-desired communities, the prisoners will default into forming undesirable gangs of their own devising.
Prisons should be there to protect inmates from crazy mobs and vigilantes that tend to be paranoid survivalists. Kill on sight pardon can do that. When the rest of the world is more dangerous, no need for as many guards. Prison cos are already private. Expand it to ngos like the lds or amish. Full on volunteers. Divide and conquer, segregate, give them useful work, preach a religiouals control system. Need to control humans? Religion not prison is the master. Some will become enlightened saint if only a kensei.
ReplyDeleteHave groups compete for rss. X. Sprts instead of gangs. Thunderdome. Winner gets pardon and cash. Gets the most dangerous mofos out, not in solitary. Those need to be exiled or sent with a bounty to see if they can survive the hunt. When your bounty is so high even hardened crims think about turning you in, you have to be insanely fearsome to counter that. Those burn out. When they do, send them to the amish. Or some other compat group.