USA has 5% of the worlds population and 25% of its prisoners

Politics International Politics
61

Interesting article.

[quote]In the US the wrongful conviction rate is extremely high. One reason is that hardly any of the convicted have had a jury trial. No peers have heard the evidence against them and found them guilty. In the US criminal justice (sic) system, more than 95% of all felony cases are settled with a plea bargain.

Before jumping to the conclusion that an innocent person would not admit guilt, be aware of how the process works. Any defendant who stands trial faces more severe penalties if found guilty than if he agrees to a plea bargain. Prosecutors don’t like trials because they are time consuming and a lot of work. To discourage trials, prosecutors offer defendants reduced charges and lighter sentences than would result from a jury conviction. In the event a defendant insists upon his innocence, prosecutors pile on charges until the defendant’s lawyer and family convince the defendant that a jury is likely to give the prosecutor a conviction on at least one of the many charges and that the penalty will be greater than a negotiated plea.

The criminal justice (sic) system today consists of a process whereby a defendant is coerced into admitting to a crime in order to escape more severe punishment for maintaining his innocence. Many of the crimes for which people are imprisoned never occurred. They are made up crimes created by the process of negotiation to close a case.

This takes most of the work out of the system and, thereby, suits police, prosecutors, and judges to a tee. Police do not have to be careful about evidence, because they know that no more than one case out of twenty will ever be tested in the courtroom.

Prosecutors do not have to make decisions about which cases to prosecute or risk losing cases. By coercing pleas, prosecutors can prosecute every case and boast of extremely high conviction rates.

When prosecutors had to decide which cases to prosecute, they had to examine the evidence and to investigate the defendant’s side of the story. No more. The evidence seldom comes into play. In place of a determination of innocence or guilt, prosecutors negotiate with lawyers the crimes to which a defendant will enter a plea.

Prosecutors have lost sight of innocence and guilt. What we have today is a conveyor belt that convicts almost everyone who is charged. Every defense attorney knows that today prosecutors can purchase testimony against a defendant by paying a “witness” with money, dropped charges, or reduced time to testify against the defendant. Many prosecutors become highly annoyed at any disruption of the plea bargain conviction process. A defendant that incurs the prosecutor’s ire is certain to be framed on far more serious charges than a negotiated plea.

Going to trial is no guarantee that an innocent person will be acquitted. Prosecutors routinely withhold exculpatory evidence and suborn perjury. Generally, jurors trust prosecutors and are unaware of their inventory of dirty tricks. Few jurors can tell the difference between bogus evidence and real evidence. For example, psychologists and criminologists have established beyond all doubt that eye-witnesses are wrong 50% of the time. Yet, jurors usually believe eye-witnesses unless they think the witness has it in for the defendant and is lying.

Prosecutors–and there are still a few–who are meticulous about their cases and fair to defendants show poor results compared to the high convictions attained by prosecutors who run plea bargain mills and frame-up factories. Today’s criminal justice (sic) system is results orientated, not justice orientated.

counterpunch.org/roberts12122006.html
[/quote]

BTW, the source is not some bleeding heart liberal, but a former member of the Reagan adminstration.

62

HOLY SHIT! Anyone who believes we don’t have a prison problem in the US should read this.

[quote]
1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are. . . [/quote]

article

1 in 100! Regardless of politics, I don’t see how one could possibly deny that indicates a very serious problem.

63

Nope, I don’t think you got a problem with your prisons, they appear to be doing exactly what they’re supposed to. The issue would appear to have something more to do with your laws and how they’re interpeted.

HG

64

. . . and, I would add, problems with the seriously declining state of the US education system, cuts in healthcare, drug rehab programs, mental health facilities, job training, parent facilities, recreation and after school programs for kids, along with inflation, rising unemployment, the proliferation of guns and glamorization of gangsta culture in some portions of the society.

65

[quote=“brianlkennedy”]What is driving the huge expansion of the prison population is what is called the Sentencing Revolution. It took place in the US during the Ronnie Ray-Gun years (1980s Get Tough on Crime and all that Regan horseshit).

What the Sentencing Revolution brought was what is called structured sentencing. Structured sentencing is a sentencing program that minimizes the judges room to move. Structured sentencing was a reaction to erratic and too lenient sentencing. Erratic meaning the same case would get wildly different sentences if sentenced by different judges; too lenient means too little prison time. Because lack of uniformity and excessive leniency are the two major problems with Taiwanese sentencing, I have recommended to the Judicial Yuan that they go with a structured sentencing system for Taiwan. In particular I have recommended the US Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

The US Federal Sentencing Guidelines are perhaps the best known example of structured sentencing. They were a mandatory strict formula. The US Federal sentencing worksheets look like a tax form. It is fill in the boxes and get the one answer. That number is how long the dirt bag goes to jail, no ifs, ands, or buts.

The US Federal Sentencing Guidelines also eliminated parole and made most cases ineligible for probation. End result, Federal Prison population slowly swells over the past 15 years or so.

Many states, including my wonderful home state of California, adopted other forms of structured sentencing. For example in California there were added in the 1980s and 1990s (often by voter referendum) mandatory sentences for various things (for example use a gun, mandatory consecutive 2 years to the underlying sentence). And of course that most wonderful of California inventions ; the Three Strikes, You’re Out, mandatory life scheme. [/quote]

Brian, if you’re still out there, you’ll be pleased (but not surprised) to know that most judges agree with you.

[quote] Judges Give Thumbs Down to Crack, Pot, Porn Mandatory Minimums

Mandatory minimum sentences are too high . . . according to a [color=#FF0000]survey of more than 600 federal trial judges[/color].

From January through March of this year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission for the first time questioned federal judges on their views about sentencing under the advisory guidelines system in effect since 2005. . . .

The survey, released last week, drew responses from 639 of the 942 judges to whom it was sent – a 67.8 percent response rate. The 639 judges who responded had sentenced . . . 79 percent of those sentenced during fiscal 2008 and 2009.

[color=#FF0000]Sixty-two percent of the judges said the mandatory minimums that they were required to impose were too high, particularly for crack cocaine (76 percent), receipt of child pornography (71 percent) and marijuana (54 percent). . .[/color] [/quote]
law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1 … s=newswire

:bravo:

Now let’s see if lawmakers care what the experts say or will continue to pander to misguided emotions of their constituents. :ponder:

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Apparently, so the gun carry advocates claim, an armed society is a polite society in which crime declines dramatically. The statistics shown here give good reason to question this.

67

That’s because the gun carry advocates, to quote Gandhi yet again, are “full of shit”.

But the federal marijuana laws and sentencing guidelines (pre-Obama, hopefully) are absolutely ridiculous. At least the gun nuts have a false and outdated interpretation of the bill of rights to fall back on, marijuana opponents (like most gay marriage opponents) have no such support.

68

Yeah, I get more and more appalled at the stuff people get prosecuted for, as though there wasn’t enough real crime…

For instance, some idiot with a camera in his motorcycle camera posted his video of the cop arresting him and they’re trying to put him on trial for it…claiming something about the cops “right of privacy” in making the arrest! Utter BS.