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In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

nytimes.com

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Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#71

Post by askvictor »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #43
almostgotcaught wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. and just like re healthcare, this is the rub of communicating about this: 90% (to pick a random number out of thin air) of hn's target demo has had perfect/sheltered lives and has never come into contact with the "law". so they believe all the political and institutional rhetoric around it. the other 10% know it's a…

I think the most inconvenient thing is actually that it’s both (largely) accidental and systematic. If you go looking for the source of “evil” breaking these systems, you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything. The vast majority of these systems’ behavior (good or bad) is effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever.

> you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything

So you you think, without those few bad folks, these systems would not tend to break, or that these few bad folks are not being challenged? I.e. do you think these few bad folks are completely inconsequential at a systemic level?

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#72

Post by sorcerer-mar »

askvictor wrote: post #71
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most inconvenient thing is actually that it’s both (largely) accidental and systematic. If you go looking for the source of “evil” breaking these systems, you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything. The vast majority of these systems’ behavior (good or bad) is effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever.

> you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything So you you think, without those few bad folks, these systems would not tend to break, or that these few bad folks are not being challenged? I.e. do you think these few bad folks are completely inconsequential at a systemic level?

> do you think these few bad folks are completely inconsequential at a systemic level?

Pretty much yes, and so are the good ones. Such is the nature of systems. A thing becomes visible as and labeled as "a system" only after it's quite stable and resilient, i.e. after it has developed effective responses to common "attacks" (deliberate or otherwise). Achieving fungibility of 99.9% of individual humans is like objective #1 and the systems that fail to achieve it don't exist long enough to be problematic.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#73

Post by sorcerer-mar »

askvictor wrote: post #67
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course! If the codebase gets non-performant or hard to maintain, all you have to do is rewrite it to be not-that. Typically makes sense to fire anyone who wrote the broken version too, just to get a fresh set of eyes on it. Not sure why there’s any non-performant or unmaintainable code in light of this fact.

I appreciate the irony, but it doesn't have to be that drastic. In Australia we have the Law Reform Commission, which looks to gradually make laws better. Is the legal system perfect? Far from it. Does it get political? All the time. Is it getting better? I would argue yes, slowly. To your analogy, it's possible to incrementally improve a code base. It's also possible to stop it getting worse.

Right, which no one (to my knowledge) is opposed to.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#74

Post by redczar »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #40
AngryData wrote: post #38

Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for the courts and cops. If you can't afford a lawyer, they will provide you with a joke. And if you can afford a lawyer, now its just a question if you are willing to spend more on your lawyer than the state is hoping to extort from you. If you are, you will get…

> Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. and just like re healthcare, this is the rub of communicating about this: 90% (to pick a random number out of thin air) of hn's target demo has had perfect/sheltered lives and has never come into contact with the "law". so they believe all the political and institutional rhetoric around it. the other 10% know it's a…

Part of the problem as I see it is that we Americans are incredibly vengeful and seek retribution. We are particularly incensed when someone poorer (or otherwise different than us) seemingly gets a “light sentence”.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#75

Post by Zigurd »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #43
almostgotcaught wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. and just like re healthcare, this is the rub of communicating about this: 90% (to pick a random number out of thin air) of hn's target demo has had perfect/sheltered lives and has never come into contact with the "law". so they believe all the political and institutional rhetoric around it. the other 10% know it's a…

I think the most inconvenient thing is actually that it’s both (largely) accidental and systematic. If you go looking for the source of “evil” breaking these systems, you’ll surely find a few bad folks purposely fucking it up, but removing them is almost certainly not going to fix anything. The vast majority of these systems’ behavior (good or bad) is effectively not driven by individuals whatsoever.

Dirty and thuggish cops are way more common than Americans think. The more benign form is detail and overtime fraud. But I'd bet the dollar amount easily rivals property crime value in your town.

Theft and fraud in businesses is more common than software people think. Kickbacks to purchasing managers, for example. You're less likely to encounter this than a casually dirty cop, but it's out there.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#76

Post by ranger_danger »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #69
kubb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this where the whole Europe bashing on social media comes from? US needing to believe that a better society, rule of law, social services isn’t real in Europe and impossible in general?

Not only that, but it explains the disdain for Europe in the current American government. European society proves that Americans could have true freedom and quality of life if it weren't for corporations and oligarchs effectively owning our government. Fascists hate a counterexample.

Seems like "they hate us for our freedom!" has done a complete 180 as of late.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#77

Post by IsTom »

nadermx wrote: post #4

"Two men were released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their sentences had been completed." Horrific. This egregious human rights violation is something you'd think you read about in a developing nation, not a developed nation.

Another reason why "the richest third-world nation" monicker holds.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#78

Post by frakkingcylons »

crooked-v wrote: post #8

Merely "fails"? That sounds like apologetic underemphasis to me, like so many other Times stories. The system described is more like active oppression.

It’s the appropriate language for a news organization. Making the language more charged doesn’t change the facts that they are presenting and it’s what I want as a subscriber.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#79

Post by psd1 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #31
nine_zeros wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

None so blind as them what won't see.

I'm European. We don't have favelas, as far as I've seen. The destitute in my country, and there are plenty, have far higher living standards than in yours.

Take a little drive round Memphis, or New Orleans. The parts you wouldn't normally go.

Re: In Jail Without a Lawyer: How a Texas Town Fails Poor Defendants

#80

Post by BrenBarn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
AngryData wrote: post #38

Anyone who has ever dealt with the US justice system as just some regular bloke knows it is broken. 90% of it is about extorting the population for funding for the courts and cops. If you can't afford a lawyer, they will provide you with a joke. And if you can afford a lawyer, now its just a question if you are willing to spend more on your lawyer than the state is hoping to extort from you. If you are, you will get…

My understanding is the root of the evil is in our overcriminalisation of day to day life. Is this accurate? Or would reducing the prison population through reduced sentencing not alleviate the worst of the problems? (Reduced sentencing loads mean you can raise standards for court-appointed counsel, possibly ban plea deals, et cetera .)

I think it is less to with "overcriminalization" in the sense of legislation, and more to do with the enforcement process. In some sense I think we need more criminalization, in that the types of malfeasance described in the article (e.g., keeping people imprisoned beyond their sentence, failing to provide an attorney, etc.) should result in long jail sentences for the officials who perpetrated them. The problem is that in the US we have become accustomed to an enormous gap between the law and its implementation.
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