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

nytimes.com

81–90 of 457 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery has existed for all of human history, and is sadly the natural state of things. It was stamped out by the British empire, a colonising power, because of the relentless campaigning of Christian moralists. Imprisonment is indeed a newer development. In the past they chopped off your hand and let fate deal with you, or they just executed you. Nobody was going to feed some peasant who couldn't even work. Imprison…

> Imprisonment is indeed a newer development. Ancient Greece and Rome are "newer"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamertine_Prison was built in the 7th century BC .

Please - and I ask this with calmness and a sincere urging:

Stop trying to make incarceration seem like a long-running historical phenomenon. It is profit-driven propaganda, the promulgation of which began promptly in 1865.

Incarceration, in the Western legal tradition, is very new in relative terms, and its growth has been overwhelmingly the result of the experience of the USA transforming slavery into something marginally more politically acceptable.

You probably already know this, given your knowledge of the history, but some plantations, such as Angola, never even bothered closing down; they just transformed into penitentiaries and continued business as usual. The 13th amendment to the constitution, against the better judgment of many objectors, is specifically worded to facilitate this transformation.

Incarceration is not a legal tradition. It is a way to shoehorn slavery economics into one.

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

#82

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.

There's a long running historiographical debate about the relative influence individuals have over the ultimate course of historical events compared to systemic factors

For many years, it was popular (particularly in revisionist circles) almost entirely to deny individual agency and to rely instead exclusively on systemic arguments which highlighted the power of geography, ecology, culture, technology, and other complex systems to shape human events. That revisionist approach emerged partially in reaction to the near universal overreliance of prior generations of historians on the so-called "Great Man" theory of history, which assumes events are largely attributable to the decisions of a select group of politically powerful individuals. Nearly all of those individuals happened to be white, male, and wealthy, and thus Great Man history suffered not only from blindness to systemic factors that can shape events, but also to the experiences, contributions, and agency of anyone who was not rich, not white, not a man, or even simply not politically powerful enough to count. In other words, they ignore nearly everyone who has ever lived.

Although academic history has long since moved away from the Great Man theory, it remains a popular trope of low quality popular history books, and increasingly it has become clear that purely systemic, revisionist approaches with no consideration for the effects of individual actors are also inadequate to explain historical events.

Sometimes systems are more powerful than people, and no amount of good will or effort is going to fix a problem. The Vikings abandoned Greenland during the Little Ice Age because they had no way of controlling the climate or adapting efficiently to the changes. The climate system was more powerful than any individual Norse settler or group of settlers could ever hope to be.

Sometimes systems are weaker than people, and leaders can bend them to their will. After nearly 1000 years of independence from secular authority and mostly uncontested religious domination in England, the Catholic Church in the 16th century formed an incredibly powerful institutional system of religious control built on vast endowments of land. It was by and large extremely popular with the common people and historically served a critical role in bolstering the king's position by promoting a respect for hierarchy that naturally encompassed both their own elevated status as priests and the position of secular authoritarian rulers, who ruled as God's representative on Earth. Despite the Church's enduring local popularity, its immense wealth, its deep connections with the broader Christian world, and the powerful hold fear of excommunication and damnation had on most Christians, King Henry VIII managed to completely transform the institutional, legal, and property-managing system of the medieval English Catholic Church, sundering it entirely from Rome, depriving it of essentially all of its land holdings, and subordinating its institutions entirely to royal authority. And he accomplished this in a shockingly short period of time, only around a decade.

Why did Henry decide to throw his lot in with the Reformation? Was it because he saw the injustice of monks, priests, and friars siphoning off so much of his subjects' wealth to Rome simply to subsidize the already luxurious and decidedly un-Christian lifestyle enjoyed by the pope? Not at all, in fact in the years before his marriage to Katherine of Aragon soured, he wrote a book defending the pope, who promptly named the king Defender of the Faith in gratitude and recognition of his scholastic achievement. Did Henry instead recognize an opportunity to enrich himself? Probably not, the evidence suggests he wasn't that savvy about money, but luckily for him, he had Cromwell to take care of the pounds and the pennies. Ultimately, he just needed a divorce. Because if he failed to produce an heir, the danger of civil war would be intolerable, and Katherine was clearly beyond her childbearing years. But the pope wouldn't give him one, and Henry was a raging narcissist willing to burst through any boundary in service of his own ego, even risking his soul to break from Rome.

So individual idiosyncrasies can also affect the course of events, we can't just look at systems, and we can't just look at individuals, we need systems too. The relative influence of each over how a complex institution like a justice system develops is a highly contingent and fact-specific analysis. Sometimes the climate can push winters to be too cold even for the hardiest settlers. Sometimes an entire nation's centuries-long, enduring religious beliefs and ideologies can depend solely on the whims (and lust) of a single egotistical dictator. And sometimes when such a basic function is this messed up, you might actually find that there are indeed a limited number of individuals responsible, and that replacing them with competent or less malicious individuals will actually solve the problem.

That's the trick though, and where the systemic and individual-focused explanatory variables start to bleed into each other. If it is systematically impossible to find good people to staff these institutions, then yes merely swapping out individuals will not fix the situation because by definition you are swapping out bad people for other bad people. However, I seriously doubt that it is impossible to do so in this case, because even if the US justice system is messed up and broken, this is about the most messed up and broken that it gets. I think it's fair to say that 99.999% of the country does not experience systemic justice problems to the same extent as Maverick County, which is why so many people are reacting to this story with justifiable shock. So even assuming ad arguendo that it is systemically impossible to find truly good people to work in law enforcement or the judicial system, we know it's at least possible to find better people than they have in Maverick County.

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

#83

[flagged]

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” -- Benjamin Franklin

I heard "deserve neither and will lose both", which has better meter. No idea which is more accurate.

I _generally_ agree with the sentiment, but Franklin's neighbours didn't have amplified music.

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

#84
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Plenty of poor brown people who live here would be happy to tell you how shitty it is. Nuff said.

Shittier as third world countries? I doubt they've ever lived in one to know this. Nor have you for that matter.

Just ask Cubans who moved to the US if the US is a third world dictatorship or Cuba they left from.

And repeating nuff said like a 5 year old, doesn't make you sound smart. At least try to be more original if you go for a cheap jab.

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

#85
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

I'm talking about how bad comparisons of the US are to actual third world countries and your counter arguments is comparison to Europe, a very NOT third world area?

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

People in the States know how fast our country can fall and don’t accept “well, we’ve still got a ways to go” as an excuse for the descent. The so-called best shouldn’t compare itself to others, it should compare itself to itself from yesterday. And in those regards, we are descending rapidly, especially for those of us LGBTQ+, women and minorities. Do not forget how fast Saudi Arabia and other countries changed from…

[flagged]

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

#87
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of poor brown people who live here would be happy to tell you how shitty it is. Nuff said.

Shittier as third world countries? I doubt they've ever lived in one to know this. Nor have you for that matter. Just ask Cubans who moved to the US if the US is a third world dictatorship or Cuba they left from. And repeating nuff said like a 5 year old, doesn't make you sound smart. At least try to be more original if you go for a cheap jab.

Nor have you lived in every third world country or experienced every level of American life. So who are you, or they, to say otherwise?

And I'm sure some gusanos would say that. They never bother to mention their families were land "owners" and enslaved people, of course.

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

#88
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shittier as third world countries? I doubt they've ever lived in one to know this. Nor have you for that matter. Just ask Cubans who moved to the US if the US is a third world dictatorship or Cuba they left from. And repeating nuff said like a 5 year old, doesn't make you sound smart. At least try to be more original if you go for a cheap jab.

Nor have you lived in every third world country or experienced every level of American life. So who are you, or they, to say otherwise? And I'm sure some gusanos would say that. They never bother to mention their families were land "owners" and enslaved people, of course.

>Nor have you lived in every third world country or experienced every level of American life.

That's what statistics are for. Check how many people from Africa try to move to the US, and then how many people from the US try to move to Africa, to get a fucking perspective.

>So who are you, or they, to say otherwise?

I'm the person with the correct arguments.

> I was mocking your bad post

You don't interact much with people IRL do you? If this is what mocking is to you, repeating what others say. You need to work on your mocking. And on your thought process.

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

#89
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor have you lived in every third world country or experienced every level of American life. So who are you, or they, to say otherwise? And I'm sure some gusanos would say that. They never bother to mention their families were land "owners" and enslaved people, of course.

>Nor have you lived in every third world country or experienced every level of American life. That's what statistics are for. Check how many people from Africa try to move to the US, and then how many people from the US try to move to Africa, to get a fucking perspective. >So who are you, or they, to say otherwise? I'm the person with the correct arguments. > I was mocking your bad post You don't interact much with p…

So you haven't been to every third world country and haven't lived in every level of American life, and therefore are clueless to the reality of it. Glad we cleared that up, thanks.

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

#90

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 don't think there is just one problem, although that is a big part of it. Prosecutors and judges are often picked by how profitable they are to the local courts, neither cops nor prosecutors lose anything if they make up and push bullshit charges even when caught red handed, states and locales continuously tack on all sorts of random court charges to increase revenues, and there is no verification that any "programs" they tack on and receive kickbacks for actually improve anyone's situation. Not to mention all the inter-family connections and "ill scratch your back if you scratch mine" backroom dealings between cops, courts, prosecutors, and jails.

The only checks on any part of the justice system are from within the justice system itself, and its pretty hard to get those people to voluntarily cut their own pay, staff, benefits, and control in the name of justice, especially when it would most likely just get them fired and blacklisted. There are very little checks against what they do, and the people who have been involved with the courts and know how it works either benefit personally from it, or are considered a no-good criminal who's word is given zero heed. In most places if you get a felony you even lose your right to vote.

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