Comment by Aurornis
16 hours ago
> Federal prosecutor success rate is over > 90%.
This is a misunderstood statistic.
Federal prosecutors won't even pursue cases unless they think there's a high chance of success. They don't operate like two private parties suing each other to force the court to decide something. If the evidence is there or the charges aren't fully formed, they don't waste resources on it.
This leads to a contradictory set of complaints that the legal system lets too many people go or doesn't have enough teeth.
True, although many prosecutors do also try to put their thumb on the scale when possible.
For comparison, Japan has a 99.9% conviction rate, but defers prosecution in 60% of cases. And police aren’t arresting or even attempting to enforce the law for every crime. Citizens complain that petty crime laws aren’t being enforced enough, leading to a rise in things like graffiti, litter, and traffic violations (the “bosozoku” motorcycle gangs are having a resurgence). But if you do face prosecution, there is enormous pressure to sign a confession and avoid trial, as a conviction at trial may be punished more harshly. Very similar in some respects.
>Federal prosecutors won't even pursue cases unless they think there's a high chance of success.
Given the incarceration rates compared to average western standards, that's a moot point. Even if they selectively pursue, they do pursue a hell of a lot, and they do get a hell of a lot of convictions - relatively. Factor in the severity of the convictions, also much worse compared to average western standards even for the same offenses, and it's an ever worse picture.
> Given the incarceration rates...
I don't think you make anything moot by compounding more regional stats. Some countries have more crime, they underinvest in rehabilitation, addiction treatment, and social diversion programmes. Shock horror: jobless, homeless addicts commit crimes. The US also has a land border with long land borders.
That is all to say, comparing apples and margaritas doesn't do what you think it does.
US does not have that much more crime.
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"also much worse …"
Why is convicting and sentencing criminals a bad thing?
> Federal prosecutors won't even pursue cases unless they think there's a high chance of success.
The problem with this theory is that it ignores the incentives on the other side in a criminal case. When you get charged with something, the prosecutor offers you a deal and that deal is almost invariably a significantly lower penalty than what happens if you go to court and get convicted. The plea deal is a lesser charge, if you demand a trial then they throw the book at you, stack charges and ask for more severe penalties for each one.
With the result that if someone actually did it, demanding a trial instead of pleading guilty for a lesser sentence has a large negative expected value. Which in turn implies that it doesn't make sense to do unless you think there is a high probability you can win, for example because you know you didn't do it. The coercive force is so large that it can cause innocent people to plead guilty, since even a 10% chance of losing can screw up your whole life when it means a 10x higher penalty.
And yet > 90% of the people who thought their chances of being acquitted were high enough to be worth taking a much large sentence on conviction, still get convicted. Which seems suspicious.
What youre saying is true, but the reality is that the number of people actually affected by it is vanishingly small. Of course its not vanishing if youre that person affected, but as far as the system goes, its negligible.
The reality is that most people who become subject to criminal prosecution are guilty. The reason can often be attributed to overbroad laws, but that still means you are guilty and will likely lose your criminal case. The prevalence of plea deals is just a performance optimization on top of that fact - most people are guilty at that stage and we'll let you off a little easier if you avoid the time and cost of a trial.
Innocent people are coerced to plead guilty, but you also have to realize the number of "innocent people pleading guilty" also contains guilty people who convinced lay people, who never saw or reviewed the evidence, they were innocent. As a prosecutor during a plea negotiation I once almost dismissed a charge against a girl who convinced me that she was innocent until I actually looked a security tape before signing the dismissal. She was 100% guilty. This is another interesting point about how busy prosecutors are - i didnt even bother to review the evidence against her before offering her a plea deal.
All this to say, if you end up coerced into accepting a plea deal despite your innocence, you are not a normal person. Yes, there's at least one normal person out there who was coerced, but they're the exception that proves the rule.
Courts need more funding, laws need to be relaxed and fine tuned, we need to stop the school to prison pipeline, but even with all those problems the system works pretty damn well.
> The reality is that most people who become subject to criminal prosecution are guilty.
This is not the reality, but your own justifying premise. which is why you instinctively began it with the proclamation "this is the reality."
I personally pled guilty for something that I didn't do, and that no one involved thought I did. I was offered a plea bargain of zero time, zero fine, and it would be expunged from my record in a year if I weren't convicted of anything else - which is evidence that the prosecution knew that I hadn't done anything. This was actually a systemic kindness - the people involved in the system couldn't live with the idea that they were punishing me for nothing.
The alternative was going on trial for a stupid felony called "possession of the instrument of a crime" which not only had nothing to do with the conditions of my initial arrest, but carried something like a 5-15 year sentence. The odds that they would have gotten a conviction on such a bizarre felony (the only reason it existed was to have a lower standard) in the state I lived, and with the race I was, and with a public defender, was around 100% imo. They go hard as a punishment for forcing them to hold a trial - that would be the excuse for those same kind people as before to label me a troublemaker who had turned down their kindness, and now deserved to go to prison for nothing.
You've made a comment with a lot of words, but the only reasoning you have is "the reality is," and you surrounded it with pronouncements and some personal anecdote about one woman. You're talking about a system that convicts 90% of the people (unlike me) who said "I didn't do anything, they know I didn't do anything, they certainly will let me go once they figure it out."
> if you end up coerced into accepting a plea deal despite your innocence, you are not a normal person.
The system is unjust because people like you support it exactly as it is...
> need to stop the school to prison pipeline,
...with lefty sloganistic jargon, playing the part of a good progressive prosecutor. You won't see it until it happens to you or someone you care about, then it will become the most important issue in the world. The fact that the US criminal justice system is hard on black Americans is not "racism" or "white supremacy" but because black Americans are not the friends or loved ones of people in power, and will never be. When you personally are prosecuted for nothing, or even for a crime that your peers deem trivial, the resumes of the people at your protest and your candlelight vigil will force people to pay attention, or risk their own comfort. Most people are not so lucky.
The system is an atrocity. It fails the victims of crimes, the accused of crimes, the perpetrators of crimes, and to protect the safety of the public in the aftermath of crime. It is simply an enrichment device for its participants, and an empty performance to mollify the middle class. It also serves to warehouse the wealthless underclass of the descendants of freed slaves away from view when they are found unfit for menial work.
I don't think it's so much a "misunderstood" statistic as much as a number that people (like the commenter you are replying to) deliberately trot out to use as evidence for their position because they are depending on most people being statistically illiterate.
To be clear, I totally agree with your points, I just think this is more of a case of "lying with statistics" than being a misunderstanding.
I think in this case Hanlon’s Razor very much applies.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
When it comes to political statements everything is opposite day.
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I think you forgot something even more basic. Federal prosecutors handle federal crimes and the vast majority of those require extensive investigations to gather evidence before you can even initiate a court case.
The most classic case of federal offense is tax fraud. You can't record tax fraud on a camera or believe the witnesses, you actually need to look at the balance sheet and contracts of the company and make sure there is actually a crime to prosecute.
They never pursue court trials, because it's too much work. But they'll pursue plea deals, because there's this gigantic pipeline and everyone in it (including public defenders) is on the same team: Team Make Him Plead.
Because of this, no true justice is possible. Trials don't just try the defendants, it forces the prosecutor to prove that there really was a case and that they weren't just trying to bully someone who felt it was hopeless and would rather get out of pre-trial jail early. It forces the cops to actually make a fucking case, rather than rely on horseshit to lock someone away that can't bond out.
And no reform is possible. If you explain any of this to someone who actually understands it, they panic and say "but the prosecutors wouldn't even be able to bring 1/50th of those cases to trial, the system would overload" as if that were a bad thing that they couldn't. In the same way that you're not caught in a traffic jam but rather you are traffic, you're not caught up in these problems... your apathy, your ignorance, your rejection of boat-rocking, in short you are the problem.