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What does the prison system of America say about Americans?
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Texas has an interesting solution to the overhead costs.
Hahaha what?
How will they know it isn't true? If you're relying on an informant to prove if someone is guilty or not, doesn't that basically require you to lack other evidence? "The informant said Bob confessed, but we asked Bob and Bob said that's bullshit, so I guess we are back to square one."
Really?
That's the Third World solution. This works pretty well until the criminals catch on and decide that it's easier to shoot cops than to get shot. The last thing we need to add to our problems is militarized criminal gangs going to war against the law, especially in regions where they might actually have a chance of winning.
One of the reasons that U.S. is not Mexico or Colombia is that we've traditionally been a society where getting arrested means a car ride, some days in jail and the chance to get out in court. Contrary to what 80s cop shows would have you believe, that's a system that keeps everyone safer.
Rigorous Scholarship
Uh-huh.
Texas has actually made a lot of criminal justice reforms in recent history, despite the conservatism, presumably due to some combination of love of freedom and the right to do job X, as well as a desire to cut the massive amounts of spending on our prisoners.
And unfortunately, those reforms seemingly have slowed down due to the previously mentioned tough on crime approach. If you propose a bill that requires mandatory probation instead of incarceration for small-level drug possession, proposed by the dominant state conservative think-tank and supported by Grover Norquist etc, the bill gets smacked down because local prosecutors, and police officials etc etc come out in force and say you're being too soft.
They do this all the time. The whole point is that they can turn a weak case around with a high-pressure plea deal backed by a slanted witness/informant. Everyone may know the info is bullshit, but the decision is going to be between trying to fight the information and possibly adding decades to the sentence if you lose, or accept the bullshit and take the deal.
Incentives are poorly aligned. Prosecutors don't want to look like chumps, and that means they want to get a conviction.
MM, you need to replace every "will" in your response with "should." How the system should work and how it does work are quite different.
I don't see how "bribing other criminals with money or plea bargains" is a good idea (at least not as it is currently used). If there is enough evidence to "investigate" an informant, why are they needed to begin with? How do you investigate "Yeah, Bob confessed" or "Yeah, I saw Bob holding the gun?"
However, there are so many ways to cut costs through responsible penal codes that getting rid of the death penalty wouldn't bother me a bit.
No, it really isn't. The use of informants has been corrosive.
The fact that a bigger deal isn't being made out of how prevalent and widespread these significant problems are.
For those concerned about the cost of things, maybe these might interest you
2010 NPMSRP Police Misconduct Statistical Report -Draft-
Note that the money total there is excluding sealed settlements, court costs, and attorney fees.
Yup. Informants almost never go to a jury trial. In fact, they have stuff in place to make sure they don't unless absolutely necessary due to the desire to protect them (even if they are lying). In most cases with high profile defendants, during a bench trial, the defendant is pulled from the court room when an informant makes his/her testimony in order to protect them, and the defendant is given an edited transcript to protect their identity. This happened to a fellow I know who took his trial to the bench phase before going to the DA and getting a deal.
They use informants to secure indictments at grand-jury, and in a situation when they have proof their statements are true (like a recording). But even then, it's pretty rare for their claims to be actually backed up and checked unless they are used in the investigation.
"Hobley was accused of setting a fire that claimed seven lives, including those of his
wife and infant son, in an apartment building on the south side of Chicago in 1987.
The snitch was Andre Council, a suspect in another arson fire in the same neighborhood.
In exchange for police agreeing to drop the investigation in which he was
a target, Council testified that he saw Hobley purchase gasoline at a filling station and
a little later, after hearing fire engines, saw him standing outside the burning building.
Hobley was convicted and sentenced to death."
Who in their right fucking mind thinks things like this are good ideas? "Oh hey we saw that you were in the area and we know you have a history of arson, did you maybe see somebody else doing a crime we could otherwise pin on you?"
This is absolutely true. About half of your prison population is African American, while African Americans make-up about 13% of the total population.
...You're mis-attributing quotes. Please be more careful with your tags. I never made the statement your quote labels as being mine.
In any case, I do know several drug dealers, and they are not scumbags. Your local Wal Mart pharmacist is a fucking 'drug dealer', and they give out far more potent narcotics than cannabis.
Cannabis dealing / smoking shouldn't even be illegal. The prohibitions laws are racist in origin, based on faked testimony and have not delivered anything but wreckage.
One of the ironies of the informant racket is that actual, established criminals make the best informants. It's better to arrest the innocent dude, as you aren't going to get a lot of juicy tips from someone who isn't actually part of the underworld.
How the hell is that legal? What part of "the accused has the Constitutional right to confront his accuser" don't they get?
That's few and far between as a rare Law and Order episode, admittedly, but things we should entertain the possibility for.
No. I don't keep toxic chemicals that harm me around on the off chance they might be useful.
The vast majority of people in jail are not African-Americans convicted of minor drug crimes.
Sorry about the misquote. That was Thanatos.
No, pharmacists are not "drug dealers." That's an utterly goosey statement. And whether or not marijuan should be legal or illegal is irrelevant to the question of whether people engaged in large-scale criminal conspiracies are scumbags. Given the horrible secondary effects associated with the illegal drug trade, anyone who voluntarily engages in it is a scumbag.
Rigorous Scholarship
But dude, they're not accusers. They're informants. All they're doing is spitting out stuff that sways opinion drastically. That's not an accusation, that's corroboration.
That's how they skirt it. I even asked a similar question during my case, if I could hear the recording they were using. I quoted the bit about being able to confront my accuser, and was brushed off with "An informant doesn't fall under those rules."
...You don't use detergents or, say, boiling water? :P
Look, plea bargaining is clearly being used as a means of intimidation right now. That doesn't mean it's the sole thing it can be used for, though, and I have no doubt that there are practical reasons to include that sort of mechanism.
Well if you want to be a goose about it, yes you do.
Those are two different issues, which you thoughtlessly compressed.
Is the guy who grows a few plants in his backyard engaged in a "large-scale criminal conspiracy?" It's the kind of sloppy thinking that equates Tony Montana with some hippy with a grow-op that got us into this mess.
Cops can talk to whomever they want during their investigation (with some exceptions) and follow up leads as they see fit. The prosecution doesn't have to put an informant up on the stand, unless they want to use their statements as evidence at trial.
Rigorous Scholarship
This is a goosey and grossly ignorant statement propagated by popular media and TV shows. But that's not for this thread.
That's why I said bench trial. In my state informants almost never take the stand simply because if a case goes to jury trial they drop the informant, unless defense calls them up, the state tries not to bring them in.
Edit: My example may have been extraordinary as well, the informant was involved in another investigation. So there's that.
Yeah, like bribing doctors, lying to the FDA, giving colonoscopy patients hepatitis, and selling HIV-tainted factor 8.
...
Oh, sorry, you said il-legal.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Now, first of all, I have worked both for lawyers and at a courthouse in the past. Second of all, I grew up in a region known as "the Emerald Triangle." My county had 80,000 people in it, and, at best guess, did about a billion dollars a year in pot business; that's thought to be an underestimate, by most people. With the mill closures and the drop in wine prices, it was difficult to get by without going into the pot business; it was one of the reasons I left, because I didn't want to be involved. I am extraordinarily lucky, but an awful lot of people there couldn't afford to go to college like I could, didn't get degrees, and couldn't just leave their parents and the rest of their family back there, either because they needed their family's support, or their family needed their support.
So, most of the jobs that are available are either government work (which is some of the only decent-paying work, and is seeing huge cuts), wine industry work (also seeing big cuts), or service industry work. Service industry work pays for shit and has no benefits, and this is in an area where a house that is on fire right at this moment on a quarter-acre plot sells for $200,000. So, they have to pay the rent somehow. And there's a convenient billion-dollar industry you can start up right in your backyard (or in your garage, with a bit of investment). So, you do that, because Jesus Christ that's a healthy chunk of change. And maybe you have a little extra land, so you put in a few more plants. Harvest time rolls around, and you have way more stuff than you know what to do with, so what do you do? You turn around and hire your friends and family to help. Going rate, last I heard, was about $25 an hour. For those of you doing the math, that's three times the fucking minimum wage, which is a lot, especially when you can't get 40 hours at most of the jobs there, anyhow. And sure, it doesn't pay benefits, but neither does fucking Wal-Mart. And what, exactly, is the harm they're doing? They're stealing business from Mexican and Central-/South-American drug cartels, who treat their employees like shit, and regularly engage in murder, rape, and any number of other crimes? They're selling a product that has cancer-fighting properties, is not physically addictive, and makes people feel good? It certainly can't be that they're dodging taxes. And this makes them "scumbags?" I mean, really, if they treated their employees shittier, dumped a bunch of cancer-causing chemicals into the air and drinking water, made way more money, and sold a product that was way more harmful while dodging taxes, you'd call them fucking "job creators!"
So, there are our "scumbag drug-dealers." Now, let's turn to our boys in blue, the people who are "protecting and serving." And what's their role in all this? Well, they roll up with their starting $90,000 annual pay with fucking ridiculous benefits, and arrest these "scumbags," essentially ruining their lives, at the very least forcing them to always disclose a drug conviction on any future job/school applications, but most likely sending them to jail/prison for awhile. Jail or prison where their sister sounder--the corrections officers--get to abuse them, and haul in their pre-overtime $50,000 annual salary. And when they get out of prison, they're never going to be able to pull themselves out of poverty. And then what does this police officer, this paragon of justice who we're paying $90,000 a year to enforce the law, and protect us do? He turns around and does exactly the thing that he just threw someone in jail for. And why? Desperation? Fuck no. He just wants some extra fucking spending money, and he's willing to ruin people's lives to do it.
If you break somebody's spine in order to steal a bunch of money and drugs from them, and they can't work for the rest of their lives because of it, we throw you in prison, and call you scumbag. But if you throw someone in prison so they can't work for the rest of their lives in order to steal a bunch of money and drugs from them, we call you a hero, write you a check, and call them a scumbag, because they totally had it coming. It just boggles my fucking mind that people who can see the world like this exist, but then again, I guess if they didn't, we wouldn't have a Republican party.
Informants aren't inherently bad, but they require careful use. Any time you have an informant who is being literally bribed or intimidated into offering a story that a prosecutor or investigator wants to hear, the potential for dishonesty is huge.
There may be times when using an informant, even one who has been clearly bribed, is necessary in the pursuit of justice. Too often, they are used in the pursuit of convictions.
Rigorous Scholarship
yeah, I wanted to say something about that little statement too, even though it's getting off topic.
There is a pretty big grey area between 'addict' and 'dealer' from any rational or humane perspective on drug use, and in the eyes of the criminal justice system, if you have ever even smoked pot you are voluntarily engaging in the illegal drug trade, and therefore subject to prosecution (and also are a 'scumbag')
In both cases, it comes down to money. The dealers and the corrupt cops want it, and they don't care if they need to break the law to make it. I'd be happy to see both parties in jail.
Rigorous Scholarship
Be specific, please: which individuals and criminal conspiracies are you talking about?
Rigorous Scholarship
You disagree with this?
The ones he described in his post:
Okay, maybe these weren't criminal conspiracies and only one person was involved in the growing and sale of 25 pounds of marijuana, but that seems a little unlikely.
Rigorous Scholarship