no subject

[firecat]

A former judge criticizes the US justice process in ways I find compelling.

http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2012/09/04/criminal-justice-media-nancy-gertner
"The Media's Reporting On Justice Is Criminal" by Nancy Gertner

We lead the world in imprisonment not just by a little — but by several orders of magnitude. Our nearest competitors are Rwanda and China, hardly good company. And the racial figures are even worse: At the end of 2010, black men had an incarceration rate of 3,059 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 U.S. black male residents. This rate was almost seven times higher than the incarceration rate for white men (456 per 100,000).

and, discussing a case of DUI that resulted in deaths,

[Massachusetts sentencing] guidelines were established by a Sentencing Commission consisting of prosecutors, defense counsel, public safety and correctional officials, and victim-witness advocates. And the judge accompanied the sentence with an elaborate recitation of the reasons for the sentence — on the record and in public.

The prosecutor cannot be so monitored. He picks a number and does not have to explain it, beyond justifying it in the particular case. There are no public, transparent guidelines for prosecutors, no Sentencing Commission, no standards. He cannot be easily reviewed to see if he is biased, choosing mandatory minimums for defendants of color more than for those who are white, or simply going with his gut.

Comments

[necturus]

I think the media's reporting of just about anything these days is scarcely short of criminal. It is all driven by profit, whatever attracts the most eyeballs, and the truth be damned.

I read somewhere that the United States has more people in prison right now than Stalin's GULag at its height.