Decius wrote:

I’ve become completely convinced that we need to begin a process of fundamental political change in the U.S., not in the form of a new party per se as a new multi-faceted movement of ideas, organizations, and cultures, based around a vision of democracy which is fundamentally open, participatory, and decentralized.

Mitch Kapor wants to change the political system.

This is interesting...

Short, though... I'm waiting for more. Some of the links in his comments point to some interesting stuff.

I've been thinking recently that the criminal justice system needs be reformed...

You're not the only one. One major question that comes to mind when I think about this topic is how one states the purpose of a justice system. Fundamentally, the idea is to provide safety and stability to society, unless I miss my mark. The complication comes when we get into how such ends are to be realized.

For one, ought we to punish evil or reform the misguided? It hinges on the point Jello brought up, that being the question of whether criminals are in general reformable, with a corrolary questioning if the cost of reform is considered reasonable.

The entire process of determining the truth of the situation is lead up to whatever action is taken to achieve the goal of the justice system. Addressing whatever flaws there are in the process of acquiring truth rank, i think, a close second to answering the question of what we are to do having arrived at the truth.

We've applied a punishment-as-reform mentality in this country. The current system operates on the assumption that inflicting punishment will serve the purposes of a) righting the wrong, b) preventing further wrongs and c) reforming the perpetrator.

Point (a) assumes that we view justice primarily as retribution : as in, eye-for-an-eye (or perhaps equivalently-damaging-punishment-for-an-eye). I think it's doubtful a rape victim feels she has been made whole when the rapist gets 30 years in prison. Even if he was put to death, it seems unlikely to conclude the matter for the victim. But, perhaps that's the best we can do.

Prisons certainly serve the purpose of point (b), at least for the term of the sentence, and as long as we leave out wrongs committed against the incarcerated. The death penalty also acheives this, though it remains a matter of debate as to whether execution is, in and of itself, a societal wrong.

As for (c), I hardly believe anyone thinks our prisons are achieving this. The extention of this point -- that is, the prevention of crime, something like reforming the character of a pre-criminal -- is likewise unresolved because for many criminals, prison doesn't seem so bad compared to the "free" life they're leading. Is there any valid deterrent for someone who feels they've nothing to lose?

I've had discussions before with people who view crime as a good/evil debate. I ask that if criminals are evil, can they be reformed? I view evil as a fundamental trait. That is, for me to call someone evil, I believe them to be beyond reform, without any shred of human worth. As such, I don't think it's appropriate to apply the term liberally over the criminals we encounter in daily life. That said, I don't know what I believe regarding the reformability of criminals. On the one hand, I really think that putting a criminal in an environment that ranges from somewhat worse to somewhat better than his everyday life, and forcing him to live in fear, anger and discomfort is hardly likely to effect any sort of meaningful reform in the general case. That being said, the kinds of things that might serve to translate a criminal into a productive member of society -- education, encouragement, etc -- are hard to justify as viable responses to the commission of a serious crime.

Thus, I'm left with the quandary of not having a viable answer for the question of how to reform someone, even if we start from the belief that it's possible (which I do, mind you, but not everyone does). There's no easy way to handle the situation if you don't believe reform is possible (or feasible). Prisons stop serving goal (c) and possibly catalyze more crime, effectively negating (a) and (b).

Is it more practical, possibly more humane in the global sense to simply kill all violent criminals? It's a tremendously distasteful proposition, but if you have arrived at the conclusion that reform is not possible/feasible, then prisons become either inhumane torture chambers if we try to reduce cost or training grounds if we pay to keep them marginally civilized. The benefit of either is questionable.

Anyway, there's more to say on this topic, but I've already gotten long winded, so I'll wrap up with an open question on the legal process.

My father (an attorney of 25 years or so) once told me he believed that jurors ought to be proffessionals. That is, that there ought to be a pool of individuals who are paid to be jurors, as their job. It's been many years, so I don't recall his justification, but I'll apply some reasoning I've come up with since. Primarily, the law is complex and not easily tractable for many, many people in our society. When we discuss the constitutional jury of "peers", I'm not sure it's correct to assume that must mean any old group of people from the community that don't have specific predjudices. I prefer that the people on the jury have some understanding of both the law and the results of their determinations. Call me elitist, but I'm not certain a burger flipper has the qualifications to decide if I ought to go to prison.

A personal anecdote from my last session on a (civil, i'll note) jury. We were hearing a case regarding a car accident in which the defendant was alleged to be negligent, causing injury to the plaintiff. There's the three part test for deciding in favor of the plaintiff, the first of which is that the defendant was, in fact negligent. In this case, the defendant had admitted to speeding at the time of the accident which is, per GA law, "negligent, per se". It's ok that the fellow jurors didn't know the latin phrase, but it was explained to them. Part one ought to have been outside our discussion. Nonetheless we probably spent a good 5 hours over the course of 2 and a half days of deliberation reiterating that this part was not under discussion. The societal cost of having all of us sitting in a room debating a point that should have been assumptive left me somewhat disillusioned with the process. One can only imagine if the stakes had been higher. I'll add that in all that time deliberating, we still couldn't reach a verdict and a hung jury was declared. That is, everyone's time had been wasted -- ours, the lawyers', the judge's, the defendant's and plaintiff's, and all the administrative staff recording, filing, etc. etc. *Thousands* of dollars, probably tens of thousdands, for nothing. I believe hung juries would practically disappear if they were composed of professionals with certified capacity in logic and the legal process.

Ok, enough from me...

-k

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