The Two Rings

“Liking” because I agree with you, not because there is anything to actually “like” about this devastating event.

States are laboratories of democracy, so they say. It’s time for a few of them to run an experiment.

Prosecutors and judges have absolute immunity from the consequences of their actions (or inactions). A few state legislatures need to enact laws that revoke said immunity and instead define a new, more narrowly tailored version of it. The details don’t matter at this point, but you could imagine a scenario where if a prosecutor refuses to actually prosecute an offender who has X number of priors and they go on to offend again, the victim(s) and/or their family can seek a civil judgment against the prosecutor in their capacity as a citizen. Inaction currently has a cost of $0. Change that to something other than $0 and see if behavior changes. A similar rule can be applied to judges. Again, details don’t matter at this stage since this is all more philosophical than mechanical.

“But won’t that mean they just put more people in jail to cover their own asses?”

Yes. That is the point. It is a feature of this idea, not a bug. When no cost is imposed on anyone but the victims of crime the crime will continue.

I know you’re just entertaining a hypothetical, but I have to guess that the number of non-prosecutions that are the result of the office saying, “God I think this dude is guilty as hell but with the paltry evidence we’ve collected I think we’re spinning our wheels for 6 months with zero chance of a conviction” is probably 1,000x, maybe 10,000x the number not prosecuted because they figured he wasn’t a bad guy who got dealt a rough hand.

Probably has more teeth for a judge, but even so, what do we need the experiment for? We’ve been running a nationwide experiment in the open on whether people who committed violent crimes are more likely to do so again, and the data are not inconclusive. And if what we’re testing is whether lawmakers, judges, and prosecutors would behave differently if they had skin in the game, we can probably just look up where they choose to live themselves.

I’m not so sure I agree with this. I think you’re underestimating the role of the activist class that spent years priming the public to accept softer and softer DAs/prosecutors until finally they all reached that Chesa Boudin level of disconnection from reality. There seem to be plenty of prosecutors who are genuine true believers. I don’t think that was the case 20 years ago.

That’s what I’m getting at here. These folks are decidedly not living in the path of the hurricane, so for now the only real consequence they may face is at the ballot box. In a lot of places that threat isn’t even worth worrying about because they’ve got a lock on enough of the electorate that they’re impervious to most bad news cycles.

We’re talking about symbolism a lot in this Note. I think one state legislature passing one law that leads to one prosecutor facing a civil case is enough of a symbol to change behavior for a generation in that state. Maybe I’m wrong about that! Wouldn’t be the first time. But something has to give here. When the state abdicates its monopoly on violence the thing that goes away is the monopoly, not the violence. Someone else will pick up that mantle and I do no wish to see what form that takes.

Based on what just happened today I’d say those two days are up. May God have mercy on this nation stricken with a sickness that has overtaken us.

Simple dignity and respect for others…we collectively have a lot less of that here in the USA than we should have.

It appears to me as a plebian in Vermont that more lethal violence, more lethal violence from youths and more repeat offenders of violent crimes that get a 2nd, 3rd, 4th…chance and they submit to further violent crimes (perhaps lethal).

I’m not sure where one starts to solve this mess, but one place is simple -consequence. Clear and swift consequence. I’m not sure our consequences are clear and our legal system is certainly not swift.

My hunch is that everyone has sympathy for someone who made a bad mistake, but to account for all the things that didn’t go right in someone’ life to justify limited consequence and/or exoneration (rehabilitation/monitor program) sounds virtuous. It is. And it doesn’t work (IMO).

In my state one of the cities mayors pleaded for State assistance to deal with it’s homeless, crime, drug use, murder rate…The Governor told them to pound sand. Paraphrasing the Gov “You made this mess by defunding police and liberalizing your drug laws and ask for help? With no plan? Get a plan, start cleaning up your mess - then approach me.”

I think that’s the right response.

Sad days and i think it will get worse before it becomes better.

Our leaders really need to start reflecting on why this stuff happens here more broadly than in other developed countries…there is no one root to this sick tree - there are roots.

Yep, there’s a reason gov. Scott keeps getting reelected with large margins.

Before we get stronger on crimes of small scale, can’t we go after career criminals who cost the government billions? Incarceration costs a lot.

Right now we have for-profit private prisons, what about “for profit” prisons. One benefits society through incarcerating people who cost the public money, the other costs the public money through incarceration and benefits the private prisons.

The danger of society such as this is people like Donald will weaponise it against his political opponents possibly. But there isn’t much difference to now, but the focus would be on financial crimes.

I mean realistically America having already one of the largest prison population in the world has not made in safer than other places. Either the problem is that the people are naturally evil or there is systemic problems underlying the society.

There is no crime of larger scale than the murder of random civilians.

Fearing the backlash more than the inciting incident is the definition of losing the plot.

Turns out it’s not large enough.

Amen and amen. It’s too much.