Think the Philly DA situation is a bit more unique and interesting. Yeah, agree, he was one of the first progressive DA's elected in recent times, and he is in many ways light on crime. But he just got re-elected by a 75% in 2025 for a third term. That's incredible and think there is a reason for this.

Am no expert on him, but as we're all talking about here, the legal system is really messed up. Yeah, there are a lot of terrible processes and laws that get in the way of justice, and a lot of the things his office did made a lot of sense.

Probably one of the biggest was the "Elimination of Cash Bail for Low-Level Offenses." The cash bail system for minor crimes really screws poor people, who can't make bail for things like shoplifting, and have to stay in jail until their pre-trial. (it's often something like $1000, which for middle-class people is not a big deal at all). But imagine a teen who had to stay out of school for a month or even two just because they stole something for $20 and his family can't put together $1k. The teen gets behind in class and stops trying, and this becomes the start of getting further and further behind in life. And a similar situation happens with poor working-class people for a minor crime, they can't pay bail, so they are in jail and can't work. They are often fired or just get into debt because they're not drawing a salary.

I don't know about anything about open drug markets, but think overall what the Philly DA seemed sensible (and just looked briefly and it seems like the crime statistics turned out well in Philly, but that could be from a number of things).

You're not entirely wrong but I think that description of the situation is rather heavily colored by partisanship. Being lenient about a very limited subset of crime that "the system" is particularly ineffective at dealing with (to the point that it is arguably racist/classist/etc) is viewed favorably by certain (primarily urban) demographics. When you have broad support for an elected official who is exercising a great deal of discretion to not enforce the law that should trigger fundamental changes to the system as opposed to impeachment.

Good!!!

That’s why I live hippie liberal voters!

Good. DA should focus on a rational plan to tackle high-impact crimes, not drug offenses.

You're assuming people view all crime the same.

I'll applaud ignoring the open air drug market. It's a symptom, not a cause. The drug *war* is the biggest crime problem in the country.

Which is why there's a push to accept a plea deal. Innocent people can easily end up accepting a plea deal after a day in jail, and pushy investigators trying to get out a confession.

> I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.

Then the government provides a lawyer; you can't be without counsel even if you can't afford them.

https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/resource/right-assistance...

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_counsel

Well, now that this story is coming to light, I'm guessing getting a decent lawyer will be pretty easy.

The DA can file the charges and drop the case right before (or even during) trial. No loss on their books

https://innocenceproject.org/all-cases/

You can get a rough idea of innocence by exoneration rates + years served. Above-link is just for that one project, which is one of the largest in this arena.

It would also be wise to assume that all exonerations only reflect a small minority of actually innocent people especially when you start factoring in 'crimes' like possession charges or debt (https://www.aclu.org/publications/pound-flesh-criminalizatio...)

A corollary of the “innocent until proven guilty” standard is that there’s just no way to compute such statistics. It’s impossible by design to distinguish between a clearly innocent person and a very suspicious person whose guilt couldn’t quite be proven without looking into the details of their case.

"Tough on crime" is often a euphemism for "lock the innocent".

By encouraging prosecutors to punish the innocent, you ensure that the guilty go free to commit more crimes.

Sure, but does voting for DAs with a high conviction rate get you any closer to solving these problems?

My guess is that it does not.

So then is your need for "justice" satisfied by rounding up a bunch of unlucky people and convicting them? To me it seems like you're just describing the other side of the exact same coin where the justice system isn't doing its job, but in a way that absolves it for not doing its job.

It's outright fallacious to want higher convictions (or even just higher arrests), because crimes aren't even being investigated, right? The goal isn't some scalar "number of people convicted" but rather justice in every case. If cases aren't being investigated, that's a specific problem with a specific part of the system, which needs to be addressed specifically. It can't be fixed by tweaking the numbers further down the line, rather that just creates further corruption.

The way I see it, every time the public demands the justice system (prosecutors, police, etc) do their jobs better, the people in the system respond by doing anything but focusing on their jobs. Either raising the false positive rate ("hard on crime"), going on [possibly silent] strike (raising false negative rate), or even rioting to create disorder from whole cloth (then blaming it on the protestors). What is really needed is accountability in general, so that specific wrongs (either way) can be rectified.

America is pretty much the only country with elected prosecutors. Everyone else considers it a career position, and then incentives are different.

Not in a criminal court, or really anything where the government is the counterparty. Philosophically it’s because those things are part of your “civic duty” as a citizen like taxes. Realistically it’s because the demographics of people getting the money would be unpalatable to the public. Recidivism is high, some large portion of it would go to people with prior convictions.

The absurd end of this spectrum is what happens when police damage a random persons property while chasing a suspect. They’re generally not liable for it, however most homeowners insurance won’t cover it.

I remember an early GoFundMe from a lady that went to work and a guy broke into her house and had a shootout with the police. She came home to being homeless (house got condemned because plumbing, gas, etc is bullet-riddled), and it’s a really disconcerting story to hear. I don’t recall if the city settled to quiet the story down or not.

Should the innocent person not be able to afford an attorney, they can petition the court to chuck their case at a random lawyer, who's obliged to accept it. Such indigent cases tend to be compensated at a statutory rate well below what the lawyer might be accustomed to—with corresponding effects on the enthusiasm of their defense...

Right, whatever the actual fundraising method is, "good justice" is something we must spend to get the same way we spend for drinkable tapwater, or roads, or having someone else watch you child for most of the day every workday for 12 years.

Yes but it only gets worse as you go to red states which are “tough on crime”. Which basically just means they put as many people in prison as humanly possible, and for as long as possible.

New Hampshire is pretty great. That may be due to them having some of the lowest crime rates in the country to begin with.

You’re in the most corrupt state in the nation. Go look at your state bond ratings. Of course it doesn’t work there!!!

WA here.

Most definitely are.

It'll be flagged and your HN account banned or restricted. HN hates political posts unless they confidently assert nothing is wrong with the system.

The UK tried the experiment and gave up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_and_crime_commissioner

They were quite overpaid compared to other local government roles, and had very poor public visibility. WP says they were originally going to be called "sheriffs" but that was rejected as "too American". This does make it clear that it was an attempt to copy the US system, but I feel obliged to point out that the Scottish court system has had Sheriffs for longer than the US has existed.

It's democratic. You don't have much democracy if the population is only allowed to elect some of the powers. Americans elect their sheriffs as well.

Is that like how european's don't understand not to burn down cities over school employee pensions?

Who does the selection? In the USA, doesn’t it always come down to voter choice one way or another? We typically elect a sheriff but a mayor appoints a police chief. The mayor is elected however. What process could be used to determine process and selection that would avoid voter input?

The highest level public offices should always be either directly elected, or appointed by an elected person for only the duration of their office. This way voters can get rid of them if necessary. Otherwise they become an unelected deep state.

Other levels of public office should be strictly by competence. Meaning by trials open for all citizens.

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I'm not a lawyer, but it feels like you should consult one. If you have the legal information of this person and they have possession of your activation locked phone, sounds like you could at least sue him civilly or in small claims court for the value of it, if the DA won't do anything