I think public transport should be free. That solves the whole problem because it makes no sense to dis-incentivize the use of public transport to begin with and the fares are disproportionally hard on the lowest earners.

Or make the transportation free, then you don't have to worry about policing infractions and instead spend the low effort policing money on cleaning, security, and improvement.

The cop made me call my mom on a pay phone and 40 years later I still have to hear about it. Cruel and unusual.

> Make them clean the station and pick up trash...

This should just be an established way to pay your fare.

Then charge them cleanly and don't artificially try to inflate charges. It is the duty of any jury to let someone off when they feel its malicious prosecution.

Police, Prosecutors, and Judges all openly use their discretion. Each of them could have quashed the charge before it got to a jury. The jury is the last line of discretion. Police, prosecutors, and judges love to call it "jury nullification" but its the same power that police, prosecutors, and judges use multiple times a day.

The only crime I see is that police arrested an innocent person on false evidence, prosecutors charged someone based on false evidence, and a judge is actually allowing this case to proceed all based on evidence that everyone knows is false.

There should be some teeth, but also we should be prepared for a small amount of "unfairness" baked into the system. If there are no controls, everyone will cheat. But if there's too many obstacles (turnstiles, checkpoints, conductors, cameras, etc) then people won't want to ride.

Or we can all just agree that maybe basic transit in a city should be subsidized, maybe say... To the same degree that road construction is?

At which point no one would need to pay a fare, and we'd all still save money trying to prosecute broke teenagers trying to move around a city?

In the off chance this is a genuine question, this thought experiment is always resolved with "reasonable payments are only effective if many people contribute, and that is probably okay".

Consider the extremes: - No one does anything. The cause fails. No one goes broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced. - One average citizen donates everything to a worthy cause. No one else donates. The cause fails and the donor is broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced. - Everyone donates a small fee to a worthy cause. The cause achieves its aim. Some people do not benefit, and are modestly inconvenienced.

The choice, when given these two extremes, is clearly to decide by some consensus whether the interests of many (who would otherwise be modestly inconvenienced) outweigh the interests of the few (who would be modestly financially inconvenienced).

But it assumes the cause is truly worthy, the money is handled faithfully, and the survey method is fair and accurate.

False dichotomy?

Ignoring smaller crimes just because they're under $1,000 isn't the answer. things can quickly spiral. How many times do you wake up to your car scratched window broken or whatever and would be ok ?

By the way, the stat you mention counts consensual arrangements as wage theft, probably the large majority of it (e.g. hiring illegal immigrants for under the minimum wage). Calling that "theft" is a rhetorical move, much like libertarians calling taxation "theft": it borrows the moral weight of stealing for something that's legally and morally quite different. If the stat had been calculated from asking workers, "does your employer owe you money that they refuse to pay?", I suspect the number would drop dramatically.

Gotta keep the poors in line.

To be clear, you're claiming that wrongdoing by one party justifies wrongdoing by another, and your enabling of the latter because you're ideologically aligned with it?

I'd also be interested to know what the crime they were trying to get a lead on was. If it's another case of minor tagging then I can empathize more with the concerns about the prosecution, but if it's something more dire then frankly using judicial leverage strikes me as entirely appropriate.

The interesting thing about thresholds is that antisocial behavior models itself to the threshold, whether by conscious awareness or by an evolutionary pattern.

  The pair is accused of stealing around $3,200 worth of merchandise, primarily meat, seafood, and produce, from one or more Safeway locations across 14 separate incidents.

Criminals have some brains. What do you think they'll do when they figure out that crimes under $1k go unpunished?

Look what happened with shoplifters.

> let's start with the ones above $1,000 first, hm?

The criminals start with the ones below $1,000 and then progress above. If you start punishing it earlier, you won't have to deal with as many above $1,000 crimes in the first place.

So mug a rich person, deal with it. Mug a normal person and ignore it.

If you go further down this line of argumentation you will end up at what will be cheaper capital punishment or prison for life.

Not sure where you got that idea. No where did I express interest in punishing the perpetrator for anything more than what they were caught. My point is that their "solution" to justice does not solve vandalism the way that it they think it does.

If the punishment is equal to the value of the crime then as long as the rate at which you are caught is less than 100% crime is a profitable option.

I want to be very clear here because the implications are extremely funny: Do you not consider sending a letter to be an interaction??

Because the DA has a win/loss ratio to maintain. If it drops too low, how is he ever going to run for governor? It's all about power using it to protect their career.

Seriously. And what kind of moron did the D.A. he think was that he would take a criminal conviction on his record by pleading guilty, when he had video evidence of his innocence!! Just to avoid embarrassing the D.A., a stranger to him?

When I was 19 and told the DA I'd be fighting my case and proving my innocence, I watched a vein pop out of his head. He got the better of me though, his dad was the mayor and the judge was in his pocket and they facilitated an absolutely mockery of a trial despite zero evidence, and my public defender was in on the racket and refused to allow me an appeal, and the jail refused to give me new counsel.

This same DA has a reputation for assaulting prostitutes and just got sworn in as the parish judge. I guess playing fair would have hurt his career because my understanding is to be a judge out there you have to demonstrate crookedness.

Courtroom trials aren't supposed to be the DA's word against the defending lawyers. They are supposed to be about evidence presented by them.

People mentioned it in the article, it used to be "innocent until proven guilty". No need for a third category.

They used to have this in Scorland - Guilty, Not Guilty and Not Proven, with the last two legally having the same affect (ie being aquitted) but I believe Not Proven was abolished at the start of this year.

Or if the jury acquits, they are asked whether it was reasonable for the state to prosecute the case for each of the charges. If ≥50% say no on any charge, criminal charges are automatically brought against the prosecuting attorney and judge for malicious prosecution. Conviction carries mandatory disbarment plus prison time.

"Your honor, I was innocent of that prior crime and it shouldn't be used to enhance the sentencing of this current case, nor to influence the jury's perception."

"I'm sorry, it says you weren't found guilty; it doesn't say you were innocent."

Now extrapolate this to your friends or potential employers.

"Sure, LorenPechtel wasn't proven guilty of murdering 500 orphans as accused, but he never fully proved his innocence with a detailed and corroborated minute-by-minute log of his activities for the past 5 years. So maybe he did it!"

It's innocent until proven guilty. Not guilty until proven innocent. A third category would be abused to high heaven, and the courts already engage in far too much abuse.

There are sort of other options like an Alford plea where, my understanding is, the prosecution knows you didn’t do it, you plead guilty anyway and they tell you to just fuck off.

I like this!

so then if you're not guilty, so not actually innocent, you're like... kinda guilty, right? you could still end up on the no-fly list, or the sex offenders list, or what have you.

Justice is unavoidably somewhat a "roll the dice" situation.

Suppose the threat is 10 years in Jail. You reckon there's a 1-in-a-million chance they can convict you since you're innocent and they have no evidence. The plea offer is $100 fine. That's a good deal, not taking it on principle is a stance I admire but it does not make good logical sense.

What the US needs is a strong incentive for prosecutors not to take cases they expect to lose. That wouldn't really fit with the rest of the US "justice" system though.

Yeah, that seems dubious to me. Among the public here in Britain it's somewhat popular but not a majority, with far lower popularity among people who understand how the sausage is made. Here's somebody who has put quite a lot of thought into this explaining why it's a bad idea from a purely practical standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrsVhzbLzU

The woman defending the Death Penalty in that clip is Priti Patel, a Tory MP who was until recently in their Shadow Cabinet. You'd hope she can do better, but judging from her subsequent comments she still doesn't get it.

Now, in the UK most people with a life sentence will (after quite some time) be eligible for parole. Historically it was possible for politicians to block this, but of course the consequence is that if a particularly notorious criminal is scheduled to be paroled, politicians are under pressure to prevent that, while a criminal who didn't attract much public interest leaves on schedule - that's manifestly unfair and a European court told the Brits they can't do that, so eventually the UK's Supreme Court decided there needed to a specific rule, identify a category of people who won't be paroled, and the category they decided on was people who have been convicted of at least two separately conceived murders.

Several European countries have no life sentences. Breivik for example got 21 years, and since he's still an avowed Nazi who wants to kill more people, and will likely still be an avowed Nazi when his sentence ends, they will just hold him until he stops being a Nazi or he dies. No additional sentence needed.

[Edited: Priti left her Shadow role a few weeks ago]

Joe Sixpack is not a deep thinker.

He cares about getting his immediate needs met.

He wants to be entertained without having to be forced to think.

He wants to see people that he's been conditioned to hate be punished.

He wants people he can look down on so he doesn't feel like he's at the bottom of the pile.

The old lawyers determine who gets to become a new lawyer.

That may be just as likely as having a high net worth individual donate their entire fortune to you gratis.

As in, just as unlikely.

"First thing we do, let's [automate] all the lawyers."

Japan only takes cases they know they can get a prosecution on, not that they know they are guilty

nasty that 'statistics' are hauled out as 'proof', fuck me Japan has an unbelievable low crime rate, and some ridiculous number of criminals turn them selves in. There is something like a 90%+ rate of lost wallets just droped in a mail box and returned, and american soldiers are responsible for the bulk of violent crime in a large radius around each base. It goes on and on, not that I think that highly of the Japanese, but due credit is theres and the US is the crime, jail, more crime and corruption leader of the planet and there is nowhere worse except where the US (cia) is running some through the worst sadistic perverts they can find and support, which makes almost all of the worst crime on the planet the direct fault of america, but as we see in this case under discusion, america is now having trouble EXPORTING it's contradictions and is just eating the coolaid powder dry.