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▲ rectang 13 hours ago

American voters care about conviction rate above all else for their prosecutors.

▲elevation 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We like convictions because there's a hell of a lot of actual crime that is never punished. Just my circle of friends has suffered car break-ins, burglaries (no suspects), grand theft auto (never recovered the car), and devastatingly, a rape on school property. Most of these crimes weren't investigated, despite real damages, and the couple that were never saw a conviction.

▲rectang 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

▲Quarrel 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲giantg2 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In theory, if crimes exceed prosecutions, then number of convictions being closest to the number of prosecutions should indicate an effective use of resources. The real problem is that thorough investigations are rare for most crimes and it's just and industrial-scale process to show the elements of an offense were met by a preponderance of the evidence.

▲AlotOfReading 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure, but it feels like you're doing something helpful. It's like self-help books, or new years resolutions. The emotional fulfillment of feeling like you've done something is vastly more popular and marketable than doing the actual work.

▲elevation 12 hours ago | parent [-]

In recent years we have also witnessed the outcomes from DAs who refuse to prosecute -- having someone more hard nosed in office seems vastly preferable to losing the local Walgreens and still not having my burglaries prosecuted.

▲bell-cot 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> ...any closer to solving these problems?

If "these problems" is the criminals getting away with their crimes? No.

Unfortunately, human nature is such that many peoples' actual priority is venting the intense angry they feel about the real-world crimes.

And for far too many people, harsh punishments inflicted on expendable whipping boys are an all-too-satisfying way of doing that.

▲mindslight 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

▲direwolf20 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All countries not only America

▲jltsiren 7 hours ago | parent [-]

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