I think maybe you are neglecting game theory for the accused, its hard to incentivize people to act in their collective interests, when they are thinking of their own future freedom and lost earning capacity. I imagine you even have researched the statistics for this, but to summarise the game theory scenario: plea bargaining clearly results in less accurate justice (more innocent people do jail time), but has the real-politic benefit of reducing the cost of implementing justice. The usual pattern (made up average numbers) is accept the plea do a discounted (lower than sentencing guideline) 3 years, reject the plea, the prosecution will make less reasonable/inflated charges (higher than sentencing guidelines, based on more tenuous/unlikey to be provable charges) threatening a scary 30 years, which in reality will be moderated down by a judge if the accused has the money for a decent lawyer to 5 years, if they lose, or 0 years if they win; if they are relying on an overworked, less capable public defender because they dont have the money to buy proper representation, their chances of winning are lower, and if they lose their post-trial sentencing will be higher at 10 years. Now law is a remarkably imprecise subject, especially when muddied with some not-so-scrupulous and politically motivated prosecutors, police entrapment, police bias (push for conviction based on opinion/bias, but statements given disproportionate weight by a system that believes it's officers over the public). (Prosecutors and police are politically motivated because their career depends on conviction rates, headlines). The system seems to largely ignore or not give adequate weight to investigating significant prosecutorial abuse or police bias. Prosecutorial abuse has to be strongly proven, and the perpetrators are career ambitiuous, and legally qualified so know the grey areas they can exploit where the abuse will be unprovable even when it is very rarely alleged, or actually prosecuted. Like police they have the benefit of the doubt, in a judicial system that favors its own officers, and so they are defacto largely immune from sanction from even significant systemic abuse, unless stupid enough to be caught red handed with with a smoking gun. Which is to say even if you have millions to your name for the most capable legal defense, and completely innocent with reasonable but not iron clad alibi, its still subject to a high degree of randomness depending on political motivations surrounding. So therefore people will not fully follow game theory of going for the lowest expected sentencing. Ie if p is probabity of winning, and the numbers above: then its 3 vs expected (p*0+(1-p)*5) so even p=2.5 its 2.5 expected vs 3, so if that was an investment you'd say good lets do it. But if its choice between 3years and no more stress, vs legal defense cost and years of stress followed by 5 years if you're unlucky. The dillema still holds if the odds p=0.75 and you have lots of money I suspect sadly that thats about as high as p gets for many areas of law. You also have to factor in the loss of income (at the average income for prisoners) into the equation, and a premium because people would sooner earn less and have their freedom. You cant reform the system via kickstart fund and incentivize people to not accept pleas, well not at $5k anyway, because they'd need compensation for lost earnings and a huge loss of liberty premium if they lose, a stress premium for going to trial, and expenses for high quality legal defense. Those figures may no longer make game theory economic sense for society, though I do think the centuries old principle that its more important for one innocent party to go free than 100 guilty to be imprisoned is not properly incorporated into the current system as plea bargaining removes most of that intended objective. Even with best attempts at fairness and balance from police, prosecutor and judge (and there are genuine public spirited ethical people in some of those roles, who would ignore the perverse career motivations on principle, so it probably happens some of the time), the outcome STILL has an unfair plea imbalance and STILL high randomness. Its an imperfect system even under the most favorable conditions. I think the solution is to politically vote to arbitrarily cap the incarceration rate to 10,000/annum; the justice system is not allowed to go over that limit by law. They will then focus on cases where they think the incarceration is of most value to society (eg of making the public safer by taking a violent criminal off the streets). Maybe the cap should be adjusted based on false conviction rates, if the false conviction rate increases, the cap decreases. Independent review of potential prosecutor abuses should be increased. Also the system should be restructured to remove the career/political motivation for prosecutors to achieve high conviction rates. Their conviction rate should include a heavy mallus for a false conviction, so they strive to avoid convicting innocent people, and the system should somehow be adjusted to be less adversarial and to remove sentencing penalties for going to trial. eg Maybe the trial sentencing level and charges should be set by an independent neutral body, not the prosecutor, with the objective of keeping the trial and plea sentencing the same. Maybe simpler bargaining should be made illegal. Another specific problem in the US is its a one dollar one vote system, and operating privatized prisons is a high profit business. The prison operators votes therefore likely outweigh the proportion of the public that is aware of the system problems or care enough to vote about it. I believe other eg european justice systems are in fact less prone to these issues. So another solution is to vote with your feet. Basically in such a system you want to avoid even interacting with the legal system or justice system, period. Even volutarily interacting as a random by-stander is unfortunately likely to be net loss to your finances or even freedoms. Even to complain publicly about the defects of the system is probably risky once you have interacted with them. Which is ridiculous but thats the reality. And finally some of the laws on the books are ridiculous on their face in the opinions of the accused's peers. eg computer abuse act which sees Weev in jail and such like stories, and the sentencing guidelines are also often ridiculous and non-proportional eg the sentencing threats to Swartz for what was probably not even a copyright crime (going on the theory from his previous activism pattern that he was aiming to republish the subset of articles that were public domain). His trial sentencing threat was above a 1st degree homicide with iron clad evidence, something's got to be wrong with that. The sentencing board are failing in their task. Something should also be done to restrict scope for judicial vengence also - Swartz made a mockery of a stupid law, with his previous popularly supported activism stunt, and so prosecutors were out to get him. Also legal systems generally seem to lag 50-200 years behind the opinions of the public Some jurisdictions are better than others, but the system of case law mixed with precedent creates a built in brake on legal theory evolution. Out of touch with reality and public opinion prosecutors, judges and sentencing another issue. Probably law should be restricted to 1MByte of ascii text and any law not approved by 90% referendum (1 person one vote, not 1 dollar one vote) struck off automatically every year. This state of significantly imperfect, and hard to reform, high cost legal system issue is why smart-contracts look so attractive. Its not even obvious how to improve the legal systems and they evolve slowly and resist experimental change. Mathematical aprior enforcement, deference to mutually agreed competing impartial arbitrators for dispute. Pseudonymous smart-contracting parties FTW. Of course it doesnt work for in-person crimes, except in a "Snow Crash" sense (cometing legal systems/governments in the same physical space) but a justice system that leant heavily on smart-contracts and refused as a principle to revise contracts where both parties received competent legal advice, nor overturn arbitrator decisions, would be a step forward for society. Adam On Sun, Oct 06, 2013 at 09:57:57PM -0700, Jim Bell wrote:
Subject: Re: <nettime> A CEO who resisted NSA spying is out of prison.
$5000 to just enter not guilty and likely pay an attorney to defend it / accept dismissal may seem realistic. Thing is, that doesn't leave much payout to defendant. And a fair number of those pleas will be going to trial. That entails conviction risk, and regardless of time dealt, that risk will carry a higher price.