Year in Jail for Web Links

[Bill Stewart]

At 06:17 PM 08/05/2003 -0700, Eric Cordian wrote:
>The problem here is that if you have a family and assets and
>responsibility and something resembling a future, you cannot afford to be
>the 1 in 100 who refuses to plea bargain,

It's a rigged game, and the "20 years extra for terrorism"
raises the stakes substantially from the usual
"1 year if you plead, or 3-4 years if you fight and lose" deal.

(In my case, the plea bargain was "We'll drop the obviously bogus charge
if you stipulate that you don't have grounds to sue us",
and given how the judge treated the other cops in his court,
chickening out and taking it was probably the correct decision.)

>It's one of those Prisoner's Dillema-ish situations.
>The demonstration to the Sheeple that one cannot break the system

No, it's *not* Prisoner's Dilemma.  The cops almost never have
anything to lose by accepting a shorter sentence,
except in highly publicized politically important cases,
or by losing an occasional case, and their costs for going to trial
are low enough that, while they save money by pleading out most cases,
it's basically a minimal cost compared to the accused's costs.
(The Prison Guards Union makes a bit less money on it,
but it leaves them room to keep some drug user in jail a bit longer,
and in any case it's not enough money to turn the game into
the classic Prisoner's Dilemma.)

Sometimes there's a case like OJ which creates really bad publicity
for them if they lose, and sometimes they've got a
Johnny Walker Lindh who could give them serious constitutional problems
if they have a trial, but all of those are pretty rare,
though they _are_ Prisoner's Dilemma cases.
Most people they try are either guilty of something,
and the real issue is exactly how many counts of what they're guilty of
and how much they ought to be punished.

Most of the rest of them are the wrong person accused by mistake,
in which case if they lose they can be really sorry and
announce how glad they are that their mistake was noticed,
or they're some quality-of-life crime where dragging the
accused through the process and keeping him in jail for a few nights
or a few months keeps the sheeple in line even if they lose.
(That's especially appropriate for most political-protest cases -
you block traffic for the afternoon, they beat you and throw you in jail
for the weekend, and maybe keep you in a couple extra days.)