How to shut down the US Federal criminal "Justice" System, for $10-15 million per year.

Zenaan Harkness zen at freedbms.net
Thu Oct 19 04:14:40 PDT 2017


(Please put 2 blank lines between each paragraph - it's really hard
to read your emails when they're all jammed up together... TIA :)

On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 07:44:46AM +0000, jim bell wrote:
...
> How?  Well, let's go to the statistics.  Last year, there were
> 77,152 new criminal defendants in the Federal criminal system, see 
>  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/28/federal-criminal-prosecutions-fall-to-lowest-level-in-nearly-two-decades/ 
>  .   According to   
> https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2017/FY16_Overview_Federal_Criminal_Cases.pdf 
> , "In fiscal year 2016 the vast majority of offenders (97.3%)
> pleaded guilty."  If that figure can be believed, then there were
> presumably no more than 2.8% x 77,152 criminal trials, or only 2160
> trials.  Perhaps this statistic would surprise most people.  I
> think the average sentence is about 3 years.
>
> The ability of the Federal criminal system to actually put on
> criminal trials is very limited.  There are only a limited number
> of courts, and judges, and prosecutors, and this system must share
> space and time with civil trials.  It is quite possible that it
> would be very difficult to put on much more than those 2160
> trials.  That court space has to be shared with civil cases, as
> well.   All, or at least most of those people had a right to a jury
> trial.  If all, or most of those defendants were somehow motivated
> to demand such a trial, rather than plead guilty, havoc would
> ensue.

Many of us have had this thought over the years, and in some
scenarios it could work - say if every single person receiving a
"road toll ticket" for "driving on a public road which is being
“lawfully” encumbered by a private corporation", then the
quasi-criminal, "summary" jurisdiction, "justice" system would
literally collapse under the weight, and road tolls would disappear
in a month.

Literally.

This is quite literally the prisoner's dilemma problem in operation -
and the sheeple are so f##king lame and uneducated, fearful and
cowardly, that the few who do balk at the violation of our rights are
buried by the weight of the system, rather than the system being
buried by the weight of the collective voice of the people.

This is today's reality here in Australia.


Secondly, those who try to play the "I'll take a small stand for the
greater good" side of the prisoner's dilemma "game", unless they
stand on the foundation of righteousness and without requirement for
money (i.e., conduct their own case), the legal bills are ultimately
crippling - people DO fork over their homes to "legal professionals"
in the face of their own fear.

$10 million?  $1 billion?

Trivial amounts for "legal professionals" to soak up with their big,
expensive legal teams for your "high profile human rights matter"s.


And here's the second problem - the sytem bands together - the courts
get their court costs too you see - and the more people there are
being processed by the system, the more efficient the system shears
the sheeple.

I've seen this with my own eyes - look at any large municipal court
complex with a dozen or four dozen courts, sit in one of them on a
sitting day, and watch the frenzy of lawyers and the occasional self
represented person get processed every hour, hour after hour - even
"just" $180 court costs for every one of those 30 or more cases
processed every hour, means $18,000, per hour!!!

So, the more cases they have to process, the more the courts rake it
in.

And the more they rake it in, the more courts they build and the more
judges/magistrates get employed.


So, sorry to say, your proposed solution of "throw shekels at the
problem" is absolutely doomed to failure.



> Even if the number of trials could increase, say to about
> 3000, then the remainder, 77,152-3000, or 74,152, would have to
> walk free,

Absolutely not true.

With a few adjournments, court cases can EASILY run out to 2 or 3
years in duration, and that's PLENTY of time to build new buildings,
and there's abundant commercial real estate they could lease as well.


> because the system could not possibly try them all.  The

I wish you were right, but sadly, that's where you're wrong.


> limitation is not merely court space:  Trials are "expensive" in
> preparation, research, and evidence.

That goes for both sides though, and the system will absolutely
buckle down and improve efficiency if we throw money at the system -
kinda goes with the territory.

The other side of the problem is the defendants - to run a trial well
requires either lots of money and hope you don't get a (((compromised
lawyer))), or do it yourself with a few mates and say goodbye to the
next couple years of your life... I am well acquainted with the DIY
approach, and it can be intense, is incredibly time consuming, and
can drain your soul -- at the best of times -- I'd wish it on no one.

Again, I wish it were otherwise.


> And that led me to yet another "awfully wonderful, wonderfully
> awful" idea, to paraphrase Dr. Seuss and the Grinch.  What would
> motivate all of these people to demand a jury trial? Well,
> currently they are threatened with much more punishment if they
> plead not guilty and demand a trial, and lose.  Like a variant on
> the "Prisoner's dilemma", each one is forced to conclude that it is
> better to 'take the deal' rather than resist, and demand a trial.
>
> What would change this system around?  Well, the lot of a prisoner
> in Federal prison is poor, if he has no money.  No money, no
> commissary.  No drinks, cookies, crackers, soups, candies, etc.  I
> know:  I spent 13 years in prison, time I shouldn't have spent. 
> Many enter prison broke.  What if they were offered, say, $3000 if
> they agreed to demand a jury trial, and thus forced the government
> to actually put them on trial, form a jury, and put on a trial.  If
> the government dropped the case, or reduced the charges to
> something that didn't require a trial, the defendant would get
> nothing.  

You're dreaming if you think the average lower-middle class Westerner
is going to accept such a deal for 3000 bucks.

It's just not going to happen.

You did time, notwithstanding your ostensible charge of tax evasion,
for publishing a rather anarchistic study paper, AIUI.

You had already published this paper, so at the point the system came
down on you, you were entrained into the process, basically having no
choice to back out.

A very folks around (and I have the honour to have met a few here in
Oz) make their principled stand repeatedly, in the face of ever
increasing threats and carried-through threats (ultimately jail) by
the system, against them - THESE are the kind of folks that will make
a stand regardless of any money involved.


> If we assume that the Federal court system could put on 3,000
> trials, one defendant per trial typically, the cost for such a
> project would be 3,000 x $3,000, or 9 million dollars.  It would be
> limited by the number of actual trials the Feds could put on each
> year, multiplied by the dollar amount that would have to be paid to
> motivate a defendant to demand a trial.

There may be some merit to the statistical game you propose - the
threshold amount to convince x % of additional defendants to go all
the way through trial.

I'm sure that could be studied, and relatively precise amounts, and
even more efficient game could be determined (certain folks, $1K
might be enough, others, $25K might be required, work out the average
to affect the required outcome...).

I'm just not convinced that this would be effective at causing the
system to grind to a halt.


> Tell each new Federal defendant that if he pleads not guilty, and
> insists on a jury trial, and if he actually gets that trial, he
> will be paid the $3,000.

It's probably worth getting some up and coming "entitled class" uni
post-doc wanna be to do some proper stats on this, to determine the
proper amounts.

Then a Foundation could be established - perhaps other foundations
like the Lock Her Up Foundation would cross-contribute (??)...


> Guilty or not guilty, it won't matter. 
> Have a trial, get the money, simple as that.   I am merely guessing
> what the 'proper' figure would be, in order to motivate such people
> adequately.  But if most people were already demanding a jury
> trial, and tens of thousands of fellow defendants were being freed
> due to lack of ability to give them trials,

This part of the plan is not quite adding up. I guess you could
analyse the "latency to establish new physical courts" vs the "delays
causing statute of limitations to kick in",

BUT, this all sounds like an attempt to exploit a (potentially)
massive legal loophole, which any insane parliament would simply
legislate to "fix" - surely??

And without handling this almost-certain parliamentary fix from your
national state mafia, is there any reason to not consider this
problem doomed from the start?


> it shouldn't take a lot
> of money to induce these people to 'stand in line', and demand a
> trial.  After all, they would know that if they didn't get the
> money, that would mean that they would have been freed.  And that's
> the goal, isn't it?  At least for the defendant, that is.  

Game/statistic theory can tell us also the amounts involved for the
scenario where defendants get the money regardless (those getting off
would be asked to voluntarily contribute back).

It is kinda cool to think about this idea...


> You can imagine what would happen.  The Feds would have to ration
> trials.  Only the most "worthy" defendants would get prosecuted. 
> And yes, there are definitely some worthy defendants. I met a
> few!!   But the total number of people who could enter the Federal
> prison system per year would drop from perhaps 75,000 per year to
> 3,000 per year.  This year, there are about 185,300 Federal
> prisoners.  Drop the input to 3,000 per year, and the total
> population could easily drop to 20,000, and perhaps to as low as
> 10,000, after a few years.  Dozens of prisons across the nation
> would have to close, maybe well over 100.  
>
> It costs approximately $40,000 to feed and house a Federal
> prisoner.  Most of that money probably goes to prison staff
> salaries and supplies, and most of the rest goes to prison
> construction.  Drop the total Federal prison population from
> 185,000 to 15,000, and they will save about 170,000 multiplied by
> $40,000, or about $6.8 billion dollars per year.
>
> Doesn't this sound like a worthy goal?

Yes, the goal is worthy, but the full picture is far from certain.

The Feds would change the legislation - this would be an upper bound
on one part of the possible effectiveness window for this idea.

The courts themselves would expand to accomodate to some degree -
this is another mitigating factor.


> We may speculate about who would be motivated to fund such a
> project.  Give them the ability to donate anonymously, and they
> might act.

Jim this one is not controversial - right to full, fair and public
trial is politically correct for many folks - most would want to
publicize, not hide, their support for this.

The problem is elsewhere though (see above).


> There might arguably be 200,000 people per year who
> fear some sort of Federal prosecution.  A donation of $50 per year,
> average, would raise $10 million.  It would not take many tax
> evaders, resistors, or avoiders to foot the bill.  People who
> resented a prior prosecution would add up, as well.  

Evidently this type of game theory works for some scenarios - such as
e.g. the train-ticket group (Australia? or was it Germany or
somewhere?) where everyone pays in $10 a year, and the non-profit
foundation pays all legal fees, and no one ever has to buy a ticket,
since the court cases work out, at the group level, cheaper.

So it certain scenarios the crowd-economics works out. But even there
it's a "my cabal" vs "your cabal" situation, where what I think is
really needed is education for humans to teach them how to tap into
their sense of righteousness/ right and wrong/ principles and ethics,
and to assist humans to build their will to engage in even minimal
sufference for a well-planned and well-reasoned cause, a cause which
the political parties would ultimately have to bow down to, because,
put simply, it's the right thing to do...



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