alt Hacker News> There's a thing called the Trial Penalty [2]. ~98% of charges result in a guilty plea.
The gist of this argument is that there are huge numbers of innocent people railroaded into prison, but in the bigger picture crime is wildly under-punished.
More than half of murderers go free.
More than 98% of rapists never spend a day in prison.
At the end of the day this is all a question of where you stand on Blackstone’s Ratio. In the US, even with the rate of wrongful conviction we may have, we stand solidly opposed to zealous pursuit of justice for the victims of crimes, on the argument that an innocent person might be punished.
> ... but in the bigger picture crime is wildly under-punished.
Um, citation needed.
> More than half of murderers go free.
The burden is on the state to prove their case not on the accused to prove their innocence. If this completely unsubstantiated statistic is true (again, citation needed) why is the state so bad at making their cases?
> More than 98% of rapists never spend a day in prison.
Yes, rape is under-reported, under-charged and rarely results in a conviction. This is true. Society engages in a whole lot of victim blaming with sex crimes.
> we stand solidly opposed to zealous pursuit of justice for the victims of crimes
What? The US has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners. If over-policing and wildly capricious sentences (eg 10+ years for cannabis possession) worked, this would be the safest country on earth.
Why isn't it?