This attitude is less hard to understand when you’re not looking at it through the filter of cases where that happened not to be true. When I worked for a federal judge I saw a ton of criminal appeals. Most criminals are dumb and usually there was just a plethora of evidence in the case. I can see why it would be very easy for cops to think that every case was that way, rather than just 98% of them. I have public defender friends. They’ll tell you, in almost every case their client is guilty of something. Their job is to make sure the police and prosecutors don’t overreach or act abusively and save the rare person who really is innocent.
That’s the key factor that outsiders looking into the criminal justice system overlook. They think it’s easy. “Just stop being racist, corrupt, etc.” It’s a system where day in and day out, almost everyone you encounter is a really shitty human being. Reforming the system is important, but it’s much harder than people think.
> It’s a system where day in and day out, almost everyone you encounter is a really shitty human being.
This is categorically not true. Police have to deal with some very problematic people, sure. But bad days are far more common that bad people, and most interactions aren't even that.
Every police force has its share of assholes too, who are net cause of more problems than they solve. The most effective ones I've known have been aware of the systemic problems of thinking like you suggest, and intentionally work against it.
When I say “criminal justice system” I’m talking in the context of this article (people who are arrested and prosecuted). Obviously most interactions with the police are with normal people and don’t lead to anything major.
But randomly pick out some sentencing hearings one day at your local federal court. They’ll go over the rap sheet of people who actually go to prison. It’s eye opening.
You can even see this in the criminal justice advocacy materials if you read carefully. I love the ACLU but if you read beyond the headline in many cases it’s quite revealing. I remember a case a few years ago where the headline was some “child” was imprisoned simply for being at a scene where a pizza delivery guy was murdered in broad daylight. Turns out he was actually in a gang, who murdered the guy in cold blood, and the legal theory is that the cops can’t prove which kid actually fired the shots. You can find the legal theory compelling (and I do) while acknowledging that this is the kind of shit that turns up even when social justice types are trying to pick impact cases.
Or heck George Floyd. I think the media overlooked a really important angle on this story that would have spoke to religious people. Floyd was a guy who spent most of his life being a pretty bad person: https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-us-news-ap-top-new...
But he had found Jesus, he was turning his life around and reaching out to kids, and when Derek Chauvin murdered him he cut short what could have been a path to redemption. Reflexively saying “criminals don’t deserve to be murdered” when Floyd’s background comes up is a tautology. Sure. But does pretending that stuff never happened help you understand the real human story of Floyd, Chauvin, and the people in that community? Why making progress on criminal justice reform is so hard even as it’s extremely necessary? Is your phat dismissal and reduction of people to a demons and angels binary persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already agree with you?
Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic.
It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police work which was more my point; lots of people make excuses for the excesses of these systems based on this sort of "98%" (or whatever big number) argument; mostly those excuses are pure fertilizer.
> Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic.
Good people don't rob their neighbors because they're "having a bad day." They're shitty people. And no, poverty doesn't excuse it. People in Bangladesh, where I'm from, are vastly poorer. If poverty caused crime, they'd go around stealing, joining gangs, etc. But mostly they don't. In Bangladeshi villages, crime is lower than in U.S. cities. And when they do those things, nobody hesitates to call them shitty people!
I'm extremely sympathetic to police reform, because I think even shitty people don't deserve to be abused by the state. But let's not mince words here.
> It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police work which was more my point
That may be your point, but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding. My point was in the context of this article, which is about someone who was prosecuted for brutally raping and murdering a woman.
The narrative that you can perform some sort of binary classification into "good people" and "shitty people", and the the latter is who shows up nearly exclusively in the justice system (and, critically that the converse might be true) falls apart under any real scrutiny.
> but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding.
Neither was I. I was talking about the majority of all the work they do.
Everyone can identify clearly horrible behavior, and often it is police who have to deal with this as part of their job. This is difficult and unfortunate, but it is not the defining characteristic of the work. Pretending that it is in order to somehow excuse bad behavior on their part doesn't do anyone favors.
It depends on what part of the system you’re in, and much of the criminal justice system exists after an initial filter and with a particular pipeline that it’s almost impossible to avoid a bias against on a day to day basis.
If your job is to do image/video forensics on hard drives of people already arrested or served with warrants, it’s generally either unremarkable or traumatically upsetting. The latter is going to have the most impact on your perception, and would likely color your worldview on things like encryption or the overall goodness of humanity.
This is true, I originally had a comment about narrower roles but thought it was a a distraction. If you are looking at the justice system as a whole, the pool of people shifts a fair bit. However, you have to pick an extremely narrow role before you are anywhere close to GP's "almost everyone is shitty" characterization.
My comment was more aimed at general policing, the vast majority of which fits my characterization.
> Every police force has its share of assholes too
Due to the nature of the job, and the perks and impunity of it in the US, it actually self selects for assholes. The military does as well, to a much lesser extent. There were some days when I went to bed thinking, "everyone I talked to today was a self important asshole."
>This attitude is less hard to understand when you’re not looking at it through the filter of cases where that happened not to be true
Nope, the attitude of "I never make mistakes" still baffles my mind. I get that most people they're dealing with are causing some amount of trouble, they should still regularly doubt their instincts. That would also go a long way to answering demands to "stop being racist."
>It’s a system where day in and day out, almost everyone you encounter is a really shitty human being.
If they hold that mindset, they should just extend it to themselves and the other people in the criminal justice system.
That’s the key factor that outsiders looking into the criminal justice system overlook. They think it’s easy. “Just stop being racist, corrupt, etc.” It’s a system where day in and day out, almost everyone you encounter is a really shitty human being. Reforming the system is important, but it’s much harder than people think.