this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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If it can be reformed with legislative actions then it's not inherently corrupt. Maybe it's just a use of language that's causing the disconnect for me here. Shaka when the Walls Fell.
It's still going to be the Justice System after comprehensive reform.
What's your argument exactly? That it's not inherently corrupt because we'd be in a big hard-to-solve problem if it's inherently corrupt, and therefore we must agree that's it's not inherently corrupt?
My point is that if you or they think the Justice System is inherently corrupt then you would be advocating for a world without said system of reform, which would be worse. I wanted to understand how somebody who thinks that would justify the lack of accountability for criminals who harm others, but instead I'm walking away realizing that people don't know the definition of the word "Inherently" and were just repeating what they thought was a figure of speech.
Inherently means inseparable, intrinsic, a permanent quality. If it is inherently corrupt then it cannot ever be fixed by definition.
You are giving infinite leeway to the justice system. A justice system can get so bad that it's better not to have one at all. Even if you place zero value on the human rights of the prisoners, if a justice system can create more crime (for example, by ruining the criminals' families financially, pushing them to break the law in order to get by. Or by ruining the lives of one-time offenders which will make them repeat offenders) than the crime it prevents (by detaining criminals and by deterring would-be criminals), then it's better without it even if it means that crime will have no consequences.
Is the American justice system that bad? Probably not. But if you do place some value on the human rights of the prisoners, and if you take into account the damage done by the prisons and prison accessories industry lobbying? I wouldn't be so sure that its effect is net positive...
"Inherently corrupt" is a property of the system, not of the problem it tries to solve. It does not mean that any conceivable justice system would be corrupt - what it means that any reform that is not deep enough to essentially be equivalent to scrapping it away and rebuilding it anew is bound to fail. The original statement was "the system is inherently corrupt". You changed it to "the vague concept of a Justice System is inherently corrupt". That's a huge difference.
Maggoty's claim, if I understand it correctly, is that the incentives behind the system (profiting from the prisoners) are the problem, and as long as they are not rooted out no reform will help. That's the "inherent" part.
If you think that the justice system can be fixed then you do not believe it is inherently flawed or corrupt. Those are mutually exclusive definitions. I don't think that having absolutely no justice system is better than what we currently have, nor do I think scrapping it entirely will lead to a better future for anybody involved, and I'm afraid that far too many people think exactly that.
Well that's the thing. We've done legislative action and the people running the prisons, police, and courts seem to just find a different way to keep doing the same thing. At what point do we create a new system that blacklists everyone in the current system? At what point do we shut down a system that's doing more harm than good for everything by the most egregious crimes?
Why would a new system be any different, if it's inherently corrupt?
If it was also corrupt? No.
That's a strange definition of inherently corrupt. Maybe a better term would be corrupt by design. If it were redesigned from the ground up, starting with Constitutional reform and then legislation, it could be more like the prison systems of more civilized countries, but a large portion of the public does not want that. While there are reform activists on the left, treating prisoners worse than animals is largely a matter of consensus within the political establishment.
I feel like we've got a good bare minimum framework. Right to trial is a human right in the USA, attorney can be provided by the state if one cannot be afforded, in most of the USA execution is illegal and sentencing limits keep excessive punishments to a minimum. Appeals can overturn literally any decision. Lots of avenues for exoneration. The people in prisons are not all bad people, far from it, but statistically most of them belong there. Especially rapists and murderers, none of those people need to be set free.
A destruction of that system for some imaginary perfect system that everybody will immediately agree to implement sounds like idiocy funded by foreign powers to stoke flames.
We also charge people a ton of money to imprison them, intentionally keep prisoners in inhumane conditions, and imprison a larger portion of our population than any other medium or large country, and allow prisoners and defendants to be exploited for profit, and subject prisoners to literal slavery (as explicitly allowed by the 13th amendment).
So those other countries, their justice systems aren't inherently corrupt?