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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

The extremely adversarial approach to "justice" is an issue specific to the US (and probably some other countries), and is not universal.

Do definitely have a lawyer present, but whether or not to talk to the police varies a lot per country. Personally, I think that not talking to the police being such vital advice in the US, is a strong condemnation of how the American system works. People should be able to trust the police, and the police and prosecutors should be working to do justice, not merely to lock up as many people as possible. Every innocent person behind bars is a failure of the system.

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I respectfully disagree that this is specific to the US. I think it has been an issue everywhere throughout history.

Don't get me wrong. It's a great thing when a country overcomes it and manages to create a fair, even-handed justice system.

But human nature is to want to see something done about it when crimes happen. That's why before formal justice systems existed (and still today in certain undeveloped areas), a mob would form and just take out -- as in kill -- the suspect on the spot. Without really being sure that they were guilty.

The idea of deferring punishment, recognizing and protecting the rights of the accused, and conducting a fair, orderly trial is a wonderful thing, but it's not the default. It's really more like an achievement in human evolution.

It has to do with incentives. When incentivized for the number of arrests and convictions, no one cares if it's the right people. Add in that there is almost zero penalty for prosecutorial misconduct unless it is extreme, and it's no wonder so many innocent people end up in jail.

Prosecutors play fast and loose to win the game, justice be damned.

Yeah, the system needs to be fixed. Instead of rewarding people for number of convictions, right or wrong, they should be rewarded for reducing crime by independent measurement. Or simply be rewarded for doing their job as honestly as possible, with proper accountability and all that.

But rewarding police and prosecutors for the number of convictions is like rewarding programmers for the number of lines of code. It rewards bad code and unjust convictions.

Maybe there should be a justice-equivalent of code review for police and prosecutors.

It was called the grand jury, they made reports on issues of public concern, and authorized private prosecutors to pursue cases against suspects.

It isn't clear what sort of reforms are needed, but grand juries are the only democratic institution in our republic.

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