Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com