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Comment by pempem | Hacker News Reader

(Unless you're the one robbed of your 43 years or 2 years of life while continuously claiming - correctly - your innocence).

Its beyond Kafkaesque.

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So a system has to be perfect or else it is Kafkaesque? Isn't there a gradient between them?

You're the only one inventing a false binary. The US legal system locks up more people than any country on earth, and the majority of its prisoners did not do anything morally wrong. Most of them didn't even go to trial, and a huge number have not even been charged.

It is so blatantly corrupt and psychotic a system, it's quite honestly ignorant to even compare it to any notion of "perfect".

"Kafkaesque" is going easy on it. It's objectively the extension of chattel slavery in this country. It's a crime against humanity.

Again, I'm not arguing that the system isn't broken or defending it in any way, I'm only saying that the original post didn't offer evidence in that direction. The things you're talking about may indeed be evidence, but they're not what I was talking about.

The evidence is not exactly in short supply, but I was not writing an essay intending to prove my case beyond a reasonable doubt.

What do you mean that the US legal systems has locked up a huge number that have not even been charged? That doesn't pass the sniff test. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying.

Most cases are pled out of court. So the dilemma is you are innocent, the prosecutor is asking 20 years for the crime you didn't commit. If you plea guilty to the crime you didn't commit, you get 5 years. Your public defender probably has 40 other ongoing cases, so he is an expert at plea deals but who knows about his trial skills. He recommends you take the plea deal. Do you trust the jury to find you rightfully innocent?

> the majority of its prisoners did not do anything morally wrong

Are you suggesting that the prisoners who did nothing morally wrong are the ones convicted of drug-related offenses?

Honestly, while the fraction is large, it hardly looks like a majority (1 in 5 apparently): https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

And it is not broken down to users vs dealers. The former may have a claim to having done nothing morally wrong, but the latter certainly do not.

> Most of them didn't even go to trial

This is arguably a problem, but not unique to the US. Other places also do a majority of convictions via plea bargain: https://www.economist.com/international/2017/11/09/the-troub...

Dealing weed or hallucinogens or even ecstasy certainly aren’t that morally wrong. I’d say not at all, but they are a far cry from actually harmful serious drugs and the addictions they can cause.

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