The judicial system in the United States is considered non-system for two reasons. First, because there is no centralized authority. 50,000 agencies enforce the law on behalf of various federal, state, local, and tribal agencies. Second, each agency cooperates using a number of protocols and agreements, but operates largely independently. Adam Benforado, a law professor at Drexel University, describes these troubling problems with the justice system in the recent book « Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. » The book uses psychology and neuroscience to examine and expose the illogical and unfair ways in which judges, jurors, lawyers, and others in the legal system make decisions about people sent to prison. and who runs freely. Knowledge@Wharton: You say in the book that there are cases where our judicial system does not have the evidence under control in the cases. What effect does this have? Knowledge@Wharton: Based on your experience as a venture capitalist, how has this failure of the legal system affected technology companies? The criminal justice system consists of three equally important branches. Unlike the TV show; In reality, law and order consist of three parts. The police investigate crimes, the judicial system that ensures appropriate punishment and the prison system that carries out the sentence and must act to reduce recidivism The justice system should be made for all. The innocent must be protected. Criminals must be convicted. Fair justice and law enforcement are necessary to maintain law and order throughout the country.
Knowledge@Wharton: Where and why has the legal system failed us? There are as many good law schools today as there were 35 years ago. To the extent that the main inputs for legal services are the people who provide services, this means that legal prices will rise. It is unnecessary and distorting, and no one has done anything about it. Just as no one has done anything to find a better way to bill customers than the billable hour introduced in the 1950s. We need to innovate again. But we didn`t. The law is a cartel, which is strange because you have members of a cartel that regulates the Federal Trade Anti-Cartel Commission. But that`s one of the strange little ironies of the law. The law must therefore take all these things seriously and think about how it wants to achieve what the common good requires. COVID-19 has also highlighted the inefficiencies of an incarceration-based system. A study by Time magazine found that 39 percent of incarcerated people pose no threat to public safety and that their release could save the country $20 billion a year.
Of these, 25% are low-level non-violent offenders who could benefit from other forms of reform, and 14% have already served long prison sentences for serious crimes and could be safely released. The second thing is that, as the courts get bogged down as regulations multiply and become more complex, it actually favors the larger companies because only they can afford the compliance teams and legal departments and the $2,000 an hour that New York law firms charge. By the way, this is not an exaggeration. I just received an invoice with an item of $2,000 an hour. This favors the sides, so you end up with this strange cycle of self-defeat with the law. Whenever he tries to improve himself, supposedly for the benefit of the public, he accidentally shoots a few members of the public in his attempt at good deeds. « The police have been placed in a very difficult system by a legislature that meets the demands of the election season. » Second, we need to think about how we can build more diverse juries and more diverse judges. The worst thing we can have is a jury or a court where everyone has the same prejudices. It`s much better if everyone is biased in different ways. Our benches and juries are disproportionately white, male and elderly. This is a problem, especially because our legal rules themselves have been developed over the centuries by older white men. To the extent that we cannot equalize the population, diversity is a good second-best approach.
Gibney: That`s the average Joe, especially the poorest 25%. If the law comes knocking on the door, I can sit there and pick up the phone from a huge New York law firm. If you look at the Fed`s numbers, the average person can afford about 18 hours of legal representation, so the median household can afford functionally zero. For economic reasons, there is no economic right to counsel. This is a real problem. Sending armed uniformed officers to answer 911 calls often leads to situations like the one that led to the death of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta in mid-2020. It is estimated that 80% of 911 calls nationwide are not made for violent or property crimes. This meant that it should not be the police who answered it. In addition, many people, especially those belonging to minority groups, do not call emergency services because they fear that emergency services are police officers.
The system needs to be reformed to ensure that the right assistants are sent to deal with each specific situation, especially stressful and psychological situations related to drugs. Despite well-documented racial and ethnic differences within the criminal justice system, other groups appear to benefit from special treatment under the law. Minors are often tried as adults in the criminal justice system and are not eligible for parole. In addition, neighbourhood and school surveillance often criminalizes petty crime and contributes to unnecessary violence.