I don't know whether you are correct (you very well might be), but either way, this is an interesting take on social policy.

"I think so to"

I missed an 'o' and now it's uneditable.

I think so tooo

100% agreement with you on all of this side of things but I dont think it's at all in alternative to the issues I was trying to address and that somehow need to be addressed.

Nice work with the extra 'o'.

And while they are not neceasarily contradictory, I'm also wary of state power. I don't think abuse of power is just something to guard against. Guarding against abuse and institutional checks on it are limiting, but abuse of power is inevitable and once given power is hard to take away.

I'm very wary of state power as well and agree abuse of power is inevitable. I get very bothered when people say we need proof of abuse before we take steps to prevent it.

But I don't believe the correct answer is to just shy away from giving the state powers where they are needed because we know they will be abused. It's like having a police force - we know there will be abuse but all (imo) the correct answers still require having a police force.

Well, I'm pretty radical. I think we'd be better off without police. In Rojava there was a plan that I don't think has happened anywhere yet to give everyone 6 weeks of police training but have no police.

Well, maybe the cities can't live without some police. It's too alienating to have sufficient community and mutual aid. Hmm, but they still might always do more harm than good.

I admire your radicalism and have much sympathy with your views.

I don't see democracy in any form ever working well without a police force - but who knows maybe one day.

A police-free state is probably only achievable where there's very little difference between the richest and poorest. Psychopaths/sociopaths aside, why would you steal from someone if you have everything that everyone else has?

Based on how you worded this, I am assuming you don’t know what 20% chance of rain actually means, either...

chezlaw stop ****ing lying about everything. We all know you're a fascist who forms his views entirely based on agreeing with whatever internet liberals are mad at.

This is untrue. They don't even have the worst murder rate in the US. That dubious honor belongs to Baltimore, MD. New Orleans, LA, Detroit, MI, Kansas City, MO, and Memphis, TN all have per capita murder rates higher than Chicago.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...017/302763002/

You should probably try getting news from somewhere other than Breitbart.

This gets to the purpose of police and is probably true. Communities can defend themselves. Consider the groups of indigenous peasants in southern Mexico who have done a better job keeping drug cartels at bay than the Mexican police or army. But in order for that kind of thing to work people have to care about each other.

Perhaps having no police at all is Utopian, but I think Utopian thinking is valuable. The obvious points behind my thoughts that no police would be better is that they don't do nearly as much good as people with no faith in human nature assume and they do do harm. But a less obvious point is that people have abdicated any responsibility, even rejected their innate empathetic responses, because of the feeling that the proper authorities will and should take care of things.

This is the same point I made in the AC discussions. I have a much higher regard for humanity than many but I can't get to it working without a state with features such as police forces. Certainly tackling issues such as social inequality is a huge and necessary part of the answer in any system

What we need is to return the responsibility o that people don't feel they can just leave it to government. I'd suggest were seeing that happening more and more now - it's the very good side of the social media phenomena. Where we appear to differ is I see that responsibility as, in large part, getting involved in demanding good government.

Lol reading fail.

"One of the..."

Anyway. How about quoting my entire post...

Does your "rebuttal" of my post have anything what-so-ever to do with the topic of this thread?

How about contributing something of value, just once in your life?

Buen Gobierno

There is a revolution going on. The forces demanding change have been unleashed and the pace has accelerated dramatically. Don't need no guns (hopefully)

The Zapatistas had guns, but they killed 3 soldiers in their revolution. It was essentially non-violent. (More than 3 of them were killed by the Mexican Army.) It's hard to describe the Zapatistas properly without being patronizing to them, so I'll just go ahead and be patronizing. They are the sweetest militant revolutionaries in history.

In another thread you called cutting up a deer leg in front of vegans not peaceful. Here you call killing three people non-violent. That seems inconsistent to me.

Well, for one thing you're just being a jerk. But, I said essentially. And killing three people is hardly any for a revolution. Also it was in self-defense. The people who were killed were soldiers who were killing them. The deer was innocent.

But yes there was some violence. And yes cutting up the deer leg is violence. And yes you are a jerk.

It doesn't seem unfair to call a revolution where only three people die "essentially non-violent."

A thought in the abstract of this is whether I would be able to plead "probably guilty" and, if so, am I potentially biasing a jury against myself by saying "I probably did it but I bet you can't prove it"?

And a thought about the real world for a moment, is to reiterate what I said before to Chez with some concrete examples.

http://observer.com/2018/04/hbo-mari...t-mishandling/

We all heard how Weinstein basically confessed on tape and the police still didn't pursue him. But this isn't a uniquely US problem.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-new...-stop-11049159

And when we look at the Rotherham scandal, we find that victims were regularly ignored by police. Somehow the police managed to pass it off that their whole system is just too scared of being racist to ever prosecute a minority. As if appearing racist has ever stopped police before.

The issue of how to handle rape cases isn't some abstract problem for philosophy of law where we need to muse over standards in order to artificially inflate conviction rates. It's a real world problem where we don't do the basics right and then scratch our heads over whether there's anything that could be done.

There's nothing unique about the defense. "probably guilty" isn't what you're charged with.

You try to prove you're not guilty, and if there're "reasonable doubts" as to your innocence the judgement is not guilty with parole/surveillance that's consistent with risk assessments. It gives juries peace of mind in borderline cases to know that being truthful in their assessment of the likelihood of guilt (when it's less than certain) won't result in a "probably guilty" child molester being let loose without being watched closely. This is why juries return guilty verdicts against people who they have prejudices against when the evidence is murky. They don't want the blood of the next victim(s) on their hands.


"You could easily get a warrant for surveillance in the current system if you can show that someone is 95% likely to be a serial killer."

Could happen is a lot different from it actually happening. Accused serial killers that narrowly missed the mark for conviction will probably catch the interest of authorities but i suspect that's rarely the case.

Maybe criminal lawyers here could shed more light as to how often that happens in cases where someone appears very likely guilty and is exonerated.

Anecdotally, I can say it happens quite often, at least in the smaller jurisdictions I've worked in. Anytime the police think someone is dirty, they are going to more likely to stretch the truth or even lie to justify a warrant or search, and walking on what the police see as a strong case is a good way to make cops think you are dirty.

Which is an argument for why the reasonable doubt standard is necessary. Police target people based on their biases and suspicions, so they need to be held to a high standard of proof. When the state whines about a guilty person being acquitted, 95% of the time it is because the state (and by extension the media) is deluded about the strength of their accusations, and 5% of the time it is because of a silly jury or technical issue or something.

i got "verbally warned" for telling officers their cases were bad when i was a prosecutor.

just to show you a little bit about how that system works.

"You try to prove you're not guilty...".

Is this how it works currently, under a "reasonable doubt" system? How does one "prove" "not guilty"? Is it the job of the defense to prove anything? I thought it is the job of the prosecutor to prove guilt?

If I am presumed not guilty, why is it the job of my defense to prove something that is already presumed?

If the judgment is "not guilty" is it ethical to subject the not guilty person to parole/surveillance?