How rich people buy their way out of prison

[frauenfelder]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/26/how-rich-people-buy-their-way.html

…

[Papasan]

Of course, public defenders don’t enjoy the same level of access to prosecutors.

Roger That!

[JonS]

Well, duh. If folks don’t want to go to prison they should have just been born richer. Also whiter. And more male.

[atl]

Okay, this is a terribly serious subject so can we drop the dramatic changes in camera angles – 14 cuts (not counting going to or back from photos) in the first 90 seconds. This isn’t an MTV video.

[Boundegar]

No, I think this would work just fine for a rich black woman. There are just fewer of them.

[mocon]

This strikes me as an important topic. Maybe someone should write about it.

Now get your video camera off my lawn!

[atl]

A good point. Oprah Winfrey could kill someone on live television with her bare hands and she’ll never do worse than FCI Lompoc.

[Pensketch]

[PsiPhiGrrrl]

@Boundegar

No, I think this would work just fine for a rich black woman.

Something tells me that she wouldn’t get the same treatment - regardless of money (attorney/law firm, legal fees, plea deal terms, etc.). Being rich provides better options in dealing with the law, but it doesn’t change your gender or ethnic identity. Even Oprah has been profiled while shopping.

[Boundegar]

That’s horrifying.

[Glaurung]

@frauenfelder

they pay high-power lawyers to convince prosecutors (sometimes contributing to DA’s campaign funds)

But of course, because political campaign contributions are sacred exercises of FREE SPEECH, we can’t possibly throw those DAs in jail for corruption.

Remind me again, making DA’s and judges elected officials is a good idea how?

[PsiPhiGrrrl]

IMO, horrifying is what the black women without money have to deal with in our legal system. The knowledge that you will always have less or be treated as less than is sometimes stressful, depressing, and/or infuriating…but inescapable.

[Alfred_Packer1]

The US has the best courts that money can buy.
The US has the best Congress that money can buy.
But money doesn’t buy justice, it just buys preferential treatment.
And that, Bucky, is why Finland is a more just country than the US; their traffic fines are proportionate to the offender’s income. We should employ that principle in all fines and penalties.

[Wanderfound]

Judah Maccabeets🍝 (AdamSerwer)

It is undeniable that wealth provides a huge advantage in the US justice system.

Wealthy people are less likely to be arrested, less likely to be charged, less likely to be convicted, more likely to be given a lenient sentence, more likely to be imprisoned in humane conditions, more likely to be released early, less likely to be subject to onerous parole conditions.

And yet everyone acts as if this is perfectly normal, as if it does not fundamentally contradict the very notion of justice itself.

So long as wealth provides even partial impunity, justice does not exist.

[phuzz]

@Alfred_Packer1

The US has the best courts that money can buy.
The US has the best Congress that money can buy.

I’m pretty sure that’s the system working as intended. As intended by rich white blokes, aka the only real people.

[Wanderfound]

@phuzz

I’m pretty sure that’s the system working as intended. As intended by rich white blokes, aka the only real people.

Yes. Literally.

The USA has always been a plutocracy. It was designed that way.

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.

James Madison, Statement (1787-06-26) as quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates

Or see here:

QUESTION: Do you see much evidence of a revolutionary spirit in the America of the 1990s?

CHOMSKY: You didn’t find evidence of it in the America of the 1790s. The Revolutionary War was an important event. But it was in the first place, to a significant extent, a civil war, as most revolutionary wars are. And it was a war of independence, as opposed to a revolution against the social structure. The social structure didn’t really change significantly. There were problems right after the war was done. For example, Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion and so on were challenging the social structure, and there were efforts on the part of radical farmers to take seriously the meaning of the words in the revolutionary pamphlets, but that was pretty well quieted down.

If you go back to the record of the Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1787, almost immediately after the end of the war, you see that they are already moving in another direction. James Madison – who was the main framer, and one of the Founding Fathers who was most libertarian – makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to ensure that the government will, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform. The determination was made that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent. Therefore, Madison argues, the country should be placed in the hands of the wealthier set of men, as he put it.

QUESTION: Isn’t that erection of barriers to democracy woven through the entire history of the United States?

CHOMSKY: It goes back to the writing of the Constitution. They were pretty explicit. Madison saw a “danger” in democracy that was quite real and he responded to it. In fact, the“problem” was noticed a long time earlier. It’s clear in Aristotle’s “Politics,” the sort of founding book of political theory – which is a very careful and thoughtful analysis of the notion of democracy. Aristotle recognizes that, for him, that democracy had to be a welfare state; it had to use public revenues to ensure lasting prosperity for all and to ensure equality. That goes right through the Enlightenment. Madison recognized that, if the overwhelming majority is poor, and if the democracy is a functioning one, then they’ll use their electoral power to serve their own interest rather than the common good of all. Aristotle’s solution was, “OK, eliminate poverty.” Madison faced the same problem but his solution was the opposite: “Eliminate democracy.”

[alphaxion]

This extends beyond the direct justice system, too.

Rich people are less likely to face continued punishment even once their time has been served, as their criminal records are unlikely to be used against them when applying for jobs.

Recidivism of the rich is near non-existent due to the combination of their conviction not unfairly harming future employment prospects, and their still having enough money to pick up where they left off by the time they leave jail.

The poor are, by design, trapped in the criminal justice system once they enter it.

[Medievalist]

@frauenfelder

like the heir to the Dupont fortune who admitted raping his three-year-old daughter

There is no such thing as “the heir to the DuPont fortune” because there is no such thing as a single eponymous Du Pont fortune.

There are many du Pont heirs, and many fortunes. Some of the heirs are nice people who are valued by their communities, who have exerted positive influence on national, state and global politics and economics. And some of them are an egregious waste of skin who ought to be compost.

[Slant]

Might you be referring to John du Pont, among others?

[Medievalist]

He was a pretty nasty piece of nutcake, although he did valuable work in ornithology and created the Delaware Natural History Museum before he went completely off his rocker. The DNHM is worth a visit and support.

Reconciling this to the original topic, John du Pont has demonstrated for us how utterly and visibly insane an extremely rich man has to be before he’ll be sent to jail. Turns out it’s pretty crazy!

The social class of “du Pont heirs” includes du Ponts, Greenwalts, Copelands, and many more. There’s actually a du Pont Genealogy corporation in Wilmington that validates and tracks them for the family.