The equivalence is based on the common (and unsustainable) assumption that there is such a thing as an untampered population. It's some kind of Garden of Eden fantasy.
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She'd visit the defendant's home and write up a description of the effects that a sentence would have, and suggest "community sentences" that the judge could apply. I'm not saying that's entirely pointless, but something has to give, and it's stuff like that.
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those are indeed giving. very often now the probation officer has to give a verbal Pre-Sentence Report (as they are called now) when the beaks hear the case, and even the written up ones (usually for more, uh, cerebral crimes such as child abuse) are very concise
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I agree that there are too many formalities which judges are forced to observe. That said, the huge costs associated with trials have given rise to our plea-bargain regime, which I imagine is more efficient than any sort of trial, no matter how efficient.
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We don't have plea-bargaining to the same extent in Britain. It seems like it has the tendency to become more unjust over time as prosecutors learn to manipulate it. The safeguards that have been added to trials are counterproductive if that's the outcome.
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Admitting guilt over 'disturbing the peace' seems like a small price to pay to avoid a hate speech conviction. Anyways, 'efficient justice' is having your cake and eating it too. Plea-bargaining strikes as good a balance as anything.
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There's a tradeoff in principle between justice and efficiency. My position is that the system is so inefficient that injustices appear as a result. Plea-bargaining would be an example of that. Long times spent on remand are another.
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plea-bargaining is a response to a felt necessity. i'm losing the plot here, but my main point was that, in the criminal context, the judicial system is doing about as good as it can. i think the problems are, generally speaking, legislative in nature.
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as for the demographic-precondition issue, I'd rather have the chance to plea-bargain (because of high trial costs) than go up before an arbiter. Hell, I'd rather try my luck with unfriendly jurors than an unfriendly inquisitor.
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Juries are a good idea if the people you live among are like you and have the same values as you. I think that's increasingly not the case. The high trial costs are the whole issue here. I'm saying bring them down, and be brutal about it if necessary.
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If you can't bring them down, the only remaining response possible is to have fewer trials, and plea-bargaining is a reasonable way to do that. As I said, an order-of-magnitude reduction in cost is what is needed.
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