Equal Justice for All
A friend on Facebook had this up as a fundraiser on her birthday. Rather than pitch in there, I went directly to the organization's donate site. I wanted to maximize what they get, and keep FacePlant's greedy little paws out of the loop.
https://support.eji.org/give/153413/#!/donation/checkout
This is in tune with a wild-n-crazy idea I had, last night:
One of the BIG drivers of mass incarceration, and criminal-justice inequity, is the fact that poor and lower-income people accused of crimes can't afford their own attorneys. Public defenders' offices are under-staffed, under-funded, and over-loaded. Meanwhile, prosecutors get their jollies, and convictions, by over-charging cases. They pile on charges that, if a case went to trial, would be used by the jury as toilet paper, and then flushed. The public defenders, then, urge their clients (even if they're actually innocent) to take a plea bargain.
So, here's my not-so-modest proposal.
The Feds, in the form of Congress, cannot under the Constitution, mandate a whole lot of stuff at the state and local level. However, something they have gotten rather alarmingly good at, is imposing state and local regulation by the expedient of attaching strings to Federal aid money. Examples are the late and un-lamented 55mph national speed limit, nationwide 21-year drinking age, and whatnot.
Given the current political balance in the House, this might get traction: Attach a condition to all federal law-enforcement aid - if jurisdictions fail to comply, they get not one single dime of Federal LE assistance. And, the Feds repossess all the MRAPs and other cute toys they've given out. Make the condition, this: Any jurisdiction with prosecutors - district attorneys, state's attorneys, attorneys-general, whatever - must split their legal budget, and staffing, 50-50 between prosecutors, and public defenders.
Now, some might say that this gives an unfair budgetary advantage to the defender's office. After all, some people (like me) can and do afford, and use, our own attorneys. So, each time someone with a private attorney wins a case, that's a theoretical "savings" for the PD's office. At the end of the fiscal year, calculate the "savings", split 50-50 between prosecutors and defenders, and roll it into the following year's budget. That should shut up the law-n-order types.
What do you folks think?
[DW Original]