October 4 2015 Editorial by the San Diego Union Tribune commented on Gov Jerry Brown's veto messages written on a series of bills that proposed to create new crimes.
The editorial said that possibly the article written by Alex Kozinski concerning the unfairness of our justice system may have been one of the reasons for his vetoes.
Kozinski was the Chief Justice of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and his "Criminal Law 2.0" article in the Georgetown Law Review pointed out the serious flaws in our US system of justice and made a series of recommendations.
I believe I agree with Kozinski's findings and recommendations. While I have not been in any courts other than a few times on jury duty, I do recognize from the news all of the many injustices that take place. Prosecutors seem to be anxious to "win at any cost" which gives them a built-in conflict of interest when it comes to justice.
The US really does need to figure out why we have more people in prison than any other country of the world both by percentage and by total numbers. Our laws need to narrow down the scope to focus on crimes that actually affect us. For example, it seems that far too much emphasis is placed upon crimes that occur among consenting adults that incur minimum of harm to others -- obviously drugs, gambling and prostitution. All of them could easily be regulated, controlled and taxed and it would much better protect the sellers, and buyers. In the name of protecting the public from these "vices" the Government has then justified defining many more crimes to include RICO, anti gang laws, money laundering laws, restrictions on buying/selling of chemicals that could be used for making or refining drugs, human trafficking (which would be reduced or eliminated if prostitution were legalized),
The problems created by "illegal gambling" were significantly reduced when legal casinos were built throughout the country. Now it is a very minor problem. When prohibition ended, the problems of illegal alcohol almost went completely away. Yes, we still have problem with DUIs which is a difficult situation for society. However I believe the "self driving cars" on the horizon will start to resolve that problem long before our justice system will be revised.
That leaves illegal recreational drugs and prostitution as the only remaining issues that seem to contribute to a very high percentage of our prison population. According to drugwarfacts.org website around 50% of the inmates in the US are there for some sort of drug violation. These statistics appear to be related to direct drug offenses, and not "secondary" drug offenses. For example, people could be arrested for gun offenses, or other violent crimes that were a result of disagreements related to drugs. People could be arrested for money laundering, which could be due to moving drug money. Gang related arrests and convictions are related to illegal drugs, because so much of a gangs power and finances seem to revolve around marketing of illegal drugs. I think if all of those causes were included in the statistics, the percentage of drug-related inmates would be much higher.
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