Wasn't going to post this because
1) I won't be free enough to defend it like I have been because the weather has cleared.
2) Needs citations to motivations for legal history and psychology.
3) see sig. I usually just smh and facepalm and continue on my way.
Just world fallacy. This does happen.
Get in touch with your congresspersons and convince them to introduce an amendment to the Constitution that removes or alters the text "and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." from the 1st Amendment. That would knock out lawsuits and IIRC, lobbying for everybody.
I like how you worded that. It's only the burglar that's been convicted by the cops and the cops have the power to ignore the law.
It is not a video of cops beating a criminal, it's a video of 4 suspected criminals beating another suspected criminal.
Anyway, yeah, that is really old-fashioned thinking, roughly from around ~1215 AD. It's also one of the officially stated reasons the American Colonies revolted against the British Crown.
Also, based off studies of human psychology, you don't want to be giving the state (humans) that much power. You just end up attracting more sociopaths and sadists to the job and increased chances of corrupting the good to the dark side.
Relative privation. The gist is that your [noun x] does not gain merit because you can identify a [noun y] that is worse.
Put directly, your idea of a justice system does not gain merit because you can point to worse justice systems.
There are real consequences for crime, it just is not and should not be up to the police/the state to decide guilt and administer punishment. The state gains an ability to be tyrannical under those conditions, and Americans have already fought to ensure that's prevented.
Also, it's recognized by society and cognitive psychologists that teenagers are not all there in the head and they are prone to not thinking twice before doing... anything. That's why they get their own juvenile justice system accordingly, which probably explains why this kid got probation.
Agree. People in power abuse their power. Has always happened and will continue to happen. It's just better understood these days and more prevalent with the raw increase in population and improved means to communicate when it happens.
Disagree. In the past, there were less possible crimes to commit, period. Today, there are so many laws and regulations that literally nobody knows what's illegal or how many total laws there are. You or I could have committed a felony today and not realized it. Though, any past racist, prostitution, or gambling crimes were false bumps that I wouldn't count in the crime rate, just like I wouldn't count certain drug crimes as criminal today.
In the past, police powers were more limited by the courts too, so their ability to do their job of gathering evidence for the prosecution was more limited, plausibly resulting in less convictions. Today, they've been expanded to aid the war on drugs and terror. Much easier to get a conviction when law enforcement has the power to write their own warrants, enter anywhere claiming exigent circumstances, or just call a dog over to manufacture probable cause for a search.
tl;dr: More laws and more powerful police = more people convicted of crimes. Doesn't mean there wasn't less crime in the past.
