But this is a different question than the one I asked.

I’d also second most of jigmeister’s sentiments, but Seth asks us to guess how many angels dance on the head of a pin, pointing to speculative (and often, unlikely) benefits to “the public at large” that cannot be documented or quantified.

I agree the proportion of overall cases where prosecution is actually “helping victims” is vanishingly small. Some exist, but mostly such rhetoric, IMO, amounts to a strained conflation aimed at justifying the majority of cases where the victim doesn’t directly benefit at all from the prosecutor’s work.

Also, the moment the victim doesn’t support the prosecutors’ decision – e.g., the sex abuse victim who doesn’t support a lengthy sentence for a family member – it’s always amazing to me how quickly the victim’s stated interests are discounted so the prosecutor can adopt a “tuffer” stance.

The game is the game. I’m not saying that the only crimes that should be prosecuted are those in which the prosecutor is actually helping an identifiable human being. But we need to be truthful about the rewards (and costs) of the work that we are doing.

I shall come visit your Inn of Court. Can you arrange for me to sit second with you in a trial?

I would go as far as to suggest there are no cases which should be prosecuted with relish.

There we are… better

It’s Lincoln’s Inn by the way… bloody amazing place…

But to say we are speculating or making shit up if we can’t name the victim, this is simply not right.

It appears to me that your system has lost sight of due process (from our disclosure discussions) perhaps that is because you have lost belief in the rule of law. On an individual basis, I know where you are coming from and there are many cases which should not be prosecuted with relish… I’d go as far as to say there are none… but in answering your question, who is the identifiable victim, I will quote the great man,

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”

And lest any of your readers forget, that great man was not Hemingway… But the one time Chaplain of my Inn of Court (which is a great place to visit by the way).((talk about off topic, too much vino!))

That said, let me give you an example I was around for: the Knox brothers, Gregory and Jerry Lee. While they went to prison for a robbery & assault on a grandmother of my acquaintance — May 1, 2004 — there’s at least plenty of reason to think that their occupation was beating the crap out of people (generally elderly ones; I don’t think it was because they particularly liked beating old people, but because they were interested in getting rather than receiving the beating) and taking their money. A very similar string of strongarm robberies in that neighborhood came to a stop after their mother turned them and and they went first to jail, and then to prison. That they were the perpetrators is, of course, speculation; they weren’t charged with or convicted of those acts.

Not just to keep my street cred as somebody who sees complexity even in the simplest things intact, let me add that the two of them had a horrific (term used deliberately) childhood; there’s ample reason to believe that they were raised by a sex worker with nonlawful pharmaceutical preferences, and if somebody were to tell me that they were sexually abused as kids, I wouldn’t react with reflexive disbelief.

One’s out; one gets out in a couple of years. I don’t know if either will return to their previous occupation, but I’m pretty confident — although I can’t prove it — that there are real human beings who didn’t get beaten and robbed because they were inside.

Typical of robbers in that respect? I’d not be surprised.

DWI prosecution is actually a good example of an area in which we are past the point of diminishing return, as far as societal benefit vs. human and societal cost. Proponents of our current draconian DWI laws, and of more severe laws, make shit up about the societal advantages, and pretend there are no social costs, to justify giving the government more power. A driver who is legally “intoxicated” by either definition may be less of a danger to other people than a driver who is talking on a cellphone, adjusting the radio, daydreaming, or just angry.

The numbers suggest that the entire criminal justice system is past the point of diminishing return. If putting more people under government supervision could make us safer, then we would already be, by far, the safest nation on Earth.

I still think we’re talking about 25%.