[JumpCrisscross]

> Why do we have a system that says justice was served?

Suggest specific improvements and call them into your representatives. The closer you can make your proposals to a bill, the more likely it is that the problem becomes an issue.

In this case, I’d argue we need publicly-subsidised attorneys for wrongful arrest. It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted. Giving people the right to notify employers, upon arrest, barring a specific request by the police (approved by a court), would also be prudent.

[floren]

> It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted.

This would be huge. It's illegal to fire someone because they got called up on jury duty, and if someone is arrested but later found innocent the same rules should apply: in both cases you're involuntarily assisting the criminal justice system :)

[JohnFen]

> It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted.

Replace "indicted" with "convicted" and I agree. Further, it should by unlawful to refuse you housing because you were arrested even if you weren't convicted (this is common practice right now).

[rexpop]

My representatives do not listen to me.

[loteck]

They probably do, but they also have to listen to hundreds of thousands of others just like you, and pick which opportunities to act on. Can you understand why they may both listen to you and not take action on your concern?

[syshum]

Multiple studies have been done to show they in fact do not listen to the average person

The most famous in recent memory is the 2014 Study "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595)

Which Concludes

"In the United States, indicate, the majority does not rule at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose ... majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts."

[yourbandsucks]

OP is probably not a bundler for 6 figures in campaign donations, just saying.

[rexpop]

Their responses are often unrelated, or antithetical to my stated position. I think they have an inaccurate classifier.

[JohnFen]

You should know how these things work. When you contact your representative with an opinion, they just add one to their tally of how many voters expressed the same opinion.

The totals for how many voters expressed which opinions are what carries the most sway with them. Whether or not those tallies are in alignment with the general public is not relevant.

So, when you contact them, you'll get a canned response telling you what their current stance is, regardless of whether that's the same as yours. But make no mistake, your opinion was added to the count.

This sort of thing is why phone banks and contact-your-representative campaigns are so common. In bulk, they're effective and can change policy even in ways that most of their constituents don't agree with. They're only looking at the numbers of contacts they've received.

[rexpop]

You have just described my experience to me.

> Whether or not those tallies are in alignment with the general public is not relevant.

Is this not grossly pathological?

[JohnFen]

I am not claiming this is the way it should work, only that this is the way it does work.

The silver lining in that cloud is that it means that expressing your opinion to your representative is something that really does make a difference. On a practical level, if you don't tell them, they won't know.

[fghtr]

Become a member of a charity fighting for your freedoms such as Electronic Frontier Foundation or Amnesty International.

[rexpop]

I don't have disposable income.

[fghtr]

You can also volunteer for them.

[rexpop]

I don't have disposable time.

[fghtr]

Then you do not really want to make a change. Things will not change themselves (except to the worse).

[est31]

> Giving people the right to notify employers

Why not ask your lawyer to do it for you? You already have the right to make a call to a lawyer.

[vuln]

I would be willing to be that 90% of the population getting locked up do not have a lawyer on retainer and use public defenders. Which you must wait for one to be provided to you then wait for said representation to reach out to you. That’s days if not longer in jail just waiting. Unless you have money then you won’t spend a moment in jail. Yet again the wealthy have a different set of rules because they can pay their way out of anything.

[kevingadd]

Beyond this in some areas due to lack of funding & supply there aren't even enough public defenders. It can take people weeks to get one at all and the one they get will barely have enough time to represent them.

[est31]

That's a good point, thank you. So I guess such a right would indeed be useful.

[isoskeles]

> It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted.

I disagree. The cost of bad policing shouldn't be paid for by businesses. The police should bear the consequences, not have yet another victim (some business) to burden with more punishment.

[deogeo]

> bad policing

But arresting someone reasonably suspected of some crime isn't bad policing, even if they are later found to be innocent. That is why arrest and trial are separate.

[RHSeeger]

I think part of the problem is that there's a lot of actors in law enforcement for which "reasonably suspected" isn't important; "can we make it stick" is. Past that, they don't even bother to consider if it might be the wrong person.

There's a LOT of good cops, lawyers, judges, etc. However, the bad ones can have such devastating effects on their victims, that all of them need to be watched (controlled? not sure what the right word is here) more than would be necessary for other areas.

[isoskeles]

Let's agree to disagree. I think that detaining an innocent person against their will is bad policing.

[deogeo]

But how could it be avoided? The police don't operate on 'guilty' and 'innocent', but on 'suspect' - even if they do everything right, they'll occasionally arrest someone that will later turn out to be innocent. If they're responding to an emergency, they simply don't have time to determine guilt with much accuracy, and are just focusing on protecting possible victims. And if they're arresting someone being prosecuted for some crime, well it's unavoidable that occasionally someone won't be found guilty for what they stood trial for - that's the whole point of a trial.

However, I agree that if that should happen, the detained should be compensated for the harm they suffered, even if the police (and prosecutors!) acted reasonably.

I should clarify that I don't mean to imply the US police and public prosecutors meet these reasonablenes criteria - from what I hear, the deck is stacked heavily against anyone being prosecuted for a felony, guilty or not.

[arbitrarywords]

What about if the police had a dedicated fund for arrests. For the employer - they aren't allowed to sack the employee, but administrative costs of finding temp staff can be claimed from the fund. For the arrested, all cost of living expenses are covered until trial, but should they be found guilty, this becomes a CPI indexed, interest free debt. Any pre-conviction incarceration costs where accused is found innocent are also paid by the fund. This seems to grab most of the data in one account. But does also seem to add a big incentive to find people guilty...

[JohnFen]

That's not always bad policing. The police aren't in the business of determining guild or innocence. The courts are. There will be innocent people who are arrested.

But I don't see how preventing companies from being able to fire people solely because of an arrest actually costs them anything.

[maxheadroom]

>The police should bear the consequences...

When, in the history of ever (in America), have the police borne the consequences for anything? It's always been either the taxpayer (in pay-outs) or no one (when the officer simply moves to another jurisdiction to keep on keeping on). Although, the premise is idyllic, it would never happen.

[javajosh]

An arrest of the sort we are talking about is a form of extra-judicial punishment that should be forbidden by any just system of law. In fact, I am constantly surprised at the things that are allowed, and even encouraged, in our judicial system, and how many individuals apparently believe the system is fine the way it is. Saying that we should continue to allow people to be fired for an arrest is to further support this extra-judicial punishment. It gives individual police officers the power to destroy any individuals life with which they come into contact, without even firing a shot. This power is far too great for anyone to wield, and our system was designed to prevent this kind of power, and yet here we are, with people like you arguing in it's favor.

[giancarlostoro]

It is entirely against the premise of "innocent until proven guilty" we treat suspects like criminals, I get it, you want them to "crack" but what in the world! If someone has no criminal record, please treat them as if they may not have one after you question them, don't ruin their lives.

[isoskeles]

This a misunderstanding of what I am saying. I don't think the existing system is fine.

Fix the judicial system itself, don't offload that responsibility onto businesses. If arresting a person is so easy as to be able to ruin their life (and I agree that it is), there should be a higher bar to arresting people than < says here his phone was near the scene of the crime >.

If a system is conceived in which a business is able to fire and quickly rehire someone who was wronged by the police, I am supportive of that. But some general idea of, "Well let's just make it illegal for businesses to do that!" is beyond absurd. It's papering over a problem caused by another problem. Businesses are not responsible for fixing a problem caused by the police. This would be as absurd as a business suing the government for failing to prevent a valuable employee from being murdered.

[javajosh]

Yes, I agree that the justice system itself is the root cause. However, I think it's also okay to "paper over the problem", and to support that I would directly appeal to the jury-trial system. The government is taking people away from work to perform a government service, and they (rightly) forbid business from firing someone during that time. In the same way, arresting someone also conscripts a person, against their will, to do government service. The service, in this case, is very similar to jury service in that the arrestee's role is to help justice be done by the government. The only difference is that a juror is picked by a computer (and then a lawyer) but an arrestee is picked by a cop.

[JohnFen]

> The cost of bad policing shouldn't be paid for by businesses.

How does that count as "businesses paying for bad policing"?