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by lambda 5627 days ago
> overwhelming vast majority of uneventful cases in which justice is (at least nominally) served.

You are assuming in that statement that there is an overwhelming majority of cases in which justice is served. You even try to leave yourself an out with the "at least nominally", which demonstrates part of the problem with your argument.

Among the problems with this argument: the assumption that many of the crimes we are convicting people for are actually bad, and thus worthy of being considered crimes. The assumption that convicting and imprisoning people for the crimes that they commit is just, or even that it achieves whatever ends it is supposed to achieve. The assumption that people are convicted of crimes on the basis of whether or not they actually committed the crime, plus a small random factor due to mistakes, rather than systemic social reasons relating to class, race, poverty, and other social issues (even if many of the people who are convicted of crimes are actually guilty, if the guilty of one group are convicted at a far higher rate than the other group, it's not quite right to say that justice is served in this case).

You have to be careful about bias in the other direction; the just world fallacy. It's very easy to believe that we live in a just world (and part of why people find such hope in the idea of just deities); when something bad happens, many people try to find a reason or to justify it. But in fact, we do not live in a just world; we live in an impartial world, populated with imperfect people. Given that, you need to be skeptical of any time you find yourself thinking that the vast majority of any particular situation is just, especially with stakes as high as criminal justice.