Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You are massively wrong. Only 59% of people charged with a felony actually get convicted of it, as of 2018:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate#United_States

This means nearly half of these people getting thrown in jail and/or having to post bond will never get convicted of the "high risk bond" crime they're accused of doing.



A lot of that is just bargaining down to a misdemeanor or prosecutors not wanting to fill up jails and prisons too much. Going with the revolving door in king county, our prosecutors simply don’t want to put people in jail anymore, even for major property crimes, unless violence is involved.


> or prosecutors not wanting to fill up jails and prisons too much

this is laughably not the case, and as of March they were looking at continuing to put more people in jail to the extent of shipping them out to other jails in the region to make room:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/king-county-looks-...

The only real reason prosecutors would choose to not prosecute is because they know they don't have the resources to get convictions (or because of outside political pressure)


You are confusing “not guilty” with “not convicted”. We know that most guilty people never end up convicted, this is the whole problem.


> We know that most guilty people never end up convicted

Going to need a source for this, otherwise it sounds like "I just say it how it is" type of arguing.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: