Correcting the Criminal Justice System

The genesis for this posting comes from the blog American Reality.  Blog author Jonathan Simeone’s post “How Can Anyone Support Capital Punishment” led to a discussion in the comments.  Jonathan suggested I take a comment and turn it into a post on my blog.  Thanks Jonathan, and I hope we can continue discussing the issues your post raised?

To give a bit of background on myself – I worked in the criminal justice system, primarily in military and civilian law enforcement/corrections, for a large part of my adult working life.  I believe that experience gives me more than a novice understanding of the system and what’s broken in it.  Make no mistake about it though, I believe in capital punishment and punishment for ones crimes.  I just want it to happen without any unfairness or injustice if at all possible.

America has a faulty, to be kind, criminal justice system.  While the ideal of the system is, IMO, the best option for American society, the implementation of that ideal has become troublesome over the past 230 plus years.  While we, as a society, strive to bring justice to the system we have brought about a great deal of unfairness, or injustice, into it.  While this is not necessarily intentional it does happen so we must then strive to correct the problems.

In the comments of Jonathan’s post he asked me what some of my suggestions would be for reforming and improving the criminal justice system.  I gave him three off the top of my head and I know that isn’t even an ice chip on the tip of the iceberg in all that needs to be considered. In this post I will only speak about the third suggestion I gave.

I wrote in that comment that, “I’d also like to see Public Defender’s Offices equal i[n] size (number of attorneys and investigators, etc) and funding [to] District Attorney’s Offices. In fact maybe we should have an elected Chief Public Defender just like the District Attorney.“

I made this suggestion because I have observed too many convicted defendants who never had a ‘fair’ opportunity to be defended.  Public Defenders are a necessary requirement of the criminal justice system.  The Constitution provides that persons accused have the right to “have the assistance of counsel for his defense” (6th Amendment).  The courts have repeatedly held that wherein a person is unable to afford an attorney one will be appointed without charge to defend the accused.  While that happens regularly it certainly doesn’t speak to the quality of the representation that a fair justice system should demand.

This happens because we spend less on public defenders offices than is normally awarded in tax dollars for the prosecuting attorney’s offices.  We pay lip service to equality and fairness by saying the indigent get an attorney, but we don’t give those public defenders equal footing in resources to serve their client.  Where is the fairness of that?

Now many may say “tough”, but I wonder how those same people would react if they were the ones (or the family of one) needing the public defenders to handle their case?  Suddenly it is a case of the lack of fairness in the system that they are subject to.

People who end up in prison because of the inability of public defenders, due to resources, to defend to the same degree the prosecutor uses to convict is an issue of insuring “justice for all.”  That “all” includes the defendant.  Why is it that we overlook the fairness in obtaining justice for them as well?  If I, as a citizen, demand that criminals be punished then isn’t it also required that I support equal treatment for all in obtaining punishment for guilty individuals?  I believe it does.

But how do we get this fairness between prosecution and defense?  My suggestion, as outlined above, would be to fund Pubic Defender’s Offices at the same level as District Attorney’s.  Allow PD Offices to mirror the staffing of DA Offices.  Let them have the same opportunity to use their resources as DA’s have.  In fact, why not go so far as having a Chief Public Defender as an elected position just like the District Attorney?  As an elected official he or she would be accountable to the public for the operations of the office.  The PD would oversee and choose how to expend the funding of the agency, just as the District Attorney does for his/her agency.  Give public defenders the level playing field that has, for far too many years, been unequal.  It makes sense and we should not deny defendants this just because it would cost us taxpayers more.

Remember that while we want to punish criminals the ideal is “justice for all.”