pumpkinstrokemarrow

Rather stodgy article in a recent NYRB about the dire state of the law in the US. A review, I think, by a judge of a book by a judge, which perhaps explains the stodge. The message, however, is rather dire, on three fronts. First, they put a very large number of people in jail in the US, a relatively large number of them for a relatively long time. Numbers which, it seems, have grown hugely over the last forty years or so. Second, while black people are only slightly more likely to use illegal drugs than white people, they are twice as likely to be in jail on that account. And third, contrariwise, black people have to put up with far more crime on their streets and in their neighbourhoods than white people. All very unhealthy.

It is alleged that some of this is due to the large proportion of law enforcement which is discretionary and which tends, in consequence, to fall more heavily from white cops onto black citizens. Some more is due to rather chaotic law making in states, beyond the control of the sensible feds. One example is cited of a state which wanted to send a juvenile to jail for life with life meaning life with no parole - for a non homicidal offence - although the citation does not say what the offence was. Another is the wheeze whereby state prosecutors threaten to charge a bad person with an offence carrying the death penalty to encourage that person to plead guilty to some otherwise non-provable lesser offence, but one which still carries a whopping jail sentence.

It is noted in passing that the standard of public debate (in the US) about the present prohibition of many recreational drugs is poor compared with the standard of debate about the prohibition of alcohol after the first world war.

All of which made an interesting contrast with another stodgy article about the difficulty US prosecutors are having banging up another category of bad person. The sort of bad person who knowingly sells on bad securities, the sort of thing which made the sub-prime crisis what it was. It seems that the standard of proof is high: one has to show both that the seller knew the goods stank and that they lied about them to the buyers. While the seller has the defence that the buyer ought to have known better, given the standard warnings which come with all such trades. The sort of thing which is printed in small on the bottom of the large posters advertising financial services companies at suburban railway stations in this country. The amounts of money involved are large; beyond the wildest dreams of a drug dealer of whatever colour.

But, lightening up, the issue closed with one of those bad tempered exchanges between author and reviewer which sometimes grace the correspondence page of this sort of magazine. Was Freud a druggie as well as a liar? Should we care?