“America’s Criminal Justice System Is Rotten to the Core”

The sharp title of this post is the sharp title of this new commentary authored by Clark Neily at Cato.  Here is how it gets started:

Before you can fairly assess the legitimacy of the ongoing protests or the quality of the government’s response, you must understand the relevant facts.  And the most relevant fact is that America’s criminal justice system is rotten to its core.  Though that certainly does not justify the violence and wanton destruction of property perpetrated by far too many protesters, it does provide useful context for comprehending the intensity of their anger and the fecklessness of the government’s response.  If America is burning, it is fair to say that America’s criminal justice system — which is itself a raging dumpster fire of injustice — lit the fuse.

I feel moved to write these words because it appears from some of the commentary I’ve been reading — including even from libertarian circles — that many people who consider themselves to be generally skeptical of government and supportive of individual rights have no idea just how fundamentally broken our criminal justice system is and how wildly antithetical it has become to our core constitutional values.

Within days or weeks, most protesters will renounce the use of lawless violence as a tool of politics; but the state will not.  That’s the key takeaway and the thing you really need to understand about this moment in time.

As I will explain below, I see three fundamental pathologies in America’s criminal justice system that completely undermine its moral and political legitimacy and render it a menace to the very concept of constitutionally limited government.  Those three pathologies are: (1) unconstitutional overcriminalization; (2) point‐​and‐​convict adjudication; and (3) near‐​zero accountability for police and prosecutors.