The issue with the American system is every branch of it is elected in some way. Their separation of powers lacks independence in key areas, particularly with regard the judiciary. At low levels you literally vote for judges, at the high levels, you have the politicising of the senior judiciary which has completely undermined the Supreme Court’s independence.
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Absolutely. Even down to voting for roles such as your local dog catcher in some areas. It just means political scheming and patronage seeps into every aspect of life rather than jobs on merit.
The Judicial Appointments Commission in England and Wales certainly needs improvement but it’s better than having political interference (or the old method in this country where you essentially got a tap on the shoulder in the Garrick club)
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And Trump actually did this. You can’t base a vote on one policy (especially when you preface it with “apparently”, you need to look at the big picture, and whether they are trying to destroy your country or not.
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As with any potential “criminal” action, follow the money.
Oh, probably not possible at the moment if Musk’s DOGE team have control of the USA’s $$$!
There isn’t much time for the sane people to get any court orders up & approved - with seemingly little or no security / privacy clearances, his team are probably writing code to turn things upside down. There are major concerns for data protection / privacy - looks like total access? ‘Mericans should be very, very scared.
He’s already dumped US Aid = many indirect problems, for example, shops stick in port with perishable food - can’t go anywhere. Ah, the farmers providing the food won’t get paid.
Haven’t they just randomly changed the hr database for IRS potential exposing data breaches?
Just realised - Musk could cross reference all the email addresses registered for using social security & other government services and cross reference them with his twitter database.
Effectively every US citizen on twitter is now a confirmed ID along with what they are tweeting & who they are interacting with.
Even further - if you use twitter & applied to the US for a visa that is now linked to.
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The privacy issues alone are of critical importance.
The mind-boggling complexity of the interactions between different federal departments will only need one little glitch to make everything come tumbling down.
Playing “god” with federal databases & $$$$ is markedly different from being irresponsible with a commercial company.
Personally, I’d like to see more democracy in our system. Sentencing might be a lot less lenient if judges had to consider their chances of re-election and a democratically appointed Supreme Court wouldn’t openly frustrate the elected government from delivering key manifesto pledges.
Looking at the Supreme Court cases I don’t think so - I would be interested to see the stats but I think the Supreme Court rules in favour of HMg most often than not.
if anything its less likely to be soft judges & more likely yo be poor or sloppy civil servants/special advisors not doing things the right way or advising their ministers wrongly.
Have a look at the “good” law project who keep taking things to court & failing but then claim a “victor” because the judge acknowledges a single aspect of their case is correct despite rejecting the case as a whole.
Voting for judges just makes things populist & easier to control by those with money.
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So Trump is about to play an Uno Reverse on the ICC, hitting them with sanctions for targeting the US and its Allies.
A busy day:
Think I saw a news article saying that this would be blocked by court order later today?
I did!
See, the funny thing about sentencing, is, everyone wants longer sentences for everyone else. Every single person thinks they should be the exception, but don’t want that for anyone else. Everyone hates Legal Aid Lawyers, until they realise they don’t qualify, then they want one.
Sentences have been getting longer, prisons are getting worse, and still the public thinks the answer is more, more, more.
The system is drunk on longer sentences, and they don’t fix squat.
The absolute worst thing the sentencing judges in this country need, is the public calling the shots. Because the public are stupid.
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This is very true.
Yes and no, they don’t reform people but they keep the public safe by placing those who have forfeited the right to live in society away from those who they would harm.
The problem is the same one that all public services face, people want justice and prisons to do lots of things, people don’t want to pay what that will cost, so we get the bare minimum of a system limping along.
The only real answer no matter what you want to do, be if longer sentences or better rehabilitation is more funding and that’s not on the cards.
It’s easier in the US where they have developed and entire justice system with the sole aim of reintroducing slavery.
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Then logically we should bring back execution for those never to be released if they have forfeited the right to live. Our justice system is the principle that a crime against an individual is a crime against us all. Crimes are not prosecuted in the name of the victim but the name of the crown. This has been the process for a long time (saving people the expense of taken out a private prosecution)
This all goes back to the Victorian debate of whether prison is to enact vengeance for society or reform. When a society decides that it will no longer permanently remove people its then faced with the situation of what do they do with those who cannot go anywhere.
And as an example of the two extremes of punishing vs rehabilitation look at the 2019 London Bridge stabbing . On one hand you had a terrorist who was unreformed killing more people yet one of the people who helped stopped him was a convicted murder who had worked to rehabilitate.
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Something that I only oppose because there is no way to eliminate the risk of convicting an innocent person.
That debate hasn’t gone away, there are still plenty of people who would like to see the return of the rack and hot pincers.
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Except there are also cases where the guilt is obvious to all: Lee Rigby’s killers, the Southport child murderer, etc.
You either have it or you don’t, otherwise you will inevitably end up with marginal cases.
No-one has the right to decide that someone else should die. Even if they did, isn’t it a much greater punishment to enforce confinement on an individual for the rest of their natural life than to bring it to an end prematurely?
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I broadly disagree with capital punishment but this is something that happens every day, be it by politicians, military, police, medical or other public service - somewhere someone is making a decision which will result in some people living over someone who won’t. It’s just in these scenarios people are reduced to statistics or numbers on a board.
People you have never met & do t know who you are end up deciding your fate.
From a financial viewpoint capital punishment is a lot cheaper & does have low reoffending.
I believe it would come down to the threat, harm & risk situation rather than which is the greater punishment. Some will loathe prison & are often the ones that regret their actions early on, others thrive as their particular circumstances & sociopathic bent means that they can manipulate & control a new empire.
Whilst there needs to be a punitive aspect of prison to deter & force consequences, there needs to be the reform & rehabilitation side. Prison should not be a form of torture.
As a morale maze, particularly as it’s being discussed at the moment, should a prisoner on a whole life tariff who has been diagnosed with a terminal issue & given six months to live be permitted euthanasia?
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It’s surprising how many people are pro- aNorton and euthanasia for the innocent but get queasy about killing the absolute scum of the earth or, to put it another way, they’re in favour of doctors killing their patients but not the state killing murderers.