Any criminal defense lawyer will tell you that 99% of the clients are guilty. I never ask and don't want to know. (If they tell me they did it I can't ethically say they didn't.) It's not quite true that what lands them in prison is ethnicity and poverty -- generally the evidence is pretty strong. It's not like they'd get off at a much higher rate if they had better lawyers. It's that poor people of color are disproporionately targeted for enforcement. What creates a disproprtionately poor and minority prison population is race and poverty. Incidentally the crimes of the rich and white, the white collar stuff I used to defend, while harder to prove, have a much higher conviction rate than state street crime. The US Atty almost aways gets her man. Like 99% of the time, as opposed to maybe 60-70% in state court.
--- On Tue, 4/7/09, Joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> From: Joanna <123hop at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Abolition of prisons (Was: Angela...)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 1:06 AM
> "I was at an event many years ago at which an audience
> member tried to assert to Christian Parenti - who, remember,
> wrote a great book on the prison system, Lockdown America -
> that most of the people behind bars were innocent. He
> dismissed her with scorn. "
>
> I never said people in prison were innocent. I just said
> that what landed them in prison was not their crimes but
> their ethnicity and lack of money.
>
> Joanna
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk