
Go to Trial - Crash the Justice System - donohoe
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/go-to-trial-crash-the-justice-system.html?_r=2&src=tp
======
fiatmoney
Unfortunately, this isn't really practical.

\- It requires solidarity by criminal defendants, many of whom will go to jail
for a long time absent a plea agreement. It is literally, the prisoner's
dilemma.

\- Absent posting bail, you stay in jail until you go to trial (which can be a
long time in a scenario where everyone is in fact going to trial). The
"excessive bail" clause of the 8th Amendment, in practice, has been
eviscerated. Bail is routinely set so high that the only way it is affordable
is to pay a bondsman. This means that it's easy to punish people prior to a
trial for exercising their rights. A stay in jail prior to trial can be as or
more destructive than being convicted - you likely lose your job, your
housing, possibly custody of your children, all without any process.

The judicial system has ~ a thousand years practice at maintaining control and
getting the outcomes (overall) that the State desires. It is not a simple
matter to "force" it to do anything.

~~~
tibbon
Additionally, this doubts the ability of the US Justice system to keep up if
its pushed. Yes, its already pretty slow and inefficient, but most other
countries would probably think that it would be impossible to prosecute and
detain as many people as the US already does. Just because its hard to imagine
scaling the system up even more, doesn't mean they couldn't scale it.

Politics around "we need more jails to keep dangerous criminals away from your
children" almost always result in more jails and more prosecution. Logic
rarely prevails. I feel confident that the US would just attempt
(unfortunately) to double their capacity.

~~~
monsterix
"Logic rarely prevails" --> That comment reminded me of a piece on
incarceration:

[http://www.pluggd.in/incarceration-the-extreme-end-of-
social...](http://www.pluggd.in/incarceration-the-extreme-end-of-social-media-
a-worldwide-challenge-297/)

Isn't it surprising that there are so many ideas floating around to disrupt
Hollywood, transform other forms of Governance, disrupt traditional business
models but no-one talks about forcing change in law/judiciary itself.

At best, a startup would talk about saving a few hundred dollars in legal fees
through some free advice/content on Google. Why is this so?

~~~
unimpressive
I don't know. One of my "frighteningly ambitious startup ideas" would be a
product that lets one man fight an army of lawyers and legal red tape. That
way the bar to sue competitors out of existence raises dramatically.
Dramatically enough to give start-ups a chance of actually defeating
entrenched monopolies with large legal teams.

~~~
neilk
That's fascinating... but how?

Short of AI I don't see how automation helps.

It's illegal to practice law without a license, so you can't find some
dramatically lower-cost way to do legal advice and advocacy either.

Perhaps insurance against red tape? Like a retainer fee, but built to scale up
to zillions of clients.

~~~
GFischer
I've read here that there have been studies on Legal AIs:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2380043>

Some comments are quite disheartening:

"It seems that we want to think of a world that is logical and populated with
verifiable facts. However, the world of the lawyer is fundamentally illogical
(as are most humans most of the time) and facts only exist when either agreed
to by the parties or determined by judge or jury.

This observation that "legal logic" is not quite the same as traditional
rational-thought logic has led to an interesting "legal reasoning" subfield of
AI over the past decade or so (with some precursors dating back further) that
tries to formalize exactly what logic it is following, and how it differs from
traditional rationality. That area develops alternative logics, reasoning
procedures, etc., in order to do things like simulate case outcomes, suggest
possible arguments to make, evaluate alternative strategies, etc. Until
relatively recently many people did think that the right way to make a legal
reasoning system was to treat the law as logical rules, and the legal
reasoning problem as a problem of rational inference over rules+evidence...
which turns out not to be that accurate an account of how law actually
operates."

------
cgshaw
I'm an attorney. I did some criminal appointments in the federal system before
quitting law to get into entrepreneurship full time. It's tough work and it
gave me some pretty amazing insights into the the justice system and the human
condition.

In many ways--certainly not all--the plea system benefits the accused. It
speeds up the trial, when evidence is lacking the accused tend to get a better
result and quite honestly if the evidence is really bad the charges can--and
do get dropped. We tend to look at the perverse episodes and not the helpful
ones.

That said, myself and just about any attorney I know on either side of the bar
feels like you'd rather let hundreds of guilty people go free than put one
innocent person in jail.

I hate that criminal law is so politicized. (i.e. you have you be "tough on
crime" to be electable or "three strikes rules keep 'bad' guys off the
streets." If we can find lawmakers that will fight those mentalities, we will
be much better off than trying to halt a justice system that's already
terrible underfunded and in the process further hurt the accused, judges,
juries, attorneys and citizens in the process.

Collateral charges are awful though. (mentioned briefly in the article--strips
rights away of those with felony convictions)

When we take away voting rights, public assistance rights, free speech rights,
and others, because someone broke the law (in many cases minor or non-violent
felonies) that makes the problem worse because we're silencing folks that
could give us insights to make our justice system better. And in most cases
further complicating or destroying the support system for people who truly
need help. Not to be infantalizing because not everyone needs or wants help,
but it just doesn't seem "American" or "fair" to me to kick folks while they
are down or prevent them from having a voice in our government or the help
that could enable them to get on their feet again.

------
boredguy8
Be aware that in a felony plea bargain, you may forever be forfeiting your
right to vote. 1 in 40 people in the United States are not allowed to vote
because they have lost, either for forever, while in prison, while on parole,
or while on probation, their right to vote. Fourteen states (AL, AZ, DE, FL,
IA, KY, MD, MS, NE, NV, TN, VA, WA, and WY) eliminate voting for any felony
conviction for life. In 31 states, you can't vote while on probation. Only 15
states allow you to vote while on parole. Only Maine and Vermont allow you to
vote while a prisoner.

The most comprehensive study on the issue that I'm aware of is still the 1998
Sentencing Project / Human Rights Watch study, but The Sentencing Project
provides attention to disenfranchisement issues on their blog.

'98 report:
[http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/File/FVR/fd_losingthevo...](http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/File/FVR/fd_losingthevote.pdf)

Voting rights blog:
<http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=133>

~~~
biafra
Revoking the right to vote for a felony. What a great democracy you have
there!

------
scottdw2
If there was a sudden dramatic rise in the number of cases approaching trial,
the natural response would be to increase the value of plea deals until the
number of trials drops to a managable level.

As the supply of plea deals increases, and the demand decreases, their price
will drop.

Prosecutors with a large volume of unsold plea deals (a large inventory of
pending cases and intense pressure to clear them quickly) will be highly
motivated to reduce the sentences offered to criminals.

The net result would likely be smaller sentences, but not a fundamental reform
of the justice system.

This is basically a form of strike. Although strikes can improve the wages of
workers, they won't fundamentally reform the relationship between a company
and it's workers.

No strike by the UAW would ever lead to the creation of something like
YCombinator, for example.

The key to fixing problems with our government is to disrupt it. To replace it
with something that is "not as good", but "much more accessible" (if you are
Exon, the current government is great, because it serves your needs exactly,
but if you are a non-violent drug offender it is completely in-accessible to
you).

~~~
rmc
Strike is a good analogy. However the modern labour & trade union movement has
succeeded in getting some labour reforms over the last 100 years. Workers now
have much more rights (e.g. to not be fired for no reason, mandatory holiday
pay, employee tribunals to settle disputes, force majeure, maternity &
paternity leave etc.)

------
jgfoot
This completely misses the point. The justice system is already crashing, from
being underfunded.

""" “cuts already imposed on the Los Angeles Superior Court, if unabated, will
force the closure of over 180 courtrooms and layoffs of more than 1800
employees in the coming years. This is a dramatic reduction in work force and
courtrooms. There are approximately 605 courtrooms operating throughout 50
locations in Los Angeles County. The closure of 180 courtrooms includes the
closure of nine courthouses. The loss of 1800 employees constitutes a 34
percent reduction in the court’s workforce. The cuts in staff and
courtrooms/courthouses (along with the priority given to criminal cases) will
result in an increase to the already existing backlog of cases, which, in
turn, will slow the movement of virtually all civil cases to a snail’s pace."
""" <http://www.plljlaw.com/CM/Articles/Court-Budget-Cuts.asp>

If you want to crash the justice system, then continue to do what we have been
doing: underfund judges, court employees, public defenders, and prosecutors.

~~~
icandoitbetter
I don't see how the author is missing the point because of your claim. If the
justice system is already crashing, then massively asking to go to trial would
crash it even more.

------
hardik
There is something informally called "trial tax" in the American justice
system wherein if you decide to go for trial the punishment on guilty verdict
is much higher than on plea bargain.

A famous case was that of Vincent Bogan in late 80s who was given a sentence
of 75 years in maximum security for three counts of armed robbery (which is
quite high for the crime charged) because he refused plea bargain and went for
jury trial.

~~~
MaysonL
Told on This American Life: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/134/w...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/134/we-didnt)

------
sedev
History repeats itself: the tactic being advocated here worked pretty well for
the Industrial Workers of the World in the early 20th century. Their tactic
was to provoke authorities into arresting an IWW member (it helped that, then
as now, the police are eager to arrest people who are insufficiently
deferential, crime or no crime), then bring in hundreds of IWW members and
others, flooding the jails. In the jails, they'd have a ready audience of
other imprisoned activists to make contact with and could talk about the IWW's
goals, tactics, and mission. So they won converts with every round of mass
arrests.

------
TamDenholm
Wouldn't this be reasonably easy to do if you threw money at the problem?

If a certain person or organisation had a decent chunk of change, they could
hire a large law firm to specifically volunteer to take court appointments.
Just as most court appointed lawyers advise their clients to plea, the hired
lawyers could advise to go to trial and since most people listen to their
lawyer, that'd would do it.

Obviously im oversimplifying it here, but surely its just a case of 1) get
money, 2) pick a city, 3) hire lawyers, 4) get court appointments, 5) crash
the system.

With enough money you could replicate the system elsewhere too.

~~~
rprasad
Most clients choose not to go to trial, _despite_ their court-appointed
lawyer's advice to take it to trial. In SoCal, only about 1 out of every 100
(or more) criminal cases actually goes to trial because the defendants choose
not to assert their rights. What's worse, in more than half of these cases,
there is a fatal defect in the prosecution's case (usually non-existent
evidence of an element of the charge) that would have gotten the case thrown
out before trial if only the defendant had not chosen to plead. Frequently,
this is because the type of people who rely on court-appointed lawyers are
guilty (and freely admit to being guilty), and simply want to reduce the
sentencing as much as possible.

Private criminal defense attorneys usually advise their clients to plead,
because (1) they make less money overall if the case goes to trial, and (2)
their clients usually have too much at stake to risk tossing the dice on a
jury. Thus, such cases only go to trial when the DA refuses to accept a
reasonable plea bargain.

Also, your reliance on large law firms is misplaced. Most lawyers in law
firms, even in the litigation groups, _have never gone to trial_. Indeed,
their closest exposure to trial is usually arguing motions for civil cases,
where the procedural and substantive rules are completely different. Life is
not like T.V. ( _Good Wife_ , I'm looking at you.) The end result would be a
lot of inexperienced lawyers making a lot of rookie mistakes. While this could
nuke the system, the more likely effect is that the first few defendants would
get thoroughly screwed, and the remaining defendants would opt to plea bargain
out of ear of getting one of the inexperienced private lawyers.

Finally, with enough money, i.e., the money that would be used to hire the
large law firm, you could simply _fix the system_ , at least at the county
level.

------
dustingetz
not really that interesting, this is a prisoner's dilema which is well
studied. because the globally optimal strategy is unstable, the equilibrium
state is to defect. She's given no indication of a clever way to shift this
equilibrium.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Prisoner.27s_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Prisoner.27s_dilemma)

~~~
nirvana
Hypothesis: A relatively small number of relatively well funded defendants
could have a huge impact on the system.

EG: Martha Stewart could have done more good if she'd fought her conviction
all the way to the supreme court (even if she lost, she wouldn't have gotten
more time.)

Thus an organization whose sole purpose is to underwrite (via providing
lawyers or funds for outside lawyers) drug defendants who want to fight their
charges could shift the equilibrium state.

Maybe only %10 would take this organization up on the offer, but that could be
enough to have a big impact. (Again this is a hypothesis).

~~~
rhizome
_Thus an organization whose sole purpose is to underwrite (via providing
lawyers or funds for outside lawyers) drug defendants who want to fight their
charges could shift the equilibrium state._

I'm pretty sure this is already illegal.

~~~
philwelch
It's called a "defense fund"--if someone has the right to legal defense, it
can't be illegal to contribute to the costs of it.

~~~
rhizome
Then there's laws against profiting from it, or taking part in any settlement,
or something like that. It's not a free-for-all.

------
pseingatl
The solution lays not with the accused, but their lawyers. The lawyers can
simply refuse to defend cases and the system will crash. And no one, no poor
defendant, will risk jail. In the 1960's there were "committed" lawyers who
took a stand against the Draft, as well as legal organizations that took a
stand--the National Lawyers Guild comes to mind. Unfortunately, the idealism
of the 1960's turned to drug defense work in the 1970's and by the 1980's the
pendulum had swung back and hard. Even if only a small group of lawyers
refused to handle cases, such as federal Criminal Justice Act attorneys (18
USC 3006A) the system would not be able to cope. Unfortunately, it's easier to
herd cats than to get lawyers to act in unison. But this is a better solution
than asking the first few defendants to risk life sentences: no one wants to
be the Wildebeest that enters the crocodile-infested river first. But a work
stoppage by these lawyers would carry little risk of consequences other than a
serious reassessment of the broken US criminal justice system.

------
NyxWulf
This is an interesting idea. It's hard to say how probable it is, because that
requires certain tipping point actions to occur like we saw in the Arab Spring
to get a mass movement going.

The reality is though that our current system is based on the compliance of
the people within the system. When you find a pressure point in the system
like this, it's very possible that something will come along and really start
to push on it.

Maybe the most realistic way to increase capacity if they did this would be to
more efficiently process things going to trial and those who deal. From an
efficiency point of view there are many things that could be done to make this
process happen much faster, the question is whether or not the Justice System
would go for it.

Little's Law shows the overall behavior of a System: I = RT

Where inventory is equal to the arrival rate x time in the system. If the
Arrival Rate suddenly doubles, inventory or time in the system must go up,
often in non-linear ways. The question is always probability, but if the
arrival rate went up, it would certainly shock the system. Whether or not it
would crash it is a different question that is much harder to predict, it all
depends on the scale and suddenness of the system shock.

~~~
jellicle
But that "inventory" is you, in prison, awaiting trial.

There's a pressure point. But that pushing that pressure point requires many
thousands of people to spend many years, each, in prison, losing everything -
their career, their home, their children.

Which is why the pressure point has not been pushed. And will not be pushed.

------
lr
Speaking as someone who was recently a juror on a trial, I can firmly say that
the premise of this article is correct. The courts in this country are far,
far, far too slow to deal with a mass number of trials. The system would
simply collapse if people starting exercising this right.

------
rglullis
Along these lines, a thought has occurred to me during the whole SOPA/PIPA
debate: what if _everyone_ that opposed the bill and has ever shared and/or
linked to any copyrighted material went on and confessed the crime, refused to
pay any fines and asked to go to jail?

~~~
rhizome
What does that have to do with anything? You don't get a jury trial if you
confess. I mean, you do, but anybody who trods the path you suggest will
likely just take whatever sentence is offered. The story hinges on people
being accused, indicted.

~~~
rglullis
I understand that. But my point is more along the lines of "crashing the
system" by simply having millions of people going to jail just by having their
sentence executed, as the law demands.

~~~
rhizome
It's the impracticality of so many jury trials (i.e. before a sentence is
handed down, or even a conviction) that is the proximate cause, the topic of
conversation.

~~~
rglullis
Again, I understand that. My thought is about crashing the system by abusing
another kind of "impracticality": having so many people going to jail at once
would grind it to a halt.

It doesn't have to be just SOPA or copyright stuff. Take the war on drugs.
Abortion. Illegal immigration.

Get all women who had an illegal abortion and doctors who performed one, and
get them organized to ask to go to jail. Get anyone who used any illegal drug,
and organize them to go to jail. Get all illegal immigrants and organize them
to demand deportation back to their countries.

In any of these examples, I'd guess that people would simply DoS the system.
The laws would have to be revised, and they would get actual change to the
system just by following it through.

~~~
rhizome
You're pretty much talking suicide here.

Additionally, why incur the personal risk from confession when there are
plenty of cases to be had that are already charged? OWS comes to mind.

~~~
rglullis
How would that be suicide? I'm not thinking of just getting a few hundred
people and telling them to go to some Oz-like prison. And I'm not talking
about some organized movement like OWS where people protested over issues
related to actions perpetrated by _other people_.

I'm thinking of a situation where a large number of people would be
cooperatively going to submit themselves to the penal system related to things
_they_ did and believe that is not right to be punished for. Most likely, they
would get results even before the actual collective "turning in". Can you
imagine what would happen in the US if the good majority of the 7 million
undocumented immigrants [1] organized a movement that announced they would
turn themselves in?

You say suicide, I say "immigration reform".

[1] [http://www.statemaster.com/graph/peo_est_num_of_ill_imm-
peop...](http://www.statemaster.com/graph/peo_est_num_of_ill_imm-people-
estimated-number-illegal-immigrants)

~~~
rhizome
That sounds a lot more complicated than fostering a movement among people who
are already going to be facing the system.

~~~
rglullis
Hey, I never said anything about it being easy, let alone possible. I just
think that would be one very impressive hack of the system.

------
darasen
didn't have access to anti-depressants so she became addicted to crack? That
is quite a leap.

------
rprasad
I worked for the Public Defender during an election year. The local D.A. was
trying to divert attention from a sex scandal and instructed the ADAs not to
negotiate down on any crimes so that he could "look tough" on crime. The
thinking was that most criminal defendants would cave and he would get a boost
with the mostly-conservative voters of the county.

So the lawyers of the Public Defender (and a good portion of the private
criminal defense bar) banded together and convinced about a quarter of our
clients to go to trial (up from 1 in every 100 or so). I worked in a specialty
division (mentally "disordered" defendants) where we got to make the decisions
for our clients, and we took almost every case to trial.

We also made sure that every defendant going to trial refused to waive his
right to a speedy trial, meaning that cases had to go to trial within about
2-3 months or they would get thrown out.

The consequences? (1) To avoid speedy-trial issues, the D.A.'s office had to
transfer cases out to the boonies of our county whereever there were available
courtrooms for trials, and ADA's unfamiliar with these cases would take them
to trial. They either lost these cases at trial or watched them get thrown out
when they could not start on time (frequently, because their expert witnesses
could not schedule court appearances on such short notice). (2) A backlog of
criminal and MD cases that jammed up the court docket, pushing back other
cases (i.e., civil lawsuits) 5 years _or more_. 2009 to 2010 was not a good
time to file a lawsuit in that county. (3) An enraged judiciary that began
throwing out criminal cases with wild abandon, including almost all drug
possession cases, nonviolent misdemeanors, and lower-level non-violent
felonies. (4) The D.A. lost his reelection campaign, by double-digits.

The nuclear option worked, and the next D.A. rescinded the non-negotiation
order.

 _EDIT: I should point out that this worked because massive budget reductions
to the court system during this time period artificially reduced the number of
courts in the county. Without those budget reductions, we would have needed
many more trial-ready cases to nuke the system._

~~~
Anechoic
Who was the DA?

~~~
rprasad
Let's just say that he was the D.A. of a large, conservative county which is
more commonly known for being the epicenter of the housing meltdown.

~~~
Resident_Geek
I'm having a tough time with this one. From Google, possibilities for
"epicenter of the housing meltdown are":

\- Phoenix, AZ (Maricopa County): DA won the 2008 election, resigned in 2010
to run for state AG

\- Cuyahoga County, OH: heavily Democratic

\- San Joaquin County, CA: DA in office since 2006

\- Stanislaus County, CA: female DA, in office since 2006

\- Atlanta, GA: heavily Democratic

\- Las Vegas, NV (Clark County): DA in office from ~2003-2012, then retired

None of them seem to fit (I was surprised it wasn't Maricopa County). A
mystery...

~~~
shangrila
There are a lot more possibilities than just those six. It could be almost
anywhere, really. For example, how about somewhere in Florida? There have been
lots of foreclosures there, and it has a large conservative population.

Also, the poster said "conservative" but didn't explicitly say "Republican",
so you can't necessarily rule out counties with Democratic DAs. The poster
also didn't give a timeframe. It could have been well before the housing bust
for all we know. They were obviously being intentionally vague.

------
nirvana
Its kinda amazing but this article contains the primary thesis-es of Ayn
Rand's Atlas Shrugged. This brings up some important questions that I think
its worth pondering.

Namely, that government creates crimes to control people, ("There is no way to
rule an honest man. The only power government has is over criminals. Thus we
create more and more laws until every man is a criminal.")

...and that this control relies on people accepting the easier way out, rather
than standing up for their rights. (In Atlas, the alternatives offered the
strikers were always easier than striking.)

At the end of the day, the question they both pose is this: If some action
really is immoral, is it not immoral for you to support it? If the war on
drugs is immoral, is it not immoral for you to pay for it? If you're going to
pay your taxes (a practical choice to be sure, even if you feel its immoral)
why not match them by supporting organizations working to reform or eliminate
the immoral actions those taxes fund? (e.g.: anti-drug war orgs, or a org that
underwrites defense attorneys for people charged with drug crimes who want to
fight them with a jury trial.)

If you're on a jury, are you going to listen when the judge tells you that you
have to convict if you conclude that the person charged did in fact have drugs
on them? Or are you going to judge the law (one purpose of the jury) as well
as the facts, and stand proud and hang the jury if you're unable to convince
them the drug war is immoral? Are you willing to lie on the jury questionnaire
in order to get on the jury in the first place (since the questionnaire is
designed to weed out people who will be immune to the jury tampering judges
regularly engage in with their instructions.)

Or do you recognize this as immoral, but still think that the "justice" system
itself _IS_ moral because... its the government?

These are all rhetorical questions. I'm sure my position is obvious by the
questions I'm asking, but I'm not looking to debate here, I'm just providing a
perspective. And my amusement that the NYT would write a story with such
parallels to Atlas Shrugged.

One final parallel is that in Atlas, the system continues to deteriorate, even
when most people know its wrong, because most people fool themselves into
thinking that injustice is justice. (or are anti-mind, have adopted a
philosophy that is against reason.)

So a final question- does an immoral law have any power? Or is it null and
void simply because its immoral? (In Maybury v. Madison the supreme court
ruled that unconstitutional laws are invalid the day they are signed, no need
for supreme court review to invalidate them... yet we had to have a
constitutional amendment to create prohibition, but we never had one for the
war on drugs...)

If a cop pulls over a driver and then searches his car and finds drugs, and
you believe the drug laws are immoral, are you willing to admit that the cop
is a criminal? (Or is "just doing your job" an excuse that gets him off the
hook?)

If morality is objective, and the "law" he's enforcing is immoral, then the
cop is the criminal in this hypothesis. If morality is subjective, then the
cop somehow is made moral when doing this, because law somehow conveys
morality on otherwise immoral acts. (Again all rhetorical. I'm going to log
out now and enjoy my Sunday.)

~~~
knowtheory
> _Namely, that government creates crimes to control people, ("There is no way
> to rule an honest man. The only power government has is over criminals. Thus
> we create more and more laws until every man is a criminal.")_

Things like public health directly contravene this concept. There is a
collective public good (say vaccination), it only works if some percentage of
the population opts in, either through incentive or obligation.

Infants are protected from whooping cough _only_ by our ability to guarantee
vaccination of other citizens (since they are protected not by the vaccine
itself, but the cocoon effect of having a vaccinated population that is not
susceptible to whooping cough).

In other words, governments definitely do have power over honest people.

~~~
AdleyEskridge
I understand the point you're trying to make, but I don't think there is a
single country in the world (free or otherwise) that makes it _illegal_ to
abstain from vaccination. If there is such a country, please correct me—I
simply couldn't find one after a few minutes of research.

The benefits of vaccination _for the receiver of the vaccine_ are usually
enough to entice voluntary vaccination. In fact, I'm sure there are plenty of
civic-minded people who get themselves (or their children) vaccinated for the
benefit of everyone else, too.

The government would only feel compelled to forcibly vaccinate its citizens if
people refused en masse to get vaccinated. And _that_ would likely only happen
if the cost/risk benefit ratio for getting vaccinated was (perceived to be)
unsatisfactory.

In that case, do you really want to criminalize honest, well-intentioned
people who are abstaining? I'd say no—that'll create a bitter backlash,
because these people don't feel like they deserve to be criminals. Instead,
you'd want to educate those people and explain to them why it _is_ worth it to
get vaccinated (alternatively, if the vaccine really is too risky, you'd want
to improve the vaccine). When honest, well-intentioned citizens oppose
something en masse, simply making them all criminals for the common good is
likely to make them oppose you, distrust you, and listen even less to what you
have to say.

~~~
scott_s
I'm not aware of a country that makes it illegal to abstain from vaccination,
but it's bureaucratically difficult in the US once the child reaches school
age. I know that the state I grew up in (Virginia) required proof of
vaccination upon entering public school. Even my college required proof of
vaccination.

Which is something I hadn't thought about when it comes to the anti-
vaccination crowd. I wonder what they do when their kids need proof of
vaccination for school.

~~~
bobwaycott
In many places I know of, it is as simple as a parent writing a letter
claiming to be opposed to vaccination on philosophical and/or religious
grounds.

~~~
scott_s
How do you know it? Do you know parents who did it, or people who have
accepted such letters?

~~~
siphor
My parents were very anti-vaccination and are part of a 'religion' that
exempts us from it... all we needed was a note from a 'religious leader' and
its done... I'm not vaccinated for anything. The religion is 'The Universal
Congregation of Wisdom' (its very chiropractic, my dads a chiropractor... the
'religious doctrine' is pretty entertaining...)

you can join with a letter and like a 200$ donation or soemthing

------
shingen
"So maybe, just maybe, if we truly want to end this system, some of us will
have to risk our lives."

Or you could just elect Ron Paul. The powers that be would have to assassinate
him to stop him from legalizing most drug use.

~~~
kd0amg
_The powers that be would have to assassinate him_

Or just ensure that he doesn't get enough cooperation from Congress to change
the law.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
well there is this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cldRh1SkRok>

but most don't understand that the majority of non-violent drug offenders are
not in federal prison. _shrug_

