Excerpt:
The authors end their article by stating that our “system is broken from top to bottom.” Surely there is room for improvement, but I fundamentally disagree with this conclusion. At the outset, they state that “Only 11 U.S. states incarcerate citizens at a lower rate than the Russian Federation. 25 U.S. states, including overwhelmingly white states like Wyoming and Montana, put people in prison at a higher rate than repressive, authoritarian Cuba.” But given the choice, would anyone subject themselves to a trial in Russia or Cuba or any of the dozens of other countries that fail to provide what we consider basic procedural safeguards over a trial in any of the 50 states? I didn’t think so.