Bill Otis at Crime and Consequences, who’s never met a defendant who wouldn’t taste better fried, posts the results of a Gallup poll about our confidence in American institutions.
Painful as this is to write, Otis’ downside assessment of this poll, as it relates to the criminal justice system, is not merely fair, but spot on.
I suppose one could say there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is obvious: When just over a quarter of the population has confidence in the criminal justice system, we are in trouble. That degree of skepticism is a breeding ground for everything from self-help vigilantism to jury nullification.
His “good news” scenario, however, doesn’t hold up as well.
The good news, if it can be called that, is that the criminal justice system is pretty much in the middle of the ranked institutions, and has lost less respect than most. Another piece of good news is that the police are near the top — one of only three institutions enjoying the confidence of more than half the people.
That the criminal justice system wasn’t well respected before doesn’t make strike me as good news. Not at all. And that other institutions, political in nature and subject by definition to the vicissitudes of transitory public opinion, surround it brings no comfort either.
The message, for those lawyers, judges and academics, who continue to insist that we’re doing a bang-up job, that the people appreciate your efforts and that there’s no need for change, take note. The criminal justice system does not have the respect of the governed. You remember respect, that word you throw about all the time to justify arriving at whatever conclusion you like? It’s not working. They aren’t buying.
I’m pretty confident that Bill Otis and I would disagree on the source of this discontent, though I wouldn’t want to put words in his mouth. Of course, my ideas might be hard to justify given the apparent confidence in the police. That’s a hard pill to swallow.
Commenters here often talk about the revolution coming. It’s polls like this that suggest they may have a point. It’s also polls like this that suggest that when it comes, they aren’t going to like it.
Much of public perception is driven by media attention and political pandering, providing pseudo-rationale to the worst of human nature. For example, how much of the current attitude toward the criminal justice system is driven by fear and loathing of illegal immigrants? Similarly, how much of the confidence in police is driven by television dramas?
Unfortunately, the poll is all about attitudes toward governmental institutions, not whether the people have a firm grasp on the accuracy of their attitudes. The problem, amigos, is that it won’t matter whether public perception is accurate or not when the revolution comes. That people believe is good enough.
* I pondered whether to use “whom” in the title, the correct choice but pretentious, or who. I opted for “who”, and was quickly smacked for my illiteracy. Mea culpa. So I now split the baby, leaving no one impressed.
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The poll is based on telephone interviews with 1,020 randomly selected adults so we have no idea of the geographical distribution of those surveyed. A reasonable supposition is there are wide geographical variations in the confidence in the criminal justice system. I am surprise that the percentage was as high as 27%.
Does anyone ever say anything good about the CJS?
Most of the reports I see are about CJS malfunctions. It is a confederation of independent agencies with a common set of clients that more or less works at the operational level. As far as I can tell it does not have an effective constituency and is stepchild not an equal branch of government in some case (maybe many cases).
“Does anyone ever say anything good about the CJS?”
Are you kidding me? For every critical blogger or reporter out there, there’s at least two or three full-time public relations people employed by law enforcement or justice agencies and ten more reporters who think the entirety of their job is to repeat what those flacks say.
Do any kind of content analysis on criminal justice coverage. By volume virtually all of the information and commentary comes from official sources and most of it is spun positive – getting another bad guy off the street, etc..
Now, if you’d said “Does anyone ever say anything good about the CJS on this blog? …
I don’t know about that Grits. However I do know there are no full time PR persons employed by law enforcement of justice agencies in my Judicial District.
For what its worth, both police agencies I worked for had multiple officers assigned full time to PR units. They are not called PR units but essentially that is what they do. Usually they are variations on “community policing.” Anything they say about the agency and community relations always has a positive and pro-police spin whether true or not. All of their assignments are geared in essence first and foremost to sharpen the PD image. Most agencies, if not all, that I am familiar with have people dedicated to keeping the agency in a good light. First agency I worked for had about 700 officers. Second agency I worked for had about 100. Second agency I worked for had officers assigned to monitor all media concerning the police and keep a record of it and report to the chief. Those officers were in addition to the official police spokespersons. I have family members in a large LE agency on the West coast (I worked East coast). Their agency (about 4000 strong) is just as dedicated to image as any other LE agency. In policing, image is everything. And I didn’t even go into the image the local Commonwealth’s Attorney tried to preserve.
My personal observation in both my agencies was that the vast majority of stuff put out to glorify the department was bathed in BS
Anyway…just my two cents.
I don’t know where you work, but I’d be shocked if your prosecutor’s office and your larger LE departments don’t have people who work almost exclusively as spokesperson’s for the agencies. Our DA’s office has two full time spokespeople, which is ridiculous when they are furloughing or reducing positions by attrition for the actual lawyers.
What I find so odd is that the Police rank at 59% but the Criminal Justice System comes in at 27%.
Are folks so detached as to think of them as completely separate and not supporting/a part of each other?
How can you say you love the Police but hate the CJS?
Thats like saying you love Politicians but hate DC?
I know the average person is stupid, but good grief…
Not odd at all. You just have to take off the blinders. People love police but hate the criminal justice system because it coddles criminals, gives them too many rights and doesn’t fry ’em fast enought.