When Our Justice System Fails

The debate over federal funding has featured two parties seemingly incapable of compromise. From Paul Ryan’s slash-and-burn approach to the budget to Harry Reid’s desire to preserve entitlements at all costs, the focus has been on the fighters in the political arena, not the casualties in the war. One of those casualties has been the American justice system, whose lack of funding may deprive Americans of their constitutional liberties. As The New York Times detailed in its investigative piece, “The Bronx courts are failing.” And they are not the only ones. The perilous state of the justice system threatens not only the unalienable rights of American citizens, but also the entire way in which we uphold the law in the United States.

The passing of the sequester deadline without any resolution meant an eight-percent cut to the nation’s judicial budget, which goes toward the expansion of federal justice offices and the restoration of old ones. With courts currently understaffed—the article on the Bronx reported that 73 percent of cases took longer than expected—delays impede the ability of American deliberative justice to do its job. This lack of funding could cause the state to dismiss some of its criminal cases. It could also disproportionately hurt the poor, who often cannot pay the high fees legal firms demand and have to settle for what the state can offer for free. These lawyers, who have been forced to handle cases on month-long delays to account for growing workloads, are spread too thin. By virtue of Gideon v. Wainwright, even criminal defendants are required to get representation; by virtue of the budget cuts, no defendant is likely to get quality representation.

What’s more, this issue is not confined to the federal government. In California, about 65 percent of state support for the courts has disappeared as new political leadership fights growing budget deficits. The result: trials postponed indefinitely and 53 courthouses closed across the state. In the last four years, 42 states have reduced their judicial budgets—laying off employees, freezing hiring, and reducing the operating budget for preexisting towns and counties. The paralysis of the justice system contributes to dual problems of jail-overcrowding and diminishing prosecution, leaving the state on the hook for additional costs.

As an additional problem, these additional costs are increasingly incentivizing states to look to the private sector for prison maintenance, causing the rise of a prison-industrial complex. This phenomenon makes the prosecution of Americans a business with perverse incentives that further distort the ability of judges to enforce justice. The American justice system already has enough inmates—six million and counting—and it has only gotten worse in the last 40 years, as the number of imprisoned citizens in state and federal prisons has increased by over 700 percent. This industry, whose two major groups—the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO group—receive nearly three billion dollars a year from the government, spends millions every year lobbying American legislators and has exacerbated previous problems with our judicial system.

The liberty of citizens is threatened when their friends’ murderers are left unpunished, when their siblings’ rapists walk free. The right to a free and speedy trial, enshrined in the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, is a building block on which American democracy rests. The opportunity for every citizen to have effective assistance of counsel in a criminal case preserves a modicum of equality in court between people of disparate economic backgrounds. Removing it cedes control of our adversarial justice system to the wealthiest in our society and only compounds previous issues of wealth inequality in this country. As criminal cases are dismissed, public safety and faith in our justice system are simultaneously compromised. Only the rule of law separates our current society from the Hobbesian state of nature in which each man is forced to fend for his own security.

The federal funding cut of the courts makes up only two-tenths of one percent of the American federal budget. For deficit hawks, the difference is minimal. For the average American citizen, the difference is significantly larger. The appeal process in the federal court system provides enough delay in the resolution of the case; the plaintiff in last month’s Supreme Court affirmative action case has already graduated from college. Further delays at the local level deprive grieving families of justice and cancellations threaten the sense of safety within that community. Depriving the poorest individuals in our nation from the same constitutionally guaranteed representation as the rich makes the court even more of an imbalanced playing field. Our courts are failing. It’s time for Congress to help them.

David P. Freed ’16, a Crimson sports writer and editorial comper, lives in Wigglesworth Hall. Follow him on Twitter at @CrimsonDPFreed.