Basically im in college right now (dumb 20 year old lol) majoring in criminal justice and currently have the future goal of wanting to be a paralegal or lawyer for unions or something helping people like giving legal aid to immigrants and stuff.
I've recently been starting to read some anarchist literature (Emma goldman) and it feels like my law class is making me in a strange way consider Anarchism more and more.
Like for example ive met some socialists who are public defenders and I have had conversations with them about their case load and how much work they have. Basically they get like 50 cases and the vast majority of those cases aren't even serious crimes but petty drug offenses or things of that nature. Things I dont even think need to be prosecuted in any sense.
My professor used to be a police officer then prosecutor and then became a defense attorney. This kinda have me pause though He is honest about how the system is made as of current to jail people as much as possible. He said that its super common for people to take plea deals like 99% because you can be in jail for years with no trial. So when they offer a deal that looks like "Plead guilty and leave jail today or risk a bad trial and go to Prison for 20 years" it just makes sense for most reasonable people to "confess" to get out of their imprisonment. Imprisonment that hasn't even been able to go to trial as Jails are the holding place between the court and Prison. How can the state just be allowed to do that? Well it seems that the state can do whatever it wants with no regard to the law at all!
Another thing I learned from this professor is that the state only paid out money to the people impriosned in the japense interment camps after FOURTY YEARS! What is even the point of the law if the state whenever it so chooses can break it and face no real consequences?
I was already a socialist and so understood that poverty makes crime happen more and that the legal system is unfair to working people but I guessed I assumed that just a socialization of the economy would fix this issue. But it seems to me more and more that the State itself is incapable of justice.
Emma Goldman made a point that has spurred this thought on epsecially. She states that 90% of crime is property and that the state exists to protect private property. I looked it up and yeah 80% of crime in the US is over property and other countries like Spain or Germany its 90 or 95%.
Which means that the state no matter how many public defenders there are or how many judges we have there will always be an insane backlog of cases and people who are in jail with no trials.
This is a bit ranty I suppose but I just wanted to share some of thoughts ive been thinking about recently as I cant really talk about Anarchism with many people lol. Im still learning about Anarchism and what justice in a stateless society would look like but so far im unimpressed with the states current method. I still think i want a job in the legal system but only in things like mentioned before like union or protecting rights.