Guilty When Charged - Paul Craig Roberts

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Until it happens to them or to a member of their family, Americans are clueless to the corruption in the criminal justice (sic) system.
Most prosecutors are focused on their conviction rates, and judges are focused on clearing their court dockets. Defendants are processed accordingly, not in terms of guilt or innocence.

"Law and order conservatives" wrongly believe that the justice (sic) system is run by liberal judges who turn the criminals loose. In actual fact, the system is so loaded against a defendant that very few people, including the totally innocent, dare to risk a trial.

Almost all (95-97%) felony indictments are settled by a coerced plea. By withholding exculpatory evidence, suborning perjury, fabricating evidence, and lying to jurors, prosecutors have made the risks of a trial too great even for the innocent. Consequently, the prosecutors' cases and police evidence are almost never tested in court. Defendants are simply intimidated into self-incrimination rather than risk the terrors of trial.

According to Yale University law professor John Langbein, "The parallels between the modern American plea bargaining system and the ancient system of judicial torture are many and chilling." Just as the person on the rack admitted to guilt in order to stop the pain, the present day defendant succumbs to psychological torture and cops a plea, whether he is innocent or guilty, in order to avoid ever more charges.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12212005.html

The Land of the Free holds more Prisoners than China.

Why privatize prisons unless there is good profit to be made?

Profits justify more in this country than truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_prison_population

The United States has the highest numerical prison population of any reporting world nation at 686 per 100,000. For the most part, the U.S. rate is five to eight times that of the Western European nations and Canada. The rate in England and Wales, for example, is 139 persons imprisoned per 100,000 residents while in Norway it is 59 per 100,000. The prison population in China was 111 per 100,000 in 2001 (sentenced prisoners only).