In the USA the Criminal Justice System (sic) Commits More Crimes Than Criminals

October 2, 2026

Reports I have read have me inclined to believe that there have been far more wrongful arrests from AI facial recognition and flock cameras than correct arrests.

In a recent wrongful arrest US Marshalls from the Fugitive Task Force showed up in plainclothes outside a Tennessee grandmother’s home demanding that she come out with hands up.  Her grandchildren and visiting neighbors saw a bunch of armed men and had no idea what was occurring.  It was all the fault of a dumbshit cop in Fargo, North Dakota. The Fargo police officer issued an arrest warrant based on no evidence but his deduction from facial identity that the grandmother 1,200 miles away had committed eight bank fraud felonies in North Dakota. The Art of Thinking Cl... Dobelli, Rolf Buy New $8.99 (as of 07:16 UTC - Details)

The police officer made no investigation whether the Tennessee grandmother had committed bank fraud in North Dakota. He relied only on AI and on the American system of plea bargaining.

The grandmother, Angela Lipps, spent about 6 months in prison until it became obvious that she had nothing to do with the crimes of which she was wrongly accused by a totally incompetent police officer who issued an arrest warrant without any investigatory evidence to back it.  

Indeed, from the $10 million lawsuit Mrs. Lipps lawyers have filed, we learn that the lazy cop, Luca Heck, “misrepresented the facial recognition results and omitted material exculpatory information and his failure to corroborate Lipps’s connection to the crimes.”

I agree that AI is total excrement, and that the money spent on it is a total waste of investment funds.  Only idiots of the most stupid kind would spend trillions of dollar in eliminating the need for human labor and making truth dependent on those who control the database.  But what we face here is an older problem.

Police officer Heck reflects what happens to police when 97% of felonies are settled not by trials, but by negotiated plea bargains.

A plea bargain is self-incrimination, which is prohibited by the US Constitution.  Nevertheless, plea bargains are the unconstitutional basis of 97%, according to the statistics of the US Department of Justice, of criminal convictions.  The conviction is by self-incrimination, not by a jury verdict. Almost 100% of all felony inmates are imprisoned due to self-incrimination. This does not mean that none are guilty. The Ultimate 28-Day Mi... Mann, Dominic Buy New $24.99 (as of 01:46 UTC - Details)

Self-incrimination occurs because the cost of a jury trial exceeds the financial capability of 90% of the American population.  Self-incrimination is chosen by defendants, whether innocent or guilty, also because a plea bargain conveniences prosecutor and judge by saving them time and energy, and thus results in a lighter sentence than the prosecutor and judge would impose with a guilty verdict from a jury.  As it is permissible for prosecutors  to withhold exculpatory evidence, hire witnesses to lie, and prohibit testimony that proves the defendant’s innocence, a fair trial is not possible in the United States. Occasionally someone gets a fair trial, but they are rare.  Their rarity is why the conviction rate is so high.  See my book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Police officer Heck is a victim himself of the plea bargaining system. In 97% of American felonies the police evidence is NEVER TESTED IN TRIAL BEFORE A JURY because the plea bargain leaves the evidence against the defendant UNTESTED.  Police have learned that sweating over evidence is pointless when the evidence never goes to trial.

Officer Heck assumed the case would never go to trial and would be settled with a plea bargain, so no investigation was necessary. Evidence is irrelevant in a plea bargain. For Heck and for the prosecutor, it was assumed to be an easy victory. Only in the case of Mrs. Lipps the case  made no sense.

What we need to be documented is when in our history, what year, did the prospect of a fair trial become so remote that it paid to self-incriminate oneself.  What happened to the US Constitution’s prohibition against self-incrimination?  How has it happened that only 3% of criminal convictions in the United States of America are consistent with the Constitution’s promise of a trial by peers?  Why do judges believe prosecutors and defendants when they stand before him and declare that no deal has been made? 

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Copyright © Paul Craig Roberts

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Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week’s first outside columnist, columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, contributor to the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and columnist for the main French and Italian newspapers, and for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. He served in numerous academic appointments in US universities and was  appointed to the William E. Simon Chair for Political Economy at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies where his colleagues were Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James R. Schlesinger (one of his former professors), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Thomas Moorer. His article, “How the Law Was Lost,” was published in the January 1999 Cardozo Law Review.