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You are here: Home / CSI: Real World

CSI: Real World

by $8 blue check mistermix|  July 22, 20117:36 am| 42 Comments

This post is in: Security Theatre

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ED Kain has an interesting post on crime labs, highlighting a study showing that Indiana’s toxicology lab’s results were awful:

IU hired Colorado-based auditor Forensic Consultants Inc. to examine the paper records for every positive test result from 2007 to 2009. Auditors found errors in 10 percent of marijuana cases and 32 percent of cocaine cases. They were working on the substance involved in the most cases — alcohol — when informed by email to “place a hold” on the audit.

The commission Mitch Daniels appointed  stopped that audit because it was too expensive.  ED also links to a Balko piece, where he highlights a good suggestion:

Under Koppl’s plan, a city or state would create a position of “evidence handler.” The evidence handler’s job would be to distribute the testable evidence in a case to the appropriate crime lab. Under a fully privatized system, the evidence handler would distribute it to one of a rotating series of private labs. Under a partially-privatized system, there would still be a state lab, but under both systems, in every third case or so, the evidence would be sumbitted to a second or third lab for verification. The original lab would not know when it was being checked by other labs.

This system, which Koppl calls “rivalrous redundancy,” flips the incentive problem upside down. For the individual crime lab worker, the incentive is no longer to please prosecutors or police, but to do the most thorough, sound, objective analysis possible. For the private labs, the incentive is to catch the state labs — or another private lab — making a mistake. When there’s conflict over test results, a third or fourth lab could come into the mix.

Unlike the fantasyland CSI series, real-world crime labs are full of errors, and defendants in criminal cases (especially poor ones) have no way to challenge their findings.  Indiana’s audit, and a public/private system that uses the possibility of a double-check to ensure higher quality results, are both steps in the right direction.

What’s missing from ED’s piece is recognition that Mitch Daniels, who is pretty good on prison reform, is probably not going to be good on this issue.  Daniels is simply looking to save money.  Prison reform can save money, so it’s on his to-do list.  Auditing the toxicology lab costs money, so his commission shut it down.  Daniels is no warrior for liberty, he’s just starving the beast.  The plan that Balko advocates will not save money – it’s going to cost to make extra checks.  Some taxes will have to be paid in order to get that done.  Will libertarians advocate for those taxes in order to ensure more freedom for criminal defendants?

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42Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    July 22, 2011 at 7:41 am

    Some taxes will have to be paid in order to get that done. Will libertarians advocate for those taxes in order to ensure more freedom for criminal defendants?

    No.

    This has been a simple answer to a simple question.

  2. 2.

    aimai

    July 22, 2011 at 7:49 am

    I don’t understand the system as proposed, but I do understand capitalism. The private labs will “catch” errors made by the public labs, or manufacture them, until they can force the public labs to close and then will take over a newly privatized system and fuck the victims and the police both. There will be zero accountability and evidence will be lost or misplaced or misrepresented at as great, or greater, a rate. There’s no money in running a top notch lab because when you are doing it for the police on the public dime its not, definitionally, a money maker. A better job simply costs money: better people, better checks and balances, longevity, high wages, prestige. The state doesn’t make any money off these it just gets a better job (more justice?) and that doesn’t win any prizes.

    aimai

  3. 3.

    Cat Lady

    July 22, 2011 at 7:53 am

    real-world crime labs are full of errors, and defendants in criminal cases (especially poor ones) have no way to challenge their findings.

    Next you’re going to tell us they’re not full of hot chicks and stud muffins either I suppose.

  4. 4.

    beltane

    July 22, 2011 at 7:54 am

    The wingnuts like to tell us that “Freedom isn’t free”. However, they make it their life’s work to avoid paying the bill for freedom. They are like Freeloaders of freedom.

  5. 5.

    PeakVT

    July 22, 2011 at 8:04 am

    The commission Mitch Daniels appointed stopped that audit because by claiming it was too expensive.

    The real expense would come from having to re-open thousands of cases, though the preliminary results may be enough to cause that.

    Indiana isn’t the only state with crime lab problems.

  6. 6.

    MikeJ

    July 22, 2011 at 8:08 am

    The way to sell it to the public is to point out that when there is a wrongful conviction, it usually means there’s a guilty person out on the street ready to break into your house and grab yer wimmin.

  7. 7.

    Lee

    July 22, 2011 at 8:20 am

    @Villago Delenda Est

    Done in one!

    Thread closed. Next topic.

  8. 8.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 8:28 am

    @aimai
    The realized “freed” market is a scam. It is simply teleogically incapable of improving the human condition except by minor side-effecting. The “freed” market only improves the condition of the overclass.

    @mistermix
    You also, mistermix, are a useful idiot that carries water for libertarians.
    Back to linking EDK and Balko for another glibertarian reacharound?
    Dude, you are incredibly thick.
    Hurts too much that Kain scammed you, DougJ and Cole with his fake-conversion-for-page-clicks narrative? You keep trying to restore the little creeper’s street cred here. He already recanted on unions and teachers. Wanna see the link?

    When are you and Cole gunna get it?
    A libertarian, liberaltarian, bleeding heart libertarian, classical liberal, civil libertarian are all just different words for the EXACT same thing– a teabagger with a four-year lib arts degree.

  9. 9.

    Linda Featheringill

    July 22, 2011 at 8:30 am

    A bit OT but I have to get to work and wanted to get this out:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sustaining-the-unsustainable/2011/07/21/gIQAI6mtRI_story.html

    George Will does a very good job of explaining why I personally think that the McConnell debt ceiling plan sucks. [George likes the plan.]

  10. 10.

    John Puma

    July 22, 2011 at 8:37 am

    Daniels’s campaign donations need to be reviewed for inputs from the prison-industrial complex. Therein may lie the explanation of what is characterized as inexplicable.

  11. 11.

    mistermix

    July 22, 2011 at 8:43 am

    @aimai: I don’t know how you run a good public lab without checks from a private lab. In the Indiana audit, they used a private lab to check up on the public (well, IU) lab. Maybe one state could agree to some kind of reciprocal check system with another state, but that’s open to abuse, too.

  12. 12.

    arguingwithsignposts

    July 22, 2011 at 8:52 am

    mistermix, we all know you just did it to call out the matoke_chan.

  13. 13.

    Yevgraf

    July 22, 2011 at 8:55 am

    Poor Balko. He’s like rappin’ Rodney – no respect at all…

  14. 14.

    Dave Ruddell

    July 22, 2011 at 9:00 am

    I work in a public lab, and one of the things that sets us apart is that we’re not police employees. Instead, we work for the government and the police are (in the words of ISO 17025) our customers. We have no incentive to produce a result that helps (or hinders) an investigation. We have a very well developed QA system which includes external and internal audits (I’m doing one this week), as well as ethics training specifically focused on wrongful convictions.

    I’m not saying that our system is perfect, but I honestly believe we’re doing everything we can to ensure the integrity of our work.

  15. 15.

    Quackosaur

    July 22, 2011 at 9:11 am

    @ mistermix

    Maybe I’m being pie-in-the-sky idealistically naive, but I don’t understand how a private lab employed by the state is any better than an auditor employed by the state. It’s not like the private lab won’t face the same pressures to get the the “correct” results over time (see: ratings agencies), or be yet another superfluous, unnecessarily expensive contract dolled out by state legislators to their friends and backers. If the state can’t presently afford to hire more and better staff so that it could audit its own results, there are ways to fix that; that a state government may be loath to take the steps that would actually solve its problems doesn’t mean privatization of any form is the answer.

    But I’m just weird and think the government should actually do things without introducing a profit motive into every facet of its operations.

  16. 16.

    gnomedad

    July 22, 2011 at 9:14 am

    @beltane:

    The wingnuts like to tell us that “Freedom isn’t free”. However, they make it their life’s work to avoid paying the bill for freedom.

    Silly, we pay for freedom by blowing other people‘s stuff up, not by buying t-bone steaks for young bucks.

  17. 17.

    Cermet

    July 22, 2011 at 9:18 am

    Oh, please. If you are arrested you are guilty – just watch TV/cable. Even the ones that get off do so only because the law lets guilty people off thanks to liberal judges. Whats the issue here? None. Well, unless its me arrested then its the police state and they are nazi thugs – otherwise, guilty and always guilty except for me, or my children but everyone else is a criminal … .

  18. 18.

    Citizen_X

    July 22, 2011 at 9:23 am

    To riff on Villago’s take:

    Will libertarians advocate for those taxes in order to ensure more freedom for criminal defendants?

    Hm. Slightly more government for the rich, vs. far less government for the poor?

    Fuhgetaboutit. Those Kochs ain’t gonna suck themselves, you know.

  19. 19.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 9:30 am

    Those Kochs ain’t gonna suck themselves, you know.

    niice.

    if libertarian-licker mistermix just linked Balko and Kain to bait me, isnt that a waste of spacetime?
    Nah, i think he’s still trying to prop Kain up for the juicer commentariat…
    or give him a mercy fuck link, acuz no one reads his crap.

  20. 20.

    Head Bulshytt Talker in Chief of the Temple of Libertarianism(superluminar)

    July 22, 2011 at 9:46 am

    if libertarian-licker mistermix just linked Balko and Kain to bait me, isnt that a waste of spacetime?

    Not really considering you’ve already left two comments complaining about two guys you absolutely don’t have a crush on…

  21. 21.

    brantl

    July 22, 2011 at 9:50 am

    A private lab that’s contracted by the state isn’t going to find too many to overturn, or they will lose the contract. Bet on it. They will find a few, to justify their existance and their pay, but only a few. Otherwise they will lose the job to someone more agreeable. And they will know which way the state found, or would find, or the evidence wouldn’t be in question. The only way this works is if ALL EVIDENCE in EVERY CASE goes to them, before there is even a case to go to trial.

  22. 22.

    chopper

    July 22, 2011 at 9:55 am

    whoever had 8 in the pool, collect your prize. like fish in a barrel.

  23. 23.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 9:56 am

    lol, superluminar got rolled like a cheap drunk by Kain too. He’s your mancrush, superbabie, not mine.
    just admit it.
    Certainly Kain has nothing to say here after this.

    I’ve cooled on the idea of unions lately, at least in their current form, and have had a number of really good conversations in the past couple of days after writing this post, about unions and particularly teachers unions.
    Certainly teachers unions represent a major obstacle to reform of our education system.

    You and Cole and the rest of the twodigit BJ posse can’t bear to admit that Kain was just faking it for page clicks.
    Don’t take it out on me…i tried to warn yah.
    :)

  24. 24.

    Primigenius

    July 22, 2011 at 9:56 am

    …and of course the private lab won’t be partially staffed by otherwise unemployable half-wit nieces, nephews, or brothers-in-law of some upper-level supervisor. And they won’t be underpaying the help or cutting other corners in order to win that lucrative state contract.
    Has any libertarian true-believer ever worked in the private sector? Or is Libertarianism where the otherwise unemployable half-wit nieces, nephews, or brothers-in-law all end up?

  25. 25.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 10:17 am

    Or is Libertarianism where the otherwise unemployable half-wit nieces, nephews, or brothers-in-law all end up?

    truedat.

  26. 26.

    Alex

    July 22, 2011 at 10:20 am

    Could have assured you that posting about Kain would bring the troll mongrel Matoko Chan/murbella out of its cave. Murbella can be immediately disregarded for being the retarded imp that he/she is.

  27. 27.

    Head Bulshytt Talker in Chief of the Temple of Libertarianism(superluminar)

    July 22, 2011 at 10:25 am

    @23
    It would be more honest if you actually posted more of his argument, but that’s never troubled you before so why start now, right?
    EDK’s problem is that he has yet to decide where he stands on the political spectrum (something someone his age ought to have done well before now), not that he is being dishonest about his positions (he’s been honest to a fault about his changing views). You, OTOH, have always been an idiot.

  28. 28.

    brantl

    July 22, 2011 at 10:31 am

    Kain couldn’t find a consistent argurment in a barrel full of consisten arguments. If you’re defending him, suplerluminar, you need to spend some more time thinking, instead of reacting.

  29. 29.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 10:47 am

    @superluminar

    EDK’s problem is that he has yet to decide where he stands on the political spectrum

    oh, bulshytt. he stands wherever he thinks he can get paid. Hes a crytoconservative, a fifth columnist, and has been ever since I’ve read him.
    His only core unswerving belief is the “freed” market….he has never blinked on that.
    And like I said to aimai. the “freed” market is just a scam for the overclass to continue to farm the rubes.

  30. 30.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 10:51 am

    @Alex….you can answer the question then.
    Why does mistermix link Kain?
    Kain is a libertarian that consistantly spouts anti-empirical bulshytt like all libertarians.
    mistermix is not deconstructing Kains argument– he says its “interesting”.
    Its not interesting. Its glibertarian bulshytt.
    Is this a liberal blog?

  31. 31.

    Yutsano

    July 22, 2011 at 11:12 am

    @Linda Featheringill: Shorter Will: “I don’t care how you get that fucking nigra out of the White House, just do it and restore the White Man’s proper place!!” He wasn’t even subtle about it.

  32. 32.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 11:15 am

    It would be more honest if you actually posted more of his argument

    i LINKED his whole argument. Why are you still defending Kain, superbabie?
    Is he paying you? Or is it you just can’t bear to admit how badly the juicers got rolled?

  33. 33.

    Head Bulshytt Talker in Chief of the Temple of Libertarianism(superluminar)

    July 22, 2011 at 11:32 am

    You only linked 1 sentence, his argument was longer and more nuanced then you’d admit. The “juicers” can say what they like, I’m just interested in dealing with arguments that disagree with mine, unlike you.

  34. 34.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 11:56 am

    You only linked 1 sentence

    i QUOTED 1 sentence, i LINKED the whole post.

    here mistermix and superbabie.
    “deal” with this epic libertarian vomitus.
    read meh, lol.
    a truly steaming pile of glibertarian bulshytt.

    First things first: I absolutely loathe the term ‘neoliberal’ and its derivatives. For one thing, neoliberals are much more akin to classical liberals than traditional leftists, and there’s an obvious dissonance between ‘classical’ and ‘neo’. In some sense, ‘neo’ makes it sound like something of an upstart, usurper ideology rather than a throwback to an older form of liberalism.
    __
    This leads me to a very smart post in the ongoing Great Neoliberalism Debate of 2011 from Noah Millman, who rightly observes:

    wallah.
    “classical liberal” is another codeword for libertarian.

    WTF is a neoliberal? is that de Bore?
    how can this not make you guys wanna puke?

  35. 35.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 12:05 pm

    Here’s more superbabie.

    This debate inevitably stretches back to the old debate over pity-charity liberalism vs. union liberalism (or leftism, really) that puts the revitalization of organized labor at the heart of its project.

    Ah jesssss, pity/charity/liberalism, the bogeyman of glibertarians everywhere. the sneer gets me everytime.

    how do you spin that to make EDK into a liberal?
    enquiring minds wanna know.
    :)

  36. 36.

    superluminar

    July 22, 2011 at 12:26 pm

    who’s saying EDK is a liberal? Neither myself nor MM said any such thing. And yet again you selectively quote the man, without any acknowlegement that his actual position may be different from what you say.

  37. 37.

    superluminar

    July 22, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    and if you think DeBoer is a neoliberal, then you should go back to kindergarten, where you so clearly belong.

  38. 38.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    Know what else guys?
    Evah since i outed George R R Martin as a LIBERAL there has not been a single Game of Thrones post at the LoOG.
    hahahaha

    these things do
    best please me
    which befall
    pre-post’rous-ly!
    oh lord what fools these mortals be.

  39. 39.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    oh, superbabie.
    de Bore is a libertarian and a cryptoconservative. I have known him since Culture 11.

    DougJ SAID Kain was a liberal.
    And that dumbass Cole put up a post bragging that EDK had “converted”, so he needed a new rightside fper..
    You stupid tools got pwned.

  40. 40.

    murbella

    July 22, 2011 at 12:42 pm

    Know what else?
    Cole is as fucking stupid as Lady Catelyn in GoT. He thinks people will play by the rules.
    Dumbass.

  41. 41.

    Tonal Crow

    July 22, 2011 at 2:33 pm

    To riff on a related topic, the article notes that “state law requires only the trace presence of cocaine or marijuana for a conviction”. I don’t think that it can be proven *beyond a reasonable doubt* that a person voluntarily possessed a “trace” of an illegal drug, because there are “trace” amounts of illegal drugs pretty much everywhere. For example, there’s detectable cocaine in somewhere between 85% and 90% of U.S. paper money. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090816211843.htm .

  42. 42.

    AAA Bonds

    July 22, 2011 at 6:54 pm

    Yeah I’d just keep the Balko stuff on Balko’s site

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