Fix the incentives that underlie the system’s pervasive failures, argues the journalist who’s exposed crime-lab scandals and expert unreliability in a series of widely discussed articles. [Reason]
Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
Schools for Misrule
Get your copy today! My new book tackles the question of why so many bad ideas come from the law schools. "Cutting-edge commentary, hard-hitting, witty, astute." -- Publisher's Weekly. "Excellent... A fine dissection of these strangely powerful institutions" -- Wall Street Journal.
Cato Institute
Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.
{ 1 comment }
As I understood the excellent article in “Reason” linked to above, there has been a bunch of scandals in forensic work. But that conclusion seems based on listings from News reports, where such listing wrongly imply great risk of people steeling children. The priest scandal was, in my opinion, completely the result of hysteria driven by Boston newspapers and plaintiff’s lawyers. In general reporters are not disciplined observers.
There are a ton of crimes, investigations, and trials. A zero error rate is a Utopian aspiration. There are many schools of criminality that study investigative methods, and the FBI is not a fly-by-night outfit. A review of the Phil Spector and OJ Simpson trials would show horrific corruption in behalf of the defense.
Still, accreditation and certification seem like a good idea to me. Also a dedicated FDA-like mechanism to review forensic methods.
Comments on this entry are closed.