Thread by @CBHessick

I completely understand why people are angry about this.

But the truth is that the criminal justice system routinely fails to prosecute people who are obviously guilty of crimes.

It’s at the very core of modern criminal justice enforcement.

https://twitter.com/devlinbarrett/status/1353046139059097600

It’s a serious problem that most Americans don’t know this. But we routinely fail to prosecute people who have obviously committed crimes. We just don’t have the capacity to pursue all of those cases.

Part of the problem is that we’ve made too many things illegal.

Another problem is that we’ve refused sufficiently fund the prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges we’d need for full enforcement.

But we also don’t have the cultural commitment to full enforcement.

This isn’t just a question of partisan politics.

And it isn’t just about race either.

We’ve literally built a system predicated on partial enforcement of the criminal laws.

In sum, if you’re angry about this, I understand.

But that anger probably means you need to pay more attention to the criminal justice system generally, and not just when a bunch of losers storm the Capitol.

A big hello to everyone in my mentions who are here to tell me that *they* know how prosecutors use their discretion to prosecute only certain groups of defendants.

Please share your dataset with those of us who actually study prosecutors’ decisionmaking.

We’d love to see it!