It’s less fine when the electorate consistently delivers a mandate to brutalize a minority population, or just isn’t paying enough attention to such down-ticket races to care.
> or just isn’t paying enough attention to such down-ticket races to care
The Open Society Foundations has had a ton of success in changing how crimes are prosecuted at the local level by pouring money into district attorney elections across the country. That's a major reason the BLM protests have been successful: most people are not being prosecuted because the local DA is a "friendly." Since many people don't pay attention, money spent at this level has been very effective.
Presumably the OSF could target county Sheriffs races next, which would stop those cases from even reaching the DA's desk. Then the police wouldn't need to be abolished per se, they could simply stop enforcing laws that disproportionally target minorities, while simultaneously ratcheting up enforcement on the people who voted for those laws.
Criminals are a minority population (by number and temperament, not by race or anything). There structurally can't be any unbiased mechanism for effectively protecting minority populations or the criminals would use them.
Look at the taxes-are-theft crowd; they think the electorate consistently delivers a mandate to brutalize their finances. They aren't totally wrong. They'd love a mechanism to avoid arrest if they don't pay taxes.
So fine or otherwise, it is probably systemically optimum.
What does this have to do with systematic abuse of specific groups? Criminals are people who break laws, they aren't a cultural group. They aren't some collection of people that are oppressed. I'd be impressed if you could show me some data showing that criminals (not prisoners) are systematically abused. What are you arguing for?
Thread ancestor said that the electorate was consistently handing out mandates to "brutalize a minority population".
The electorate's power to hand out such mandates is also the power that it uses to define who criminals are.
There can't be a check on that power without also opening up a huge can of worms for general law enforcement.
> Criminals are people who break laws, they aren't a cultural group.
If a majority hands out a mandate to oppress a minority group they can probably define the minority group to be criminals. In fact, there is a persuasive argument that that is happening.
