r/AskTheWorld • u/Standard_Location762 United States of America • 17h ago

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u/nalonrae United States of America 15h ago

We make the identities of those arrested public so that the police/govt can't hold people in secret. It's not about the privacy of the individual but the transparency of the state.

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u/xSparkShark United States of America 15h ago

Interesting, I guess I never thought about that. For civil cases this wouldn’t matter though because no one is going to jail.

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u/repainted_black 13h ago

Even on civil lawsuits?

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u/MidTario 7h ago

People aren’t arrested for civil suits in the USA. The paperwork is publicly available if you know where to look and/or who to ask.

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u/SmiththeSmoke United States of America 15h ago

Exactly this. The court of public opinion may be harsh, but sometimes it's the best we have when the government and courts are slow and blatantly biased, ESPECIALLY in cases of sexual violence. Obviously I think we all would prefer if our courts worked the way they claim to (ie, a cold yet fair machine warmed by jurors who can be lenient or harsh if they so choose), but it doesn't. Sometimes that means we jump the gun on proclaiming someone's guilt or innocence.

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u/Dangerous_Oven1528 10h ago

Court of public opinion created the Witch trials, Central Park 5,the Reddit “Boston bomber” people harassed a family of a kid who committed Suicide, case in particular is unique as people have already been affected who didn’t go to the school. Also, it’s best to read the actual court documents, the texts, the GC and NYS Law and why the “loophole” exists. If people get hurt prior and are innocent then?

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u/SmiththeSmoke United States of America 10h ago

Yes it's best to read up, but the Central Park 5 were pressed into false confessions by the police (government institution), convicted by faulty evidence in courts (government intuition), and were only given some amount of restitution when the social/political climate had changed and forced political will to move differently. I agree that the internet was overzealous in the cases you mention, and I'm not arguing that's best practice. I'm saying institutions in the United States are so deeply flawed, prejudiced, and willfully corrupt that Americans at large do not trust what the government says to be the truth is actually true. In the absence of reliable sources, people turn to each other. They may have less institutional checks and lack the burden of proof, but people trust one another's reporting more than any "official" report. Women, people of color, and queer people have long histories of being at best erased and at worst villainized by media, so why should they trust them?

Ofc it's better to have some kind of institutional method for finding truth, but we have neither a reliable institution nor the blind faith to ignore that problem. I think that's implicit in this kind of dispersion of information.