This is a pretty reasonable question from the client’s perspective! When I was in psychiatric prison (“hospital”, they call it a “hospital”) and tried to complain to the staff about the injustice of my confinement, I was told that I could call “patient’s rights”.
I didn’t bother. If the staff wasn’t going to listen, what was the designated complaint line going to do?
Later, I found out that patient’s rights advocates apparently are supposed to be independent, and not just a meaningless formality. (Scott Alexander: “Usually the doctors hate them, which I take as a pretty good sign that they are actually independent and do their job.”)
This was not at all obvious from the inside. I can only imagine a lot of criminal defendants have a similar experience. Defense attorneys are frustrated that their clients don’t understand that they’re trying to help—but that “help” is all within the rules set by the justice system. From the perspective of a client who doesn’t think he did anything particularly wrong (whether or not the law agrees), the defense attorney is part of the system.
I think my intuition was correct to dismiss patient’s rights as useless. I’m sure they believe that they’re working to protect patients’ interests, and would have been frustrated that I didn’t appreciate that. But what I wanted was not redress of any particular mistreatment that the system recognized as mistreatment, but to be let out of psych jail—and on that count, I’m sure patient’s rights would have told me that the evidence was harmful to my case. They were working for the doctors, not for me.
It’s perfectly reasonable for any client to be suspicious of my motivations and alignment, I’m after all paid directly by the same government that is gunning to throw them behind bars! The clients that are most honest with me are overwhelmingly either newbies to the criminal justice system or factually innocent. The ones who lie to me the most are frequent flyers whose guilt is not in doubt (non-legally speaking). Everyone wants to be let out of jail, the problem is that the latter group has no viable recourse available to make that happen, and their typical temperament drifts them towards pathetic dishonesty.
This was not at all obvious from the inside. I can only imagine a lot of criminal defendants have a similar experience. Defense attorneys are frustrated that their clients don’t understand that they’re trying to help—but that “help” is all within the rules set by the justice system. From the perspective of a client who doesn’t think he did anything particularly wrong (whether or not the law agrees), the defense attorney is part of the system.
I mean… you’re sticking to generalities here, and implying that the perspective of the client who thinks he didn’t do anything wrong is as valid as any other perspective.
But if we try to examine some specific common case, eg: “The owner said you robbed his store, the cameras showed you robbing his store, your fingerprints are on the register”, then the client’s fury at the attorney “working with the prosecutor” doesn’t seem very productive?
The problem isn’t that the client is disagreeing with the system about the moral legitimacy of robbing a store. The problem is that the client is looking for a secret trick so the people-who-make-decisions-about-store-robberies will think he didn’t rob the store and that’s not gonna happen.
With that in mind, saying the attorney is “part of the system” is… well, maybe it’s factually true, but it implicitly blames the robber’s predicament on the system and on his attorney in a way that just doesn’t make sense. The robber would be just as screwed if he was represented by eg his super-wealthy uncle with a law degree who loves him dearly.
(I don’t know about your psychiatric incarceration, so I’m not commenting on it. Your situation is probably pretty different to the above.)
This is a pretty reasonable question from the client’s perspective! When I was in psychiatric prison (“hospital”, they call it a “hospital”) and tried to complain to the staff about the injustice of my confinement, I was told that I could call “patient’s rights”.
I didn’t bother. If the staff wasn’t going to listen, what was the designated complaint line going to do?
Later, I found out that patient’s rights advocates apparently are supposed to be independent, and not just a meaningless formality. (Scott Alexander: “Usually the doctors hate them, which I take as a pretty good sign that they are actually independent and do their job.”)
This was not at all obvious from the inside. I can only imagine a lot of criminal defendants have a similar experience. Defense attorneys are frustrated that their clients don’t understand that they’re trying to help—but that “help” is all within the rules set by the justice system. From the perspective of a client who doesn’t think he did anything particularly wrong (whether or not the law agrees), the defense attorney is part of the system.
I think my intuition was correct to dismiss patient’s rights as useless. I’m sure they believe that they’re working to protect patients’ interests, and would have been frustrated that I didn’t appreciate that. But what I wanted was not redress of any particular mistreatment that the system recognized as mistreatment, but to be let out of psych jail—and on that count, I’m sure patient’s rights would have told me that the evidence was harmful to my case. They were working for the doctors, not for me.
It’s perfectly reasonable for any client to be suspicious of my motivations and alignment, I’m after all paid directly by the same government that is gunning to throw them behind bars! The clients that are most honest with me are overwhelmingly either newbies to the criminal justice system or factually innocent. The ones who lie to me the most are frequent flyers whose guilt is not in doubt (non-legally speaking). Everyone wants to be let out of jail, the problem is that the latter group has no viable recourse available to make that happen, and their typical temperament drifts them towards pathetic dishonesty.
An unsurprising corollation there but I have to wonder if there is not also some causative relationship present as well.
I mean… you’re sticking to generalities here, and implying that the perspective of the client who thinks he didn’t do anything wrong is as valid as any other perspective.
But if we try to examine some specific common case, eg: “The owner said you robbed his store, the cameras showed you robbing his store, your fingerprints are on the register”, then the client’s fury at the attorney “working with the prosecutor” doesn’t seem very productive?
The problem isn’t that the client is disagreeing with the system about the moral legitimacy of robbing a store. The problem is that the client is looking for a secret trick so the people-who-make-decisions-about-store-robberies will think he didn’t rob the store and that’s not gonna happen.
With that in mind, saying the attorney is “part of the system” is… well, maybe it’s factually true, but it implicitly blames the robber’s predicament on the system and on his attorney in a way that just doesn’t make sense. The robber would be just as screwed if he was represented by eg his super-wealthy uncle with a law degree who loves him dearly.
(I don’t know about your psychiatric incarceration, so I’m not commenting on it. Your situation is probably pretty different to the above.)