Criminal Justice and Medicine

Criminal justice is to medicine as drug king pins are to heart transplants -- or something like that.

In other words, like modern medicine, criminal justice best known and revered for relatively low-frequency but spectacular cases -- serial killers, large drug busts.  Similarly, modern medicine is best known and revered because of its success relatively low-frequency but spectacular medical interventions -- heart transplants and other "heroic" procedures.

It is at least somewhat acknowledged that in the area of health, that public health measures -- sanitation, diet, environment -- save or prolong the vast majority of people's lives.

As far as crime goes, however, we are still focused on treating the symptoms rather than the causes.

Justice Department Policy

The Justice Department's policy that a sitting President cannot be indicted suggests that, during his next State of the Union address, President Trump could take out a gun and shoot Representative Adam Schiff, head of the House Intelligence Committee, to death in front of broadcasting cameras and in the presence of the Supreme Court Justices and the rest of the government, and the Justice Department would refuse to indict him.

Furthermore, it is possible that Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House -- who, from her seat behind and above the President, saw the President draw his gun, take aim, and shoot the Representative; and from her vantage point heard the President say "Die, you motherfucking pencil neck," while he, watched him die -- would refuse to authorize impeachment proceedings because that would be too upsetting for the country and disruptive of the business of the nation.

Perhaps after Trump leaves office, some might raise the possibility that a charge of murder -- or at least manslaughter -- might be brought against him, but others might point out that since the government failed to act and charge him at the time killing occurred, that to do so now would be viewed as petty and revengeful and not in keeping with legal practice.

Just the facts

Some reporters seem to take the position that they are "just reporting the facts". 

In a sense, therefore, they are claiming that they know nothing, since knowing requires the ability to make causal connections between the reported facts. 

This might seem like an honorable thing to do since they appear to be letting the audience for their facts draw their own connections between the facts. 

And people will inevitably draw connections, just as people discern movement in a animated film, interpolating or inferring movement between two adjacent frames.

But if two facts (or frames) are so far apart as to be open to a variety of interpretations, then it would seem that it behooves the reporter to assert, to proclaim, that no definitive conclusion, at least in his or her opinion, can be drawn.

This suggests the philosophical problem of inference which asserts that nothing can be known as causality is invisible.  This is the basic defense in trial based on circumstantial evidence, wherein the defense's main goal is to bring into question the possibility of any causal links between the evidence.

This, then, seems to be the case with "just the facts" reporting, which builds the case that the lack of any causal links is basically a win for the defense; rather than a call for further investigation.

The Means Justify the Means

Do "ends" justify "means"?

Or, do "means" justify "ends"?

Or, is it just all "means" and no "ends", because and "end" is just a place where the mind stops to rest and not think for a while, before moving on?

Does this mean that "means" are just "ends" in themselves?

After all, if one employs "means" to achieve a purported "end", but then one's efforts are derailed (one dies, for example), then all one has as a legacy are the "means" that one has employed.