Their approach on immigration has been so maladroit -- drawing attention away from things that'd help them, directly empowering their enemies (maybe intentionally? Seems crazy) -- that it goes beyond incompetence, and it actually offends me that they'd expect any actual groups of voters to buy this.

Among those who may be called UK migration "experts" I'm likely one of the only ones who's worked for centre-left politicians in charge of immigration in another country. I know the dilemmas intimately. And beyond the bad policies, what truly gets me about Labour is their pure political artlessness.

The Labour government has been so busy telling people that immigration has caused "incalculable damage" and that people on settlement pathways don't deserve it, that they've forgotten to tell the public that immigration levels have dramatically fallen under them. Oops!

The right formula was always: do things to reduce small boats crossings (the one form of immigration the public really wants to restrict) and not rock the boat in other categories, let mechanical falls occur and take credit for them. But they panicked, took the bait, etc., now we're in a bad place.

Criminals "gaming the system" by demanding jury trials. Yes, I mean, that is quite the point?

“No one likes us, we don’t care” until the governor dismisses all of them for cause in a couple of months

In common law systems we know of course about the strong informal relationships between police, prosecutors, and judges but that is rather formalized in some civil law statutes

I don’t think it was recorded. It was about courtroom procedure (not outcomes). I think the researcher (Brazilian) was a little sanguine about the UK but she made points that in the UK the defense is more allowed to talk, the prosecutor doesn’t sit with the judge, and hearings actually decide things

Also the extensive use of magistrates in the UK is pretty far out there to me!

Juries of course will replicate common social biases but the way civil law works in Brazil seems rather rigged

I was at a talk the other day comparing the justice system for relatively low level offenses in the UK (where these are usually heard by magistrates, non-professional judges) and Brazil (perhaps a more similar society to the US in some ways). And the Brazilian civil law system doesn’t sound better

I think the recent jury/grand jury decisions in DC show that they do become quite important the more authoritarian governments become. Most countries haven’t had to deal with that much recently but it becomes clearer when you have that problem.

In general, I disagree that getting rid of grand juries and going straight to prosectors charging would be better. Grand juries are easily manipulated by prosecutors, but these days they are screening out some very politically motivated charges. Regardless, a different Q than going to bench trials.

Sure, but you're saying that if you don't want that deal, it's better to have a bench trial with no option of a jury trial?

Still, if you want a trial by jury, you have a right to one (and I think grand juries are a reasonable check on prosecutorial power, if usually subdued -- seems worse to me to put charging decisions in the hands of prosecutors with no check at all). Juries aren't perfect, but work pretty well!