Crime Labs Paid Per Conviction

If you think there is already enough corruption running through the American "justice" system get ready for some disappointment. Between police officers being incentivized to makes arrests and issue citations and prosecutors being incentivized to extract guilty verdicts through plea bargins we have a system designed to lock as many people in cages as possible. There's another group that is being incentivized to help put people in cages, crime labs:

Funding crime labs through court-assessed fees creates another channel for bias to enter crime lab analyses. In jurisdictions with this practice the crime lab receives a sum of money for each conviction of a given type. Ray Wickenheiser says, ‘‘Collection of court costs is the only stable source of funding for the Acadiana Crime Lab. $10 is received for each guilty plea or verdict from each speeding ticket, and $50 from each DWI (Driving While Impaired) and drug offense.’’

In Broward County, Florida, ‘‘Monies deposited in the Trust Fund are principally court costs assessed upon conviction of driving or boating under the influence ($50) or selling, manufacturing, delivery, or possession of a controlled substance ($100).’’

Several state statutory schemes require defendants to pay crime laboratory fees upon conviction. North Carolina General Statutes require, ‘‘[f]or the services of’’ the state or local crime lab, that judges in criminal cases assess a $600 fee to be charged ‘‘upon conviction’’ and remitted to the law enforcement agency containing the lab whenever that lab ‘‘performed DNA analysis of the crime, tests of bodily fluids of the defendant for the presence of alcohol or controlled substances, or analysis of any controlled substance possessed by the defendant or the defendant’s agent.’’

What's to stop a crime lab from fabricating evidence when it's directly rewarded for convictions? We have a system that is purpose built to lock people in cages. The state has a direct interest in putting as many people as it can into cages. Federal Prison Industries, better known as UNICOR, is a government owned corporation that uses prison labor to manufacture goods that all federal agencies, with the exception of the Department of Defense, must use as a primary source. A federal agencies wanting to source goods through another manufacture must get approval from UNICOR itself. In addition to its own slave labor, the state has another interest in maintaining high prison populations. Private prison operations, such as Corrections Corporation of America, hold contracts with the state that guarantee the state will provide a minimum occupancy:

A look at the CCA's annual shareholder reports over the past few years shows an aggressive business strategy based on building prison beds, or buying them off the government, and contracting them to government authorities — sometimes with decades-long contacts mandating minimum occupancy rates as high as 90 percent. Profits, after lining the pockets of shareholders, are used to create more beds and to lobby state and federal agencies to deliver inmates to fill them. The resulting facilities can be violent and disgusting.

America's "justice" system is designed, almost exclusive, to find everybody guilty. More guilty people means more cheap goods for federal agencies and reduces governmental costs by helping the state avoid contract violations with private prison operators.