Resolved: The US Federal Government should significantly reform its Criminal Justice System (Policy)

I'll drop my mandate arguments and continue Cost: 1. Your link to the site is broken. I do see. You have not fixed the link, therefore, we cannot know if this number is even credible. SB 171 "Unknown reimbursable local start-up costs[...]Unknown potential GF trial court savings" (1). It is unknown how much it would cost. 2. Why couldn't there be more interrogation rooms used more than 10 times per year? Most of your links do not work. 3. I do not ignore your evidence...your link continuously fails. And why can it not change drastically year to year? 4. I to can provide my own math. We'll say 175,000 is correct for now. 175,000 suspects * 10 (a low number for a federal case, witnesses, experts, etc.)= 1.75 million people (low estimate) Now my opponent attempts to basically guess how many interrogation rooms the government controls by making up the number 10. But, we'll go with it. Divide by 10 and your at the original 175,000. Now even if we accept the 7,500 dollar per system (could be higher could be lower depending on the training etc.) Your already at a 1.3 billion dollars...this is not taking into account training technicians and storage of the video and sound files. You cannot accurately estimate the cost.... If each chooses their own equipment then couldn't the cost be higher if they choose more expensive equipment? Advantage 1. 1. But, the ones who are abusive will not be deterred. See number 2 for more details. And if you cannot deal with these situations why change the status quo at all? 2. Shall I bring up the DOD and the CIA? How about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharid? They were federal agents. They knew they were not supposed to be doing err...what they were doing (torture). And they did it anyway. Empirical evidence at it's finest. They were not deterred from using TORTURE. What makes my opponent think federal agents within the United States would refrain from say depriving someone of sleep on camera? 3. The United States Supreme Court held in 1969 in Frazier v. Cupp 394 US 731 (1969), that using trickery in interrogation was not a basis to disregard a confession or evidence. Other landmark cases coming to this conclusion include: U.S. v. Harris 914 F.2d 927 (7th Cir. 1990), Holland v. McGinnis 963 F.2d 1044 (7th Cir. 1992), State v. Kelekolio 849 P.2d 58 (Haw. 1993), Lucero v. Kerby 133 F.3d 1299 (10th Cir. 1998), and U. S. v. Byram 145 F.3d 405 (1st Cir. 1998). Have I backed this up enough? Advantage 2. 1. I have provided a source, 2 in fact, who have studied these topics for enough time to come to this conclusion. 2. So your source deals with false confessions. If we assume that false confessions happens for such a small minority, why should the entire system be changed for this tiny minority? If something works 97% of the time should it be changed for the sake of the 3%? I say no because we do not know how this will impact the entire system. Advantage 3 and 6. Fine less disputes, this does not change the fact, more time will be spent reviewing all of the interrogations to make a case. Meaning less efficiency and more money used in preparing for a trial...logically, the prosecutors are going to review the videos...my opponent has conceded the time spent reviewing these videos will outweigh the money saved from less disputes. Advantage 4. It's a bit more complicated than just a camera in a room and a control room...but, they are similar. Not exactly the same but, similar. A federal interrogation room is a bit more high tech than say a state police interrogation room. So how exactly does my opponent plan on figuring out whether the video is going to be evidence? By reviewing the weeks worth of interrogation. So here's the choice: video taping weeks worth of interrogations and making the prosecutors review the weeks of interrogations in order to build a case, or make an interrogator rack their brains trying to figure out what happened and come up with a detailed account of the interrogations thus, making the entire process cost less money and take less time to build the case. With detailed enough notes, an interrogator will be able to figure out exactly what happened during the interrogation. Advantage 5. It is completely relevant. I never tried to discount your source. I am merrily stating interrogators will still take notes to recall what happened later on during the interrogation. I'll give you another example, lets take a rather short 5 hour interrogation. The second question asked (this is probably completely wrong) is what color was the car you were driving. The suspect answers blue. The interrogator does not write this down. Fast forward 4 hours. The interrogator asks the same question what color was the car? The suspect this time answers red. Do you think an interrogator will be able to remember such a detail 4 hours later? Most likely, no. Notes will still be taken so they can use the suspects own words against them. This scenario is probably completely off, but, I hope you can see what I'm saying here, no human being can remember trivial details, which may be quite important later without notes. Logic. Significance: Based on logical reasoning it would cost the prosecutors office much more money which is part of it's significance. I would also like to see this survey because upon reading through Mr. Sullivan's paper (or article) I find no mention of a survey. The problem is not that I could not find the source (I figured that out). The real problem is your links were broken. I get a 404 Error Message Screen. (Besides that is the Supreme Court of NJ, not the United States). You still cannot estimate a total cost. Source: 1. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov...