The Ashcroft hearings were an opportunity to address the erosion of our legal protections and restore justice to the Justice Department. Instead, all we heard about were abortion, racism and affirmative action. The left-wing critique of the justice system is that it is racist, and arrests and convicts people because they are black. This racist perspective denies that whites are also victims of injustice. Conservatives can't face up to the failings of the criminal justice system because they fear that criticism of police and prosecutors will play into the hands of the political left.
Conservatives blindly defend the criminal justice system as a bulwark of civilized society.
Consequently, neither left nor right is prepared to do anything about the prosecutorial abuses that ruin the lives of thousands of innocent Americans, rich and poor, black and white, every year. It used to be that if an investigation turned up no evidence, charges would be dropped. Today, prosecutors feel compelled to justify the expenditure of funds on the investigation. Instead of dismissing charges, statutes are stretched beyond their meaning in order to create crimes where no criminal intent was present. Many criminal defense lawyers are part of the problem.