I tried private practice once, criminal defence law specifically. I didn’t last very long at it.
In part this was because I was brand new and the learning culture was more sink or swim than mentoring. I remember getting berated once by the person on the bench – presumably into the record – because I had not promptly appeared in their courtroom, which was because I was trapped in another courtroom. My attempts to explain this were seen as disrespectful; my role was to stand there quietly and get berated for structural problems.
Another factor was that it was just so depressing. The clients were, for the most part, people who needed life help but were instead getting criminalized. The only help I could offer was getting them out on bail but, in the absence of food and shelter and mental health services and actual choice, they often just got slapped with more charges including now, as a bonus, breach of conditions. It was a revolving door of human misery and it was pointless. All of that money could have been spent helping them, but instead we punished them for society’s failures.
I did a research paper about drug treatment courts once, for the John Howard Society of Canada, with the guidance of the indefatigable and kind Graham Stewart (then Executive Director). If I recall correctly, what I read showed that people remain under the supervision of the court for longer this way than when they plead out, which is intrusive. I think I also learned that outcomes are better when a person has access to high-quality voluntary addiction services than when they are shunted into services via the criminal law system, and that voluntary services are cheaper too, without that added layer of government involvement. But good luck, person in need, getting easy access to preventive, voluntary, high-quality mental health services when most of the budget goes to cops and “correctional” institutions and their surveillance and control tech.
Then I spent years on Parliament Hill, where I learned that even politicians whose rhetoric is compassion and evidence and results will knowingly throw money away to punish people rather than help them. The problem was not, it turned out, that they were unaware.
We do, as a society, love to punish people for things that are beyond their control.
Perfect! Sad, but perfect nonetheless.