> There's a thing called the Trial Penalty [2]. ~98% of charges result in a guilty plea.

The gist of this argument is that there are huge numbers of innocent people railroaded into prison, but in the bigger picture crime is wildly under-punished.

More than half of murderers go free.

More than 98% of rapists never spend a day in prison.

At the end of the day this is all a question of where you stand on Blackstone’s Ratio. In the US, even with the rate of wrongful conviction we may have, we stand solidly opposed to zealous pursuit of justice for the victims of crimes, on the argument that an innocent person might be punished.