There's no question that the "justice" system is just completely broken. The only reason we even comply with it at all is not a sense that it is creating peace and order in society, but simply that the people who administer it are hellishly violent to people who try not to comply (or, in some cases, even people who are just merely critical, as evinced by, for example, retaliatory actions taking by police departments in response to facebook posts).<p>Nevertheless, articles like this are good for putting things into focus. The graphic showing the assessment that "Mr. Talaska needed to do the work of five full-time lawyers to serve all of his clients" is convincing and powerful.<p>But at the end of the day, the question is this: what are we going to do in order to replace this system? Can we effectively build an alternate system (perhaps based on restorative justice) in parallel, and then hope for a clean drop-in replacement? Is there precedent for such a thing in history?<p>A runaway justice system seems like such a difficult thing to fix, but I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that it's a top priority for the health and direction of the United States, if they are to survive at all.