King County rolls out Miranda rights tailored for young people
If they are concerned enough about unnecessarily ruining lives to change the Miranda warning, why not focus more on exercising the most powerful tool we have in our criminal justice system: prosecutorial discretion? After all, the cops reading the Miranda warning can only bring people to jail; it’s the prosecutors that keep them there.<p>Prosecutors have the ability to not file cases at all. They also have the ability to offer diversion programs, wherein accused criminals can voluntarily agree to community-based sanctions/supervision in exchange for their cases not being filed.  These do exist in some jurisdictions today, but tend to be offered to a very small percentage of defendants.<p>In short: if they really cared about ruining lives, they’d stop trying so hard to ruin lives (in all but the most serious cases).  Changing the Miranda warning may be a very small step forward, but getting prosecutors on board is the only way to make a real difference.