Talk:Process crime

Recent Change

I don't think it a coincidence that on the day of a very high profile arrest for process crimes (Roger Stone) this page was significantly modified to remove the previously neutral language in favor of language heavily referenced from an article that represents a subjective opinion that this category of crime is used abusively. Originally I reverted those changes. When that was itself undone, I could see the editor's point in making that change, so I opted instead to clearly title the editorializing section as "criticism" so that it is not presented as strict fact, and instead is clearly labelled as something that represents an opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.112.218.192 (talk • contribs)

@69.112.218.192: Thanks for coming here to discuss your concerns. Yes, I saw news coverage that discussed the prosecution of Roger Stone as being merely for "process crimes" so I looked the term up and noticed that the article we had about it was very poor, in Wikipedia terms. It was just a jumble of unsourced facts about various specific process crimes thrown together, but almost nothing about process crimes as such, as a topic of criminal law. So I looked up a law review article and summarized what it said. I agree that there are certainly more perspectives to be added - historical and comparative, for example - but what we have is a start.

I don't really think that prepending "criticism" to the section about pretextual prosecutions does it justice - we're not taking a position about whether such prosecutions are a good thing or a bad thing, and I suppose there are reasons for both views. We only relate that these prosecutions do happen, and what the reasons for that might be, according to legal scholarship. Again, I am certain that there are other perspectives about this out there in academia, and it's up to us to find and integrate them here. Sandstein 16:45, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

The fact that you also happened to add "A process crime" to the page on perjury that very same day points to an attempt to editorialize by downplaying the severity of the accusations against Roger Stone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.204.241.95 (talk) 01:04, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

That was an exercise in wikilinking to make this article more discoverable. Sandstein 08:07, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

• I've undone the "{{criticism section}} {{cherry-picked}} {{POV}}" tags because it is not clear to me what the problem is. The IP's edit summary adding them read: "The previous version was mostly examples, this version is mostly criticism from one source, cited multiple times. This seems to violate NPOV." I can't follow this. A scholarly analysis of how process crimes are used by prosecutors isn't necessarily "criticism"; the author we cite doesn't say that it is necessarily wrong to punish criminals by charging them with easier-to-prove process crimes rather than their substantive crimes. I've clarified that by removing the "criticism" from the section header, which somebody else added. Also, the tag's statement that he article is based on "quotations that were previously collated by an advocacy or lobbying group" is mistaken; the article is based on a peer-reviewed law review article. I do agree, though, that the article could benefit from more sources and a perspective that is broader than that of one author; I'll try and find more when I have the time. Sandstein 08:26, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment I think it's your responsibility to argue why this one scholarly article represents a majority view instead of a minority one. Can you cite many other reliable sources (here in the talk page, not necessarily in the article) that share its views? You need to be able to prove that the source presents a majority viewpoint in order for it to be WP:DUE. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:58, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

• I do agree that we should seek out a broader range of sources. But of course it's also the responsibility of those who doubt the neutrality of the current text to provide other sources in order to indicate where, exactly, views differ among sources. Sandstein 12:34, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

That is also true, Sandstein. Unless the IP or somebody else cares to explain in depth, the tags can stay out. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:15, 15 February 2019 (UTC)