Opinion: Voters should not let North Carolina allow bench trials

M ostly lost in the political fights surrounding this year’s elections is a proposed amendment to the North Carolina constitution that will appear on every voter’s ballot.

The amendment would allow criminal defendants the right to waive a jury trial and instead have their guilt or innocence determined by a judge in a so-called “bench trial.”

North Carolina is the only state in the United States to not allow defendants to choose a bench trial, but we recommend keeping it that way.

Its proponents claim it will increase the efficiency of the criminal justice system. They are likely correct in this belief, but increasing the efficiency of a criminal justice system that is fundamentally broken and discriminatory would not generate more just outcomes.

The United States imprisons its own citizens at a rate unprecedented in world history, and its main targets are racial minorities and the economically underprivileged. Speeding up the efficiency of this machine of discrimination is not an acceptable goal.

The inefficiency and fiscal wastefulness of the practice of mass incarceration is one of the primary pressures on the system to change.

In 2011, the Justice Reinvestment Act was signed by Gov. Bev Perdue in response to out-of-control spending on prisons. The act cut back overly harsh sentences with the goal of reducing the prison population.

Voting for the proposed amendment could ease those pressures and remove obstacles to unjust policies. At the very least, the issue must be studied more before a change to the constitution is made.