Justice or Just a Game?

How We’ve Turned the Courtroom Into a Marketplace

There’s a saying you hear a lot when someone gets arrested: “Don’t say anything until your lawyer gets there.” On the surface, it sounds like good advice. And in today’s system, it often is—because anything you say can be twisted, reframed, or weaponized against you. But dig deeper, and you start to see the rot. We’ve built a society that’s trained us to lie, manipulate, and negotiate—not for truth, not for justice—but for survival.

We don't tell the truth. We manage the truth. We slice it, shave it, package it—until it fits the narrative that gets us the best deal. And lawyers? They’re no longer defenders of justice. They’ve become brokers. Interpreters. Negotiators at a table where the facts matter less than the outcome.

In this system, justice has become a game. A game played in courtrooms, on opposing teams, with referees in robes. And the truth? It’s just one more pawn.

The legal system teaches people to deny before they even understand what they’ve done. From the moment you're arrested, the advice is: deny, stay silent, say nothing. Your lawyer will do the talking. Your lawyer will craft the strategy.

But when the strategy is to deny, even when accountability is the path to healing, you begin to lose your moral compass. You enter prison with a distorted belief: “I didn’t really do anything. I just took the deal.”

Over time, that narrative eats away at personal responsibility. And that’s not just my experience. I’ve seen hundreds of men and women enter incarceration believing a version of their story that protects them from shame, but also delays their growth.

According to the Innocence Project, more than 30% of exonerated individuals had originally confessed or taken a plea deal, even when innocent. They were coached, pressured, or simply afraid.

What does that do to the human psyche?

It teaches you that survival is more important than truth. That negotiation is more valuable than justice.

A study by the National Registry of Exonerations (2021) found that 20% of people exonerated had pled guilty, many out of fear of harsher punishment or poor legal advice. These aren't isolated cases—they are systemic patterns.

Legal scholar Lucian Dervan warns that this over-reliance on plea bargaining has created what he calls “a silent crisis of justice.” In his research, he states: “The system has shifted from truth-seeking to outcome engineering.”

What we’re seeing is the normalization of denial. A cultural numbness to the truth. When your entire freedom hinges on making a deal, the goal is no longer accountability—it’s damage control.

Justice by Negotiation

Today, over 95% of criminal convictions in the U.S. are the result of plea bargains, not trials (U.S. Department of Justice, 2023). The courtroom is no longer a stage for truth—it’s a negotiation table.

Why?

Efficiency. It’s faster to negotiate than to go to trial. It's cheaper to settle than to litigate. But the consequences? Profound.

• Truth becomes secondary.

• Evidence is rarely tested.

• Innocent people confess.

• Guilty people cooperate to gain leniency, not accountability.

  
  

A 2020 Harvard Law Review article noted that the modern plea bargain “has eroded the constitutional framework of due process,” where the judge becomes a rubber stamp and prosecutors act as the gatekeepers of justice.

Deals are made in back rooms, not in open court. Justice becomes transactional.

And here's the part most people miss: the deeper we go into plea culture, the more justice becomes subjective. Not about what happened—but about what can be proven, spun, or cut in half.

Every system needs checks and balances. But the criminal justice system has lost many of them. Here’s how:

• Prosecutorial discretion has gone unchecked. A 2018 report from the Vera Institute found that DAs now control case outcomes more than judges.

  
  

• Qualified immunity protects law enforcement from liability.

  
  

• Mandatory minimums remove judicial discretion.

  
  

• Plea deals bypass juries.

  
  

What remains is a system of shortcuts, not safeguards. Of outcomes, not principles.

And the cost? We numb our collective sense of justice.

We stop asking: “What really happened?” and start asking: “What can we get out of this?”

Victims feel unseen. Defendants feel voiceless. Communities feel cynical.

In a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, just 29% of Americans said they had confidence in the fairness of the U.S. criminal justice system—a historic low. Why? Because people aren’t stupid. They know when the rules are being bent. They know when the game is rigged.

The Economic Engine of Legal Deals

The U.S. legal services market is now worth over $365 billion annually (IBISWorld, 2024). High-stakes defense attorneys can charge upwards of $1,000 per hour, while public defenders—handling hundreds of cases per year—are often underpaid and under-resourced.

The result? A two-tiered system:

• If you have money, you buy better outcomes.

• If you’re poor, you get a deal—or you get buried.

  
  

The Brennan Center for Justice found that poor defendants are more likely to accept plea bargains—even if innocent—because they can’t afford to fight. The system isn’t blind; it’s economically stratified.

And this disparity has ripple effects:

• Families go into debt to hire legal counsel.

• Communities lose faith in legal integrity.

• The revolving door of incarceration spins faster.

  
  

I spent years in a system that rewarded denial. But I can tell you from experience: you don’t heal by denying. You don’t grow by making deals. You grow by facing the truth, owning your decisions, and choosing to transform.

Accountability is power. It’s not weakness.

As Desmond Tutu once said: “There is no future without forgiveness. But there can be no forgiveness without truth.”

And that starts inside us. Inside courtrooms. Inside the laws we write.

The answer isn’t just reform. It’s redefinition.

Imagine a justice system where:

• Truth isn’t punished.

• Accountability is encouraged.

• Healing is prioritized for everyone.

  
  

Restorative justice programs are already proving that change is possible. A study by the Journal of Criminology & Public Policy (2019) found that restorative justice practices reduced recidivism by up to 45%, while increasing satisfaction among victims.

These aren’t just statistics—they are proof that justice doesn’t have to be adversarial.

I walked into prison with a belief that I didn’t belong there. I told myself I was a product of a broken system, that I’d been mishandled, that others were more responsible for my situation than I was.

That mindset protected me from the weight of guilt—but it also kept me blind to my own choices. For years, I repeated what I was taught: stay quiet, let your lawyer speak, don’t own more than you’re forced to. And I paid for it. Not just with time, but with the delay of my healing.

The truth is, I wasn't ready to grow until I admitted my role—not just in the crime, but in the decisions that led to it. That admission didn’t come through a plea deal. It came in the silence of solitary. In the reflection that comes from being stripped of distractions. Only then did I realize that accepting accountability wasn’t about surrendering power—it was about reclaiming it.

We live in a society that teaches people to dodge blame and make deals. But we’ve taken that strategy so far that we’ve lost the purpose of justice itself. Justice isn’t about leveraging power. It’s about creating clarity. It’s about allowing space for both truth and transformation. That’s how we begin to restore integrity—not just in the courtroom, but in ourselves.

And to my brothers and sisters in the legal profession: this work demands more of you, too. Too many lawyers today are content with progress that amounts to baby steps—celebrating a reduced sentence or a procedural win while ignoring the deeper miscarriage of justice that remains.

Saying, “Well, it’s something,” has become a way to avoid pushing harder, asking tougher questions, or standing firm when it’s inconvenient. I’ve seen lawyers fight tooth and nail to convince a client to take a deal—but remain silent when evidence needed to be challenged, when a client needed a voice, or when the facts deserved to see the light of day.

Justice doesn’t come from what’s convenient—it comes from what’s right. And the legal community must return to that. Stop negotiating against the truth just to move a file off the desk. Start insisting that the people you represent—and the system you serve—are given more than shortcuts and settlements.

Begin demanding outcomes rooted in principle, not just process.

Keep fighting the good fight.

-Troy Rienstra