It gets worse. Not only is there a direct financial incentive for the police and courts to send people to prison (yes, I'm saying they get kickbacks), now we learn that the forensic labs are coming under pressure to come up with 'evidence' that also sends the guy the cops caught to jail.

As a result, we see lots of innocent people arrested and put into private prisons, simply because it is easier and quicker and MORE PROFITABLE.

Check this out in the latest issue of NewScientist:

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GREG TAYLOR spent 17 years in a North Carolina jail for the murder of a prostitute that he didn't commit. He was released in 2010 after a panel of three judges concluded that the blood found on his SUV wasn't blood at all. As a result, the North Carolina state crime lab was investigated and found to have withheld or distorted evidence in more than 230 cases over a 16-year period - three of which resulted in executions. Investigators found widespread evidence of forensic analysts coming under pressure from police and prosecutors to produce results that would help secure convictions, including a policy of not reporting the results of more sophisticated blood tests if they challenged those of earlier tests.

North Carolina is one of 38 states where crime labs are under police or prosecution control, and is far from alone in having such problems. In 2009, a report by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) strongly recommended that forensic labs should be buffered from the forces investigating crimes, and a new centralised authority created to oversee standards and conduct much-needed research to improve the field of forensic science as a whole. "Forensic labs are supposed to be independent, objective evaluators, but here we have them being influenced or even controlled directly by law enforcement," says Thomas Bohan, former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
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(Source: NewScientist, Issue 2851, February 8, 2012)