It's not just that my clients lie to me a lot, which will only hurt them --- it's that they're really, really bad at it.
[Originally posted on Singal-Minded]
My job as a public defender puts me in a weird place. I am my clients' zealous advocate, but I'm not their marionette. I don't just roll into court to parrot whatever my clients tell me --- I make sure I'm not re-shoveling bullshit. So for my sake and theirs, I do my homework. I corroborate. I investigate.
A significant portion of my job ironically mirrors that of a police detective. Every case I get requires me to deploy a microscope and retrace the cops' steps to see if they fucked up somehow (spoiler: they haven't). Sometimes I go beyond what the cops did to collect my own evidence and track down my own witnesses.
All this puts some of my clients of the guilty persuasion in a bind. Sure, they don't want me sitting on my ass doing nothing for their case, but they also can't have me snooping around on my own too much. . . because who knows what I might find? So they take steps to surreptitiously install guardrails around my scrutiny, hoping I won't notice.
You might wonder why any chicanery from my clients is warranted. After all, am I not professionally obligated to strictly maintain client confidentiality? It's true, a client can show me where they buried their dozen murder victims and I wouldn't be allowed to tell a soul, even if an innocent person is sitting in prison for their crimes. Part of my clients' clammed-up demeanors rests on a deluded notion that I won't fight as hard for their cases unless I am infatuated by their innocence. Perhaps they don't realize that representing the guilty is the overwhelmingly banal reality of my job.[1] More importantly, it's myopic to forget that judges, prosecutors, and jurors want to see proof, not just emphatic assurances on the matter.
But clients still lie to me --- exclusively to their own detriment.
Marcel was not allowed to possess a firearm. And yet mysteriously, when the police arrested him --- the details are way too complicated to explain, even by my standards --- in his sister's vehicle, they found a pistol under the passenger seat.
"The gun is not mine. I don't even like guns. I'm actually scared of guns." He told me this through the jail plexiglass as I flipped through his remarkable résumé of gun-related crimes. Marcel spent our entire first meeting proselytizing his innocence to me. Over the next half hour he went on a genealogy world tour, swearing up and down on the lives of various immediate and extended members of his family that he never ever ever touched guns.
I was confused why he perseverated so much, but I just nodded along as part of my standard early precarious effort to build rapport with a new (and likely volatile) client. What he was telling me wasn't completely implausible --- sometimes people are indeed caught with contraband that isn't theirs --- but there was nothing I could do with his information at that early stage. Maybe he thought if he could win me over as a convert, I'd then ask for the case to be dismissed on the "he says it's not his" precedent.
Weeks later, I got the first batch of discovery. I perused the photographs that documented the meticulous search of his sister's car. I saw the pistol glistening beneath the camera flash, nestled among some CDs and a layer of Cheetos crumbs. And on the pistol itself, a sight to behold: to this day the clearest, most legible, most unobstructed fingerprints I have ever seen in my legal life. If you looked closely enough, the whorls spelled out his name and Social Security number.
Public defenders are entitled to ask the court for money to pay for private investigators, digital forensic specialists, fingerprint examiners, or whatever else is needed to ensure a defendant in a criminal case is provided with his constitutionally guaranteed legal bulwark. The photographed prints here were so apparent that an examiner could easily rely on the photos alone to make a comparison.
Marcel had earned himself some trolling from me. I went back to see him at the jail, faked as much enthusiasm as I could muster, and declared, "Good news! They found fingerprints on the gun!" He stared at me stunned and confused, so I continued.
"Well, when we first met, you told me that you never touched the gun," I reminded him with an encouraging smile. "Obviously you wouldn't lie to your own lawyer, and so what I can do is get a fingerprint expert to come to the jail, take your prints, then do a comparison on the gun itself. Since you never touched the gun, the prints won't be a match! This whole case will get dismissed, and we can put all this behind you!"[2]
He was still reeling but realized I was waiting for a response. "You. . . don't need to do that," he muttered. I had the confirmation I was looking for, but I pressed him while maintaining the facade of earnest congeniality.
"But why not?" I sang in staccato, smile wide. "You told me. That. You. Never. Touch any guns."
Turned out Marcel might have accidentally touched the gun. So his prints could be on it. I had made my point, so I dropped the act. I explained to Marcel that the only thing lying to me accomplishes is to slow things down and worsen his own prospects --- how could I pursue any potentially helpful leads for his defense when I couldn't be sure I wasn't about to bumble into an incriminating revelation?
Marcel nodded sagely and claimed to understand, but he went on to lie to me many more times over the next two years that I remained his attorney. Marcel has and will spend the majority of his adult life in prison --- not necessarily because he lied to me but that certainly didn't help.
My first meeting with Kyle was useless. He insisted throughout that it wasn't him, that he wasn't even there. Now, personally speaking, if several witnesses claimed to have seen someone who looks like me, in my car, with my girlfriend in the front seat, commit a drive-by shooting in broad daylight, I would summon slightly more curiosity about who this apparent doppelganger might be. But Kyle gave me no leads, pantomiming an internal agony about not wanting to be a snitch, clutching at his stomach as if the mere thought was physically unbearable.
His tune eventually changed. "I need you to tell the prosecutor who was driving my car," he said."His name is Richie Bottoms." If the name hadn't given it away, I already knew where this was going,[3] and I was excited for the coming entertainment. I pretended to be enthused by his revelation, and let Kyle know that I had a "really great" investigator who's phenomenal at tracking "anyone" down --- even the elusive Dick Bottoms.
Based on his reaction, that wasn't the response Kyle expected; another illustration of a myopic theory of mind (not uncommon among the interpersonally inept) incapable of simulating anything but affirmation. He tensed up momentarily, but realized that he'd already committed himself to acting out a demeanor congruent with the "innocent client responds to helpful attorney" fantasy. Yet the only excuse he could muster up in the moment was that Richie wouldn't be found because he fled to Los Angeles.
I maintained what must have been an obnoxious level of optimism, explaining how "perfect" that was because my investigator "knew lots of people" there. My job affords me few if any moments of joy, and so forgive me if I overindulged in Kyle's vexation. I'll spare you a full accounting of the myriad reasons he gave why tracking down Sir Bottoms was a lost cause. Suffice to say that in addition to being out of state, Richie had maybe fled the country; also, Richie happens to look almost identical to Kyle, but also we might not even know his real name since he went by "Arby," and no one had his phone number, et cetera. . .
Even when we moved on to other topics, Kyle couldn't let it go, interrupting whatever we were talking about to repeat warnings about how tracking down Richie was going to be a total waste of time for my investigator and me. He was palpably angry, but had no viable outlet for his frustration, and so he just stewed, stuck with his lie. I kept my poker face. It's a stark contrast to my factually innocent clients, who cannot help but drown me with leads to pursue in the hopes that any are helpful.
The whole thing reminded me of Carl Sagan's parable of the dragon in his garage as a critique of certain unprovable religious beliefs. Can I see the dragon? No, it's invisible. Can I detect its fire's thermal image? No, the fire is heatless. Can I find Dick in Los Angeles? No, because now he fled the country.
There's always some excuse --- there's always some eject button allowing my defendants to evade specific evidence demands. No matter how ridiculous.
It's banal for my clients to deny the accusations, but a special breed takes denial to the next level by waging total jihad against their accusers. It's a sort of a reverse counterpart to the Narcissist's Prayer:
If they claim I was driving during the hit-and-run, they're lying. And if they're liars, then they exaggerated their injuries. And they're exaggerating because they're after an insurance payday. And we know they're after a payday because they sued their dry cleaners in 1993. And they're framing me to get money, which is how we know they're lying.
In these clients' telling, nothing is their fault. The random bystanders who randomly drew the unlucky witness card become a convenient scapegoat. Yet these clients are so myopically overwhelmed by the desire to bounce the rubble on a witness's credibility, they don't notice how implausible their story becomes with each new clause they tape onto their fabulist's scrapbook.[4]
Sometimes clients are self-aware enough to couch their denials in innuendo. Ivan, who was accused of [redacted], was waging the same Total War approach against Cindy, a social worker at the homeless shelter where Ivan regularly stayed. Cindy was a dangerous witness --- an uninvolved, respected professional who severely undercut Ivan's alibi defense about having never left the shelter to go on his [redacted] spree.
In yet another of our jail rendezvous, Ivan expounded at length about how Cindy's testimony was invalid because, as a social worker, she would be violating HIPAA.[5] The glaze over my eyes must have gotten too obvious for me to hide, so he switched tack, shuffled through his jail-sanctioned filing system (read: pile), and slid a flyer across the table about trash cleanup day at the shelter, with a smiling cartoon trash can picking up a baby garbage bag while announcing "Pick up a little trash, talk a little trash." It's cute, but what the fuck was I supposed to be looking at? Ivan stared at me grinning and expectant, but his demeanor quickly turned into disappointment at my ongoing silence. He snatched the flyer out of my hand and jammed his finger at the "talk a little trash" clause. "This!" he shouted, and then just stared at me again. I looked at the words that meant so much to him and nothing to me and just said, "Huh?"
His disappointment transmogrified into astonished anger. "Do I have to fucking spell it out for you?" he screamed. "I thought you were the lawyer here!" We had been ping-ponging across various aspects of his case for the last hour or so and I gave up on any posturing and reiterated my ignorance at the significance of the cartoon flyer. Ivan snapped, "Cindy is encouraging people to trash talk!" For, you see, she wrote the flyer. "I'm trying to show you that she's a fucking punk! And a liar!"
I immediately understood why Ivan was so attached to remaining within the realm of innuendo. Because as soon as he gave his claim some body ("We should infer lack of credibility from individuals when they author flyers that include garbage-related puns"), he knew how much of a dumbass he would sound like out loud.
Ivan moved on from the flyer, and instead asked how to disqualify a witness "for being a liar." I tell him that's not a thing,[6] which sent him into a further rage. "I need you to be on my side here but all I hear from you is 'NO.' Why are you working for the prosecutors?"
The manipulation attempts we just cataloged were comically inept, and fell apart with far less effort than it took to create them. Slightly more polished versions of these charades are regularly deployed within the Discourse™ but they're equally hollow and just as pathetic. So those are some of my clients --- individuals who cannot rise to the level of your average internet troll.
[1] There is a kernel of an exception that is almost not worth mentioning. The Rules of Professional Conduct 3.3 obligates me with the duty of candor. I am not allowed to present evidence that I "know" is false, which encompasses witness testimony. Some jurisdictions make exceptions to this rule for defendants testifying in their criminal trial (correctly, IMO) but not all. So assuming that a client truthfully confesses to me, assuming we go to trial, assuming they decide to testify, and assuming I "know" they're going to lie, then yes, this could indeed spawn a very awkward situation where I'm forced to withdraw in the middle of proceedings.
[2] I'm told I put on a good poker face.
[3] There was no Richie Bottoms.
[4] For example, Kyle asked if it was possible to present self-defense evidence on behalf of "Richie Bottoms," just in case.
[5] Does this sound familiar to anyone?
[6] During the editing process, Jesse was skeptical of this. "Wait," he asked me in a Google Doc comment, "there's NO way for one side to prove to a judge that a witness is so untrustworthy the jurors/judge shouldn't consider their testimony?" Correct. The closest rule is disqualifying a witness as incompetent, either for being too young, severely mentally ill or mentally retarded, or too intoxicated (on the witness stand!). Credibility is up to the judge/jury to decide, and if a witness has a history of lying, then it makes for a very easy credibility impeachment. Theoretically, in extremely rare circumstances, a judge could strike the testimony of a witness or find them in contempt, but they'd have to be seriously flagrant about their lying under oath. I have never heard of this happening.
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Notes -
On the other end of the spectrum, have you ever had any clients who you were fairly sure were innocent and being railroaded, but whom you were unable to get acquitted?
If so, is this a regular occurrence (say more than 2%), or extremely rare?
Very rarely, yes, though keep in mind that my caseload isn't representative. The main one that comes to mind was a wheelchair-bound veteran with 0 criminal record who conducted a citizen's arrest using his (legal) gun but got the wrong people. The people he pointed a gun at were literally begging the police at the scene to not arrest him because they understood it was an innocent mistake on his end. I poked enough holes in the state's case that they offered a misdemeanor plea deal with no jail time, down from a serious firearm violent felony. I really didn't want him to take the deal, but he knew it was too risky to chance it at trial.
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You may find it fruitful to read some of the work done by non-woke Psychologists and Psychiatrists (ex: Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple), if for no other reason than to go "my god other people have noticed this!"
Everybody who deals with these people has experienced this stuff but having the tools to diagnose and label what these people do is helpful (and may at times give you some insight in how to work them for your needs).
That's a good idea, thanks for the suggestion
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Very reminiscent of the courtroom procedural bits in Sergio de la Pava's A Naked Singularity, which I liked a lot.
I hadn't heard of this before and now I must read it.
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godamn if that wasn't entertaining. have you ever had repeat customers? if yes, what was the situation like?.
Yes, depending on your definition. I routinely get appointed to clients for one case who then go on to catch even more charges while they're out. Sometimes a client asks to have me appointed on some of their other pending cases/appeals. Generally though, charges tend to happen in bursts and then followed by a lull of inactivity while they're incarcerated (or optimistically, they temporarily get their shit together). Repping the same client after a lull hasn't really happened yet and I try to avoid it.
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Denials - even very stupid denials - might be an adaptive strategy in most circumstances. Denials can stop a fact (especially a negative one) from becoming legible to institutions.
The way I'm thinking about this, organizations (eg, "the local high-school" / "Starbucks" / "the hardware store") aren't people. They can't see stuff or draw 'obvious' conclusions the way that a human could draw conclusions. Instead, organizations - particularly big ones - need to have formal or semi-formal fact-finding processes where reality is summarized in an 'official' report.
Trials are just one instance. When the government wants to learn a fact ("Did Kinoite steal a sack of roofing tiles from the hardware store?") there needs to be a process. The government collects a record of facts. Maybe it presents them to a judge. The judge looks over the record and fills out a form saying "Guilty" or "Not Guilty." Going forward, as far as the government is concerned, the 'truth' of my guilt comes down to whatever was written on the form. God, all of his angels, and the entire tabernacle choir could have seen me walking out of the store with those tiles, but if the judge checks "Not Guilty" then every future government interaction will proceed as if I'm a good, innocent person.
Trials are also a little unique in that the government is motivated to drive the process to completion. The court system is also unique in its willingness to stick to decisions once they're made, absent rare and difficult appeals.
I think a lot of other institutions might not bother to complete their "fact-finding" process. Going back to the hardware store, if I'm an employee, there's a potentially huge different in outcomes for me along the following gradient:
In the moment, the difference seems to be "fired' vs "not fired." But, consider what happens if I re-apply for a job a few years down the road when my ex-manager has quit. In the second case, ("fired on the spot") the ex-manager might have been 100% certain that I stole roofing tiles. The evidence that existed at the time might have me dead-to-rights. But, if all that's left of our exchange is a series of emails reading:
What's the hardware store to do with that information?
My old manager is gone, and the choir members have returned to Salt Lake, the new store manager is left with a He-Said/She-Said dispute and some text where an ex-manager claimed to have once possessed video. In terms of institutional legibility, the hardware store doesn't know I'm a thief, they know I'm an alleged thief. Maybe the new manager will make a decision that I'm unhireable. Maybe they won't.
Contrast that with a world where I admitted, in writing, to the theft. In that case, I've stipulated to the truth of the accusation and, for whatever reason, institutions seem to like accepting that kind of stipulation.
While my hardware store example might be a bit silly, consider a more realistic scenario where some kids are sent into a principal's office for fighting. If the kids admit to having been in a fight, then they'll get punished for fighting.
If the kids invent a lie - even a very stupid lie - there's a chance they could evade or mitigate punishment, particularly if they have the backing of their parents. When the parent arrives at the school, the direct evidence (Mrs Grundy saw a fight) has gone through at least one level of indirection (Principle Skinner is meeting with the parents and reporting his conversation of Mrs Grundy). If the parents escalate the issue, then the attenuation gets worse; the school board might be reading a report, in which Principle Skinner records that Mrs Grundy claims she saw the kids fighting.
In the moment, a stupid lie ("We weren't fighting! He just slipped on some playground equipment. I was helping him up") won't convince Mrs Grundy. She knows what she saw. The school board, in contrast, has a written report that summarizes a memory of a conversation. As far as they know, maybe Mrs Grundy was mistaken.
Again, if institutions really wanted, they could do mini-trials and call in witnesses, and make a proper record of each of their factual determinations. But trials burn weeks of time to get to a single Yes/No decision, so most often, institutions don't bother and allegations live in some weird half-determined state unless someone is dumb enough to admit to wrongdoing.
So, this sort of obvious lying might be adaptive and only becomes a problem in the very counter-intuitive world of courts.
I have a formative childhood memory of exactly that sort of thing happening. I was roughhousing with a friend of mine, in the type of way that it was very unlikely either of us would get seriously hurt, but was still very much against the school rules. I remember then a parent volunteer caught us in a way that she didn't didn't directly witness it but it was very obvious to everyone what happened- I don't remember exactly how, but it was probably something like hearing a yelp and then turning the corner to see my friend with a bruise. When she interrogated us, I stayed quiet and my friend insisted he just walked into a pole- despite no poles being nearby. We both got off scott free.
John, an old friend if mine, once answered the door for a bill collector who asked him, "are you John Doe?" He claims he replied, "My name is Bruce Wayne."
While wearing a Batman tee shirt.
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You're on point with this. This is also why many states offer the ability to "seal" and/or "expunge" your criminal records... conditional on not committing particularly severe offenses.
With an expunged record you can truthfully state that you "have no criminal record" and have no convictions or even arrests that might turn up on a background check. And indeed, a standard background check would not turn up any such incident.
This matters a lot if you're a young person who got pinned for a misdemeanor and doesn't want to have this interfere with your attempts to kick off your career. Also why Judges sometimes employ leniency with young persons even when the offense is rather heinous, because someone is unlikely to return to the straight-and-narrow ever again if an early conviction cuts off most legitimate employment.
The next best thing is to have a plea of 'not guilty' on your record and as you say a consistent pattern of denials even if ultimately you get found guilty. You can at least claim that there was some crooked prosecutor or corrupt cops who fabricated evidence (it happens) and railroaded you for [reasons] and that you genuinely to this day protest your innocence.
This stops working very quickly the longer your rap sheet gets.
The other practical reason to stay in denial mode is because if you get caught on tape or within earshot of a reliable witness admitting guilt, that confession mostly torpedoes your ability to negotiate with the prosecutor because that confession, if admissible, simplifies their job immensely and means they are more willing to take the case to a jury and use your own words against you.
So if you risk possibly incriminating yourself by uttering a confession in any context, its safer to lie to every single person you interact with so none of them turn up on the witness stand later, and ONLY be willing to admit guilt after a favorable plea bargain has been obtained.
Incidentally, there's your logic for why the fifth amendment enshrines a right against self-incrimination.
The problem is, if every guy says he's innocent even as he's five years into his jail sentence, and everyone knows that "all prisoners claim to be innocent", then it poisons the chances in the cases where the guy really is innocent. Everyone from cops to judges knows that the guilty guys all claim to be innocent, so why should they take your assertion that no you really did not do it seriously?
That's how we get caught with "just plead guilty, even if you really didn't do it, and the prosecutor will cut a deal but if you insist on going to trial, they will throw the book at you" procedures to clear backlogs and keep the court system working in some fashion, and why people who deal with the public at these levels quickly become hardened and cynical. Yeah, yeah: you claim you need a wheelchair for mobility purposes, you're number three hundred in the list of people who want wheelchairs even though they can walk perfectly well, but if they have a disability diagnosis they get special accommodations/extra benefits. Even if that person does need a wheelchair for times when they can't walk, but other times they manage to be mobile without it, they get lumped in with the rest of the liars. All due to "it's better if you start lying to keep lying to everyone and never admit anything even when you're caught out" practical reasoning.
There’s the old joke of a governor interviewing prisoners, determining why they were incarcerated. After prisoner after prisoner professed their innocence, one prisoner said he was in jail for theft. The warden quickly proclaims, release this man from jail, before he corrupts all these innocent men.
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I mean, there's a reason the most classic of game theory 'traps' is called "The prisoner's dilemma."
There are points on the payoff matrix that make sense for individual facing down a possible jail sentence when they can't trust anyone else in the system to cooperate with them. Even if there is clearly a better overall point you can get to (Guilty people cop to it immediately, innocent people keep denying and hopefully get released) there's very little incentive for any individual player to try to move the matrix there.
The incentives are what the incentives are. Moloch goes brrrrrrrrrr. I can say that when I was working as a Public Defender I told people who seemed vehement in their protestations of innocence and had some valid defense that they really ought to push their case all the way to trial and FORCE the state to really consider the strength of the evidence when offering a plea.
Perhaps the worst problem is that there's very little evidence that jail time has a rehabilitative effect and thus we'd only want to send the very worst persons who need to be separated from civil society there, but we aren't that great at selecting, via the justice system, ONLY the people who are too dangerous to leave free.
The last little thing that we DO have in the U.S. that at least provides a release valve: The presumption of innocence and the right to remain silent.
If you are indeed innocent, it actually makes more sense to hold your peace and refuse to comment one way or the other and force the state to attempt to put together a case to convict you completely de novo. If you make no statements, then there's no way for them to catch you in a lie or contradiction.
If we could magically make it so that EVERY single criminal defendant would shut up and remain silent about their charges for the duration of the case, then IN THEORY the state should end up convicting, on the surrounding evidence alone, only those who are actually in fact guilty, whereas those who are innocent will also avoid accidentally making a statement which harms their case and thus are more likely on average to be found innocent.
This assumes there aren't actually corrupt cops or prosecutors in the mix.
Trick is, people with that level of self-control and conscientiousness probably won't be committing crimes in the first place.
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Well yeah, if criminals had the moral wiring and foresight to dodge "tragedy of the commons" scenarios, they wouldn't be criminals.
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Help me understand more clearly why this is 'deluded'? it might be wrong but deluded? You talk about your clients' poor theory of mind later, but don't offer any reason why, in their shoes they should know and beleive that you work just as hard for clients you believe are guilty.
I know it is a light hearted article, but the whole spirit of sneering and literal anecdotes of mockery and sarcasm with these people is good evidence that you might treat them psychologically differently. Maybe you really really would never work a little harder, polish a little more, fight a little better for a client you were sympathetic too, but that hardly seems deluded to assume.
When I recieved a serious speeding ticket, which I beleived was somewhat in err, the exact thought was in my mind as I debated how to discuss it with lawyers. Yes, yes, they're all going to fight for me to get out of it, and yes it's routine boring shit. But with even a chance of outcome unpredictability in the air, and knowing that I won't be there when the lawyer negotiates with the DA, is it really, not just incorrect but 'deluded' to wonder whether the lawyer, who's not getting any bonuses for better outcomes here, might advocate a little better for me if he likes me? (also I, a PhD, wasn't 100% confident exactly what the rules were about incriminating yourself to your lawyer. I can only imagine some level of lingering uncertainty with an uneducated criminal, especially if their lawyer talks to them with sarcasm and playful mockery that goes over their head.)
Even if that's not a conscious thought, we all want to ingratiate ourselves to people who hold some sort of power over us. You might see yourself as 'working for' this guy, but every time I interact with a doctor, a mechanic, or much less often a lawyer, I have a strong pang of recognition that my outcomes are somewhat at the mercy of this busy stranger's scruples. I become over eager to prove myself worthy of their esteem and extra consideration. Is it stupid and often counterproductive, sure. But your sneering about it to strangers on the internet only reenforces my perception that professionals are contemptuous of a lot of the pleebs they have to boringly 'serve'.
Speaking of other professions, I'm not a lawyer, but I've worked at a mechanics shop, and the perspective is similar.
The more truth you tell us about how your car got broke, the faster and easier it is to fix. If you tried to use JB Weld to fix a leak, and you just cop to it - "It started leaking something, so I tried putting JB Weld on it here, but it didn't work. Can you fix it right?", we've got better things to do that judge you. The honesty is appreciated, and it lets us fix the problem faster. If you tell a stupid and obvious lie, like you have no idea what happened but the car isn't working right, it just takes longer to find, and when you later claim you have no clue why there is JB Weld all over the crankcase where it's leaking, then you only make yourself look even dumber than you would if you just copped to it. You've cost yourself time and money and done nothing at all to help anything.
Yeah, not every mechanic or shop is honest, and that can be a headache to deal with. But whether they are or are not honest, you're still not helping anything by lying about what happened.
If you want to make your mechanic happy with you, tell them exactly what is happening and what if anything you did in as much detail as possible, but don't bother speculating on what you think might be wrong. It's okay to ask for explanations or to see what's broken etc, but there's not really any point in accusing them of ripping you off.
I think my point was entirely missed by everyone who's responded. Which is clearly my fault. I am in no way advocating or justifying lying to professionals.
I am saying that the professional has a great deal of power over your outcomes, limited time and attention for you, unknown scruples/ levels of quality, and will conduct their work on your behalf behind a veil of your own ignorance.
These factors can lead to a lack of trust and a desire to influence the interaction. LYING is a BAD strategy to resolve these issues. But it is understandable how and why someone kind of dim might develop that bad strategy in this context. Especially if lying has been an effective strategy in other interactions with people they don't trust or want to influence.
Ah, I see. Thinking about it a bit more, I'm not sure whether it's a culture thing or a raw intelligence thing, but I think you could say that some people aren't capable of understanding the idea that some things are physical systems that are not governed by the whims of individuals but instead by their own sets of rules. So in their minds, the outcome of any interaction with such a system is actually solely determined by the feelings and inclinations of whatever expert they are interacting with.
We could say things like, the outcome of your legal case doesn't really depend all that strongly on what your lawyer or the prosecutor thinks of you. Your medical outcome doesn't really change much based on how much the doctors and nurses like you. Your car or other such thing getting fixed doesn't depend on the mechanic liking you. And so on. But I think this class of people doesn't consider these ideas and then reject them, they seriously aren't capable of thinking them at all. So maybe it makes sense to them to lie to look better to them, even though, to us, it's stupidly obvious and will clearly have no impact on the outcome besides making it slightly harder for us to do our jobs.
Which in turn makes it sound more callous and cruel to use sarcasm and mockery to try to show such people the error of their ways. Might as well knock a guy with no legs for not being able to walk. But then on the other hand, if somebody is fundamentally incapable of dealing with the real world and can't be fixed, doesn't that suggest they should be locked up in a mental institution somewhere, or at least not allowed outside the house without "adult supervision". Maybe this is all a little exaggerated and most people do figure this out eventually, it's just that the worst cases of this tend to be much more likely to commit and be caught for serious crimes and end up talking to a public defender.
Just like parents don't affect their children's outcomes much, unless they're abusive, lawyers may not affect the outcome fo the trial much, unless they're abusive. The civilian who knows nothing about lawyers and certainly nothing about you personally, has no idea if you'll deliberately lose the case because you think he's unsympathetic, or even just give in to the prosecutor because you don't care about the case. So he lies to appear more sympathetic.
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This reminds me of Robert Kegan's 5 stages of adult development, which I first learned about through David Chapman's blogs, for example https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence. In short, people at stage 3 are like fish in water regarding their relationships to other people ("if the judge sentences me, then the judge does not like me personally"), whereas people at stage 4 see their relationships to other people more from an outside perspective, almost like objects that can be used for specific purposes, and they know that even if they know the judge personally and could ask them for a favour when hanging out after work, they cannot ask for a favour in the courtroom ("have to put the friend-friend relationship back in the toy box and take out the defendant-judge relationship and play with that for a while").
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You are doing yourself absolutely no favours by lying or misrepresenting yourself to a doctor.
medical records, including notes, can be subpeona'd, leaked, and otherwise obtained by and to the state and other parties as well as be used by insurance companies to deny coverage or otherwise be made public info
being candid to people who do not have an ethical and legal duty to not reveal that information absolutely has risks and people are regularly harmed because of it
even when it comes to lawyers, a single clownshow judge can put them in a position where they violate their ethical and legal duty to not reveal atty-client communications and that lawyer will either fight it and likely spend time in jail, so their client is harmed, or they reveal the information (.e.g., a shit judge in a group of shitty judges in Beryl Howell on the DC district court who pierced Trump's atty-client privilege and his coward lawyer who cooperated), and their client is harmed
the truth is being candid has risks and each person has to weigh those risks with the benefits and make a decision
I was only talking about doctors, not mechanics or lawyers. I appreciate that there are good reasons not to be perfectly candid to a mechanic or lawyer, even though I think actively lying to them is generally not in one's best interests.
In general, I think the advantages of being candid with a doctor (candid in the sense of providing the whole truth to all questions asked, not in the sense of volunteering information of one's own accord) outweigh the risks. How many patients' medical records are subpoenaed, leaked etc. in a typical calendar year? How does that compare to the number of people who die every year because they knowingly gave their doctor an inaccurate impression of their health and/or lifestyle, and as a result their cancer went untreated for months longer than it could have been had they been forthcoming?
people are regularly denied coverage by insurance companies because of something they told a doctor at the present time or in the past
a claim a person does themselves no favors by lying/misrepresenting themselves to doctors is simply nonsense; there are many situations where it would be the correct thing to do
I would be all-for doctor-patient protections similar to lawyer-client privilege, which is itself not a certainty, but it currently doesn't exist and being candid does have risk of serious costs.
This seems like a conversation where the correct course of action is very heavily dependent on jurisdiction. I'm under the impression that legal protections for doctor-patient confidentiality are much more robust where I live than you.
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No, either you misread me or I was unclear. I've never lied to a doctor (or a lawyer or another professional). I've been over-eager / over worried about how much they like me,
That is a different thing; I've found myself gushing like a fountain with details and prattle to a doctor trying to prove that I'm a 'good' patient who didn't do something dumb or skip my medication.
But lying to someone in a silly lie that will immediately get found out - like the client with the gun under the car seat who was all "me? guns? never within a mile of them!" is just ridiculous, and if they act as if you're too stupid to realise they're lying, that makes it worse. And often these liars just lie for no reason at all, because they lie so habitually and casually they can't even tell the truth about "your name is Joe?" "Nah, I'm Tom" "Okay but your driver's licence says Joe" "Oh yeah well that was a mistake" "And your birth cert says Joe" "See, that's 'cos my mom meant to call me Tom but she told them Joe when it was filled out".
Just string after string of pointless lies.
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I think it's reasonable for my clients to be suspicious of my motivations or how enthusiastically I'd represent them. But I brought up their poor theory of mind in context of how good they think they are at lying, not about their opinion of me.
Well to be clear if I make any distinction among my clients, it's between the honest and the lying (to me), not between the innocent and the guilty. The clients that lie to me waste my time and fuck themselves over and (if it persists past the point of funny) personally offends me. I've had to withdraw from cases many times, and by far the most common reason is client dishonesty. If someone's dishonesty ever reaches a level where it would affect how well I represent them, I bounce. Still though, I'm generally desensitized to clients lying to me because it happens so routinely that it's background noise. Any sneering you identified above was about how pathetic their attempts at lying were. I got along great with Marcel for the most part, and even Ivan was one of the few clients who took the effort to send me a thank you letter from jail. Their lying was too pathetic to be enraging.
Besides the issue of honesty, I definitely like some clients more than others, but it's hard to think about when that actually matters regarding their legal case. I represented a teenager I felt bad for and I knew he was going to be in jail for at least several months, so I spent my own money buying books on meditation and self-improvement. I also had a client who was a unicorn in that she had been homeless for years before ever getting arrested and I did whatever I could on the clock to get her connected with social services. Overall, someone's legal outcomes are beyond my control unless I'm somehow intentionally sabotaging a case. And yeah, I get how inscrutable the rules about attorney-client confidentiality might be to a newbie, but generally my clients are repeat customers and know the deal.
Thanks for the response. And apologies if my tone seemed overly combative, I was on a mobile phone and didn't have the patience with my touchscreen keyboard to edit for balance.
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You might have that fear of God in you, but that doesn't cause you to start lying your butt off in ways that are totally feeble.
Think about it. You're sat across from an expert that has power over you. You want them on your side. And your choice is to tell extremely weak lies. 'Never touched a cigarette in my life', you say through browned teeth. 'It weren't me, it was Mr Dick Bum, my identical twin.'
People that lie habitually like this aren't scared. They have bad judgment, no respect for others, no respect for rules. And, if they're pulling the same crummy trick again for the fifth time, no ability to learn from their mistakes.
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He's not sneering. People really are this stupid.
Now, if you fudge things a little to put yourself into the best light, okay. That's natural.
If you fucking lie to my face about stupid shit that I know is a lie, and moreover this is a shitty dumb lie that harms your case, then I'm still going to do my job, but by God I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt or try and help you out of the holes you are digging for yourself.
I'm more sympathetic because I've seen people a rung or two above this level (but some fall right down the ladder) and dealt with them in former jobs, and they are not misunderstood little lambs. Some of them are even genuinely evil.
Most, though, are stupid and greedy. They make things worse for themselves by lying, because telling the truth (or as near as they can bring themselves to tell it) will work out better in the long run. Take the example of Marcel: how absolutely stupid would the lawyer have looked in court when he promised the judge up, down and sideways his client never even touched the gun - and now here's his clear prints all over it? Marcel would have done way better for himself with "Okay, man, so I know I'm not supposed to have guns, but this is not my fault, I sorta picked up this gun and then - " even if that was a bullshit story too.
Because the lies are so dumb and so shoddy, they get shown up as lies in no time at all. Like the cases I heard of when working in social housing: one client who swore that she never even had a boyfriend, no way, it was just her and nobody else would be moving in to the house if she got one. Then she goes on Facebook showing off her engagement ring and boasting about the honeymoon they were planning. Yes, turns out housing officials do things like check Facebook for exactly these reasons. Because if two people are going to be living in the house, then there should be two people paying rent, but some people think they can get away with "No, just me" and then move in the boyfriend/girlfriend at no cost afterwards.
Or the client who mysteriously got pregnant by some unknown person. Okay, so she broke up with her ex-boyfriend, then they met up for his birthday, and went drinking, and she went back to his place, and they had sex, but clearly that could not be the reason she was pregnant. No, it was just some mysterious unknown event and we certainly shouldn't be asking if he was going to pay child support. Again, nine out of ten times the guys don't pay maintenance because they claim to have no income (and often really don't have any income), but we're supposed to find out if there are any sources of income by the tenant. Lying about the guy who's your baby daddy so he won't be asked to contribute ten quid a week is a no-brain-involved move.
Dumb, stupid lies by dumb, stupid people. Who get themselves into trouble because they think they're smarter than they are.
EDIT: You talk about "contemptuous of a lot of the pleebs they have to boringly 'serve'" but that's not it. There are a lot of people who, through no fault of their own, are struggling. Maybe they haven't had a good education, or they are not that smart, or they have mental/physical problems, or are the products of broken homes. We do try our best to help those people.
But there are the ones who are liars, grifters, and would slit your throat for a sixpence, and those are the ones who try the dumb, stupid lies and who will exploit everyone around them, including their own kids. I've seen cases of women deliberately hampering their own kids from getting help with learning/psychological disabilities, because as long as Mommy is able to claim that Junior has special needs she can get more resources out of the system. If Junior is improving because they're getting the supports they need, that's Mommy's little gravy train derailed.
You have no fucking idea how horrible some people are. And I'm seeing the ones who aren't at the level of "well here we are in the courthouse again".
Genuine question (that I've asked myself and thought about for over a decade)...
Given that these people do exist, how ought society deal with them? Right now, we've come to the de facto arrangement of cycling them in and out of the criminal justice - incarceration system. At best, this does zero to solve the problem and costs billions of tax-payers dollars and creates perverse incentives and cottage industries. At worst, it may actually contribute to a downward life spiral of increased criminality and antisocial behavior. Anyway you slice it, it isn't working to improve things.
Of course Tollbooth, he of the hyper traditionalist bent, isn't going to be advocating for drug legalization and more spending on social workers (ha!). Yet, I certainly cannot advocate for some sort of boot camp semi-incarceration for "at risk" youth or some such nonsense. The government using "data" to select the "most in need" for its benevolence is a Great Leap Forward towards evil, IMHO. But, the status quo remains disappointing.
Hive mind of the Motte, led by @FarNearEverywhere, ..... what do?
Oh, gosh.
Well, first thing is to squash my immediate impulses on hearing some of the horror stories, which is to get somebody to kick the absolute living shit out of the bastards (gender neutral on that one, women are as horrible as men).
That's no good. There has to be a way to get the vulnerable out of those situations without falling foul of the two extremes of "your kids are dragged away from you because little Johnny showed up to school with scratched knees" and "you can literally torture a child to death because the case fell between the cracks".
Part of it seems to be (1) everything is left up to social workers where (2) there is no continuity, the social worker has a ton of caseload, and suddenly the person dealing with one family for the year is gone and a new one who has to be brought up to speed is in charge and (3) there's the bloody theoretical underpinnings they seem to learn in university about not being there to do anything but facilitate, not to intervene or interfere, progressive liberal values out the wazoo, and they're the ones get played by the scammers like fiddles - this is in part why I react so heatedly to @iprayiam3 about sneering about stupid people.
These people are not just stupid, they're actively wicked and malicious. And it's not mere stupidity, they can be quite cunning and even smart, not stupid. But they see nothing in life but what they want, they care nothing for others even where they owe a duty of care, and they lie like they breathe.
But what's the answer? I honestly don't know. I see why protections have been put in place, but maybe I'm just idealising the past when I wish we could go back to a more socially conservative view of matters, where you damn well do have duties and responsibilities and you're not a poor little victim of society. That past did have bad things and faults too, but the hyper-liberal view allows exploitation by the malicious.
I do think prison should be structured for rehabilitation as much as punishment, but the hard, cold fact is that some people won't be rehabilitated, don't want to be, don't have the capacity to be. The merely stupid and ignorant, we can muddle along with - even the likes of Marcel who are realistically going to keep going in and out of jail for life. The really vicious and violent and exploitative? The ones who game the system? We may have to bite the bullet on "lock them up, keep them locked up. Don't mistreat them, but you can't let them out into wider society because they are weasels ripping out the throats of chickens".
That's textbook anarcho-tyranny.
Taking kids from a law-abiding parent is much easier than taking them from a guilty one. The law-abiding person has probably never tried to navigate the system before. They're probably going to assume good faith on your part. They're not going to threaten you or pull a gun on you, they're not going to lie, they're much more inclined to do things like let you into their house. They have jobs so they can't just flee town.
The ones who treat their kids worse than dogs would treat their whelps are the ones that really get the blood boiling. Honestly, vigilante justice starts to look appealing then, even though my few shreds of better sense say that lawlessness is not good in general, even the 'breaking the law for the greater good'. But I tell ya, a bout in the stocks starts to look like "why did we ever do away with this?"
I'd say it's less bad that one evil parent hurt his own kids, than that the cogs of bureaucracy chew up countless children who would've had loving homes, all the while the evil parents still hurt their own kids too.
Of course neither is perfect, but you're not getting perfection.
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Making fun of stupid people for being stupid is sneering.
Well this kind of proves the point that you're going to give a different service based on your perception of the person you're dealing with.
Now of course, lying is a stupid and self fulfilling way for you to lower your esteem and because they're stupid, they're stupid liars. But the premise that OP immediately dismisses as deluded, is proven out here.
My biggest problem here is the claim that it's deluded to suspect one might be treated differently based on perception of sympathy.
I know ymkeshout enough to believe that he wouldn't consciously do that. But have no reason to extend that to any given professional wouldn't. And I don't believe that ymkeshout or anyone doesn't unconsciously. Replication crisis and all that, but the principles of influence and persuasion aren't totally false.
Of course lying to your lawyer is the wrong way to deal with that, but the premise as argued is wrong.
This article is 1 part dismissing as delusional to suspect you might get difference based on perceived sympathy. 1 part the fact that non Lawyers don't know ahead of time what is or isn't a lever in the legal process and 2 parts laughing that stupid people make stupid decisions.
And consider that this whole discussion exists in a world where lying about something as obviously stupid as, your gender can get you put into a better prison. So...
What I remember from my time among the underclass was a large number of people who, if they would make better decisions, would be normal working class people.
I remember a man who had a habit of sitting on paychecks for weeks and weeks so that he didn't cash them until just before he spent the money. His wife was bad with keeping track of papers. This wasn't his only poor financial decision. Needless to say, he was constantly behind on bills, and cutting back to three packs a day and cashing or depositing his paychecks like a normal person so he didn't have to skip meals never occurred to him. He also had a suspended license from refusing to pay fines, and "deposit your paycheck, pay the fines, and renew your license" didn't occur to him as a solution.
Pointing out that people in dire straights in modern western first world countries are mostly there through their own fault isn't sneering. It's acknowledging reality.
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Sorry for the combative tone, it's just that as I've said, I have seen people being horribly abusive to those dependent on them, all for their own personal benefit, who have no problem lying straight to your face.
I don't feel sorry for them (in my angrier moments, things like walls and firing squads dance like visions of sugarplums in my brain) and it's not because I don't understand that people want to appease authority figures, it's because they're selfish, greedy, stupid and in some cases damn near sociopaths.
If I'm faced with someone lying to me, demonstrably lying, and trying to play on my sympathies by their lies, I'm not going to fall for that. You say "the claim that it's deluded to suspect one might be treated differently based on perception of sympathy", but the liars and cheats are very well aware of perception of sympathy, and using that to get better treatment. They do it to social workers, and fill them up with lies about (in one instance) domestic abuse where the alleged abuser was in fact the parent taking care of the kids, making sure they were fed and got to school, etc. But the person making the allegations to the social worker knew that having it written down that "Sally X (not real name) is afraid of her partner due to domestic violence" would advantage her in the long run, as she could then ditch her partner and claim preferential treatment, all due to having the deluded, sympathetic social worker in her corner fighting for her. As for the kids - who cares, they can look after themselves, Sally X has bars to be drinking in all day and bets on horses to place (real behaviour*). Sally X also managed to get a sob story piece on a local radio show, complete with story in local newspaper, about poor brave lone single mother just trying to get the best for her kids, but bureaucratic red tape and uncaring blankfaces (to borrow Scott Aaronson's phrase) were hampering her and denying her the just rights she was owed. All calculated to get that perception of sympathy and different treatment.
And there's worse cases out there. Genuine evil.
@ymeskhout and I are not laughing at the stupid people, we're laughing at the stupid lies they expect us to swallow because no, we're not that dumb or gullible. Ordinary plain stupid and greedy can be funny, in those "textbook fingerprints on gun, guy swears he never even touched a gun in his life" way. Marcel was hurting nobody but himself by lying to his lawyer. It's the abusive types who will trample over others, but try to get you to be a bleeding heart about their poor hard lives, who enrage me.
*The thing about working in a small local office is that a lot of the clerical officers and case workers come from the same towns/areas and know the clients, or their families. So one of my colleagues was related to the guy who owned the bookmakers where Sally X and her equally scummy mother and sisters would spend money all day betting on horses, and the village that colleague came from knew all about that family and the drinking and violent behaviour by Sally and her clan. And that the alleged abusive partner was the responsible parent. Of course, all that is second-hand testimony and no good to stand up in court, and it certainly can't be used in denying Sally when she makes application for services. But it also means that we know when we're being lied to, why we're being lied to, who is doing the lying, and what kind of person they are.
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Intelligence is not the only relevant axis here. I represented someone who had an IQ of around 60-80 and he was one of my favorite clients ever. He got dinged on a DUI and was super respectful and always on time to our meetings, and I really felt for him when he expressed fear and earnest confusion about why he was in trouble. He was verifiably the least intelligent client I've ever had, but he never lied to me or the cops ("Yes I was drinking tonight sir, I am so sorry sir, I am so sorry sir.") and except for that one case he just carried on his life working as a nighttime janitor.
The clients I laugh about above also lack intelligence but to a lesser degree that the janitor. What really sets them apart is their dishonesty combined with the baseless confidence that deludes them into thinking they can successfully pull off their cons.
Oh, yeah. Like the clients who show up to appointments about their housing needs baked to the gills, but confident that there is NO WAY you, straight authority figure person in an office, can tell they're stoned off their gourd because hey, they can walk in a straight line. That's funny, and harmless, and doesn't mean we have nothing but sneering contempt for them.
There's people who have literacy problems and other difficulties and do need a lot of time and patience to help them, and again, not evoking sneering contempt.
It's the guy who never showed one scrap of interest in his now nine year old daughter, but wants a two bedroom house as a single man because he's an 'artist' and needs a studio, and gets refused on the regulations that nope, single guy, one bedroom flat or house is all he's entitled to, who then suddenly turns up with "oh I'll be having my daughter to stay, now I need that second bedroom". We all know that kid is never going to stay overnight in his house, and that spare bedroom will become the studio, and if she ever does visit she'll be sleeping on the sofa in the living room. But we're supposed to swallow this obvious fake story and just hand over the goodies, because Mr. Artist asked. That's the guy that I can't find it in my heart to give a scrap of sympathy for his troubles, poor poor man.
What's your job by the way? I've dealt with similar scenarios when I volunteered as a low-income tax preparer. I remember one guy who came in with his sister or whatever and who wanted to claim three kids as dependents even though he earned $500 the whole year. His sister earned way more and could plausibly claim all three kids, and we sort of gently and patiently tried to explain to them that there was no net profit to be gained from spreading the kid deductions/credits around. Of course they didn't believe us and concluded we were a barrier to their scheme and left in a puff.
Last night, I saw some signs that caused me to reflect back on this OP and think about distinctions between making fun of stupid people and trying to think about how to live life and what to expect from society while at least not mentally denying the existence of a wide range of folks. I wasn't sure I'd share it here, but you mentioned low-income tax preparation, so I feel like I must.
The signs were offering tax return services. I think at least one of them mentioned something about an advance being available; that's a service that I understand being available. Might not be the best rates, but offers of short-term credit to low-income folks has been beaten to death as a topic, so I wasn't at all impacted by that. What caught my eye is that these signs just threw out completely random ass numbers. One said something like $4995, which was portrayed as like, "This is how much money we will get you," and then sort of portrayed as the "fine print" being that the number was only good if you had one child. Nearby, there was another sign that just boldly declared a slightly different figure, but this one had it in a series of figures. This much if you have one child, about a grand more if you have two, and about another grand more if you have three. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it wasn't "about a grand more"; they gave specific numbers, as if those were just straightforwardly the number of dollars that you'd receive on your tax return if you were in the appropriate category and used their services. As if you could just find the company that advertised the highest number, and that's how you could get the most dollars.
Maybe I just didn't pay close enough attention to the signs while driving by and they had detailed fine print in little letters, but man, first off, that just sounds like false advertising. Most of all, it struck me just how much of a fundamental misunderstanding of how any of this works1 it would take for this sort of advertising to be effective. But then I feel like, surely, this sort of advertising must have some level of effectiveness within the community in which it is being used, otherwise people likely wouldn't do it, right? Thus, back to reflecting on the need to always remember how wide of a range of people there are in this world.
1 - In fact, I may have some fundamental misunderstandings about how these sorts of advertisements work. If it really was "higher number wins", then you'd think it would get even more obscene. Yet, being completely out of whack too often may just piss customers off and drive them away. Do they just pick some X percentile estimate for likely returns in the local area? ...what friggin' percentile of returns would ~$5k be?! Has EIC gotten that insane, or are there really that many people who randomly ended up with wildly off W9s?
It seems to me any advertised specificity of four digits is a claim of competency and confidence, not a true advertisement of a dollar amount. Put $3695.19 on there, and Normalman will think, “Man, six digits, that guy really knows his shit!”
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For people under (or not reporting above) 14k USD/income, the standard deduction will usually set them to zero or near-zero AGI, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (3995 USD for the first child) and Child Tax credit (1600 USD) are refundable after that point, which gives a reasonable amount of head room for under-withholding.
I'd expect there's still a bunch of exceptions and fine print hidden somewhere, but it's not obviously nutty, especially if the number was framed as about 'finding tax credits' rather than about the actual check number.
I think it's even more morbid than that; these advertisements are set up and promoting the high numbers that won't apply to many of the client base, because otherwise quite a lot of people won't file at all, and will still be 'happy' (or at least unable and unwilling to make a false advertising complaint in any way that works) if they're just getting back a few hundred to a single thousand. There's still some ethical ick -- >80%+ of users would be better served using a free online filing option, but that'd wipe out the pragmatics of the business for the remainder that are either unable or incapable of using online filing or have no way to get the cash back through ACH/mail'd check -- but their practitioners and business practices are ethical in the sense that they're probably even licensed tax providers who honestly believe they're helping their average client, and in some ways, are.
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Yes, my stint as a tax preparer was absolutely shocking to me. One guy's income was around $23,000 but he made sure to bring receipts to establish the $3500 he spent on lottery tickets because gambling losses are deductible. He proudly declared how he made $200 over the year, and he seemed genuinely surprised when I asked if it was worth it because he apparently hadn't thought about it before?
My family was well off in Morocco. After coming to America, we were "poor" only in the sense that my parents cut insane corners over spending (80% of our furniture, including my mattress, was from dumpster diving). So my best guess is there is a specific mentality that combines the desperation of being poor (hence why you buy lotto tickets) with the lack of foresight from being poor (hence why you buy lotto tickets).
Not everybody is as charming about treatos as the businesslord!
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I've bounced around different clerical roles in local government, from education to social housing to where I am now, working in a specialist service for children with additional needs.
I've often joked about "I worked in education and thought I was cynical after that, then I went into social housing and realised I wasn't half cynical enough". I come out of a rural/lower middle class background and remained pretty much in that milieu all my life. I haven't personally been in contact with the really hardcore of petty criminals etc. but with job experience have encountered the types who are products of broken homes etc.
And for some, from even an early age you can see the trajectory to ending up in jail, which can be heart-breaking (it's terrible to be able to forecast that a fifteen year old is going down that path) or grimly satisfying (at least one kid on an early school leaver programme who was sly and nasty about using others as catspaws, and I have no idea what happened him afterwards but I thought to myself that one day he was going to play his games on someone who didn't give a shit and end up stabbed or something).
There's also the cycle of "this is the third generation and I see no reason it won't continue"; grandmother had broken marriage, family life problems, wasn't able to really raise her kids; daughter ended up like mother with single parenthood; baby is probably going to grow up and end up the same way because environment, environment, environment. No positive role models. All the limited supports and help from outsiders not going to make up for the raising the kid will get at home. There's a real tension between the rights and freedoms of the individual, and the right/capacity of the state to intervene. Err too much on one side, you get the horrible stories of abuse. Err too much on the other side, you get the state being little tin god and grabbing kids out of homes in order to indoctrinate them in whatever the current orthodoxy is.
Many people are not that capable, because of understandable reasons in their lives, and best that can be done is support and help them. Of course, there's never enough capacity for that, because money money money. But then you have the actively malicious, selfish, and vicious types.
Your story of the guy and trying to claim for dependents sounds all too familiar. Sometimes it is just stupidity and ignorance, sometimes it is someone trying to pull a fast one. The real problem is that some idiot friend or acquaintance tells them "Dude, you do this thing, it's free money! The government owes it to you!" I wouldn't be at all surprised if some 'friend' or family member convinced them that if he claimed instead of his sister, because he was so low income, he would end up with more money because the government would pay him some sort of rebate. That the tax credits for the three kids would be paid over to him since he wasn't making enough money to be taxed.
Once those ideas get lodged into people's heads ("I know Mickey Murphy and he told me he's getting this money!") you cannot get them out. So yeah, they do believe when you don't go along with the brilliant scheme that you are trying to cheat them out of it. Of course you are, you're there in an office with an official form so that means you work for the government and everybody knows The Man wants to keep you down and cheat you out of your rightful due.
No disrespect to the profession of lawyers, but there's one ambulance chaser firm in town who make a speciality out of taking cases for clients like this (sue the council, get €€€€€) and the poor boobs have no idea that even if they get awarded €10 grand or whatever, the lawyer is making sure to eat most of that in fees and what they'll come away with is a couple of grand, at most. Which then gets blown on partying, treating their friends, and their local supplier of fun substances.
EDIT: I complain about social workers, but in the social housing job my boss's boss was a former social worker, and a genuinely lovely woman. Knew enough not to be taken in, but still compassionate enough not to be burned out. Much nicer and less black-hearted view of the world than I had 😀 That was heart-breaking at times too, because we administered grants for elderly and disabled people to get help maintaining/doing up their houses so they could continue to live at home, and every month (because we were in the post-crash austerity period) it was "okay do we refuse the very elderly woman or the liver cancer patient?" because not enough money to award to everyone who qualified. The boss's boss was brilliant at begging and wheedling more money out of the government department funding us, but of course everyone in the country was begging for money and you just could not get enough. Get the budget up to €2 million? Okay, that takes care of the three year backlog, but now what for the new applications?
That's also why I think our banks should have been goddamn left to fail. They got bailed out by huge government contributions and support, they continue to make profits, and the ordinary taxpayers of Ireland can just twist in the wind for all the repayment they got. But I suppose the economists would say that that would have been a bad thing.
I've seen a little bit of a few things like this. Not really enough to have much to add to this thread. But I do think that one of the major issues in the way our larger culture discusses political issues is that a large segment of the "activist class" doesn't have the slightest idea of how these people are, how they really think, and how they actually respond to the "helpful" programs that they constantly dream up. They just listen to a few of these fake sob story tales or videos and go off entirely on believing that, never even pausing to consider that it might not be an accurate description of the situation.
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I see a lot of overlap with what you describe.
I think that a lot of people in public-facing jobs have these kinds of war stories.
The joke, when I was in social housing, was that in about fifteen years there was going to be a lot of unwitting incest in the town, once all the kids grew up to be old enough to start dating. Because of social liberalisation and the explosion in A and B get together, B may already have a kid by another guy; they have a baby; break up and go on to new partners; A has baby with new partner, B has baby with new partner; rinse and repeat. If the kids take the mother's name, they may have little to no idea who the father is and subsequently who their half-siblings are. Then there's the "mom has one surname, the three kids all have different surnames" from when she does acknowledge the father, and again - if you know Dad is Murphy that doesn't much help if your half-sibling is named after their mother and you meet up.
EDIT: Actually a lot more hopeful to be working in the service for kids with additional needs. Everything from Down's to autism spectrum to mild learning disabilities to behavioural problems to wheelchair users. People on here often like to prognosticate doom for the Down's kids if they are permitted to be born and grow up, but my dude, I tell you: parents much more likely to be committed to doing best for the kid, much more likely to be two parents, and way less chance kid is going to grow up to be involved in drugs, petty crime, and a string of kids by different partners, not-so-optional extra includes jail time (not no chance but way less chance).
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