Transcript
Sarah Marshall (0:00)
A boy goes missing from a bus stop in Queensland, Australia. His disappearance made national headlines and launched the largest search for a missing child in Australia's history.
Josie Duffy Rice (0:09)
It was absolutely enormous. He said it was going to be a long few days. We didn't know it was going to be a long 12 years. Whoever responsible had picked on the wrong family. We're going to hunt you down.
Sarah Marshall (0:19)
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is where is Daniel Morcom available now on the binge? Watch, listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Josie Duffy Rice (0:31)
This is a CBC podcast.
Sarah Marshall (0:42)
Welcome to your bonus episode. This is the devil you know. I'm Sarah Marshall and today we're talking with Josie Duffy Rice, a journalist who focuses on prosecutors, prisons and other criminal justice issues. Josie is also the host of the Corruption Uncovered podcast and former president of the Appeal. Josie is here to talk with us about the United States legal system and how it may have allowed the satanic panic to rip through it a little bit faster than it would have otherwise. We've talked a lot about how moral panics work, but how can the way that a system functions or doesn't function allow a moral panic the chance to grow and flourish for much longer than it should have? And we also look at the question of what kind of blind spots might a system have if it tries to sort people into the categories of hero and villain and the vast gulf of humanity that lies between the two.
Sarah Marshall (1:49)
I'm trying to come up with sort of the. The best description for sort of the unifying theme of some of that, at least as I see it, because I was drawn to your work when I started thinking critically about the legal system. And to me, really, the ultimate truth of it all is that none of it is sacred and parts of it are good. But the fact of part of something being good doesn't mean the whole works. And I feel like it's showing the lack of logic and the actual motives sort of animating the way different parts of the system work is how you understand the whole overarching problem.
Josie Duffy Rice (2:27)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that our criminal justice system is a microcosm or a macrocosm, depending on what angle you're looking at of us. Right. It's prone to and corrupted by the same things, lack of logic, the same negative instincts, the same negative incentives that we're all prone to, but on a much broader scale. And that's why my interest in the system is directly related to the way that it reflects who we are.
