Decius wrote:
The following paragraph basically sums up everything that is wrong with the American criminal justice system, no matter what the context is. A handful of cases — in which a predator does an awful thing to an innocent — get excessive media attention and engender public outrage. This attention typically bears no relation to the frequency of the particular type of crime, and yet laws—such as three-strikes laws that give mandatory life sentences to nonviolent drug offenders — and political careers are made on the basis of the public’s reaction to the media coverage of such crimes.
It has occurred to me that the criminal justice system in the US is so out of control that not being a criminal is really little protection from worry about being caught up in it. All it takes is for someone to have a political interest in making you go away and an ability to make false accusations. The balances are so heavily weighted toward prosecutors and the punishments so severe that if it happens, you are real likely to be fucked for life. Even a few years in prison can have a significant impact on your life. Your best hope is the "prosecutors discretion," or having access to a lot of money, if you do. The cost of defending yourself can often have a deep impact on your future planning and options in your life. This has happened to people who use this website. Its a real risk associated with living in this country and I have seriously considered that it might be a good argument for living somewhere else. We law-abiding, middle-class Americans have made decisions about social policy and incarceration, and we benefit from those decisions, and that means from a system of suffering, rooted in state violence, meted out at our request. We had choices and we decided to be more punitive. Our society — the society we have made — creates criminogenic conditions in our sprawling urban ghettos, and then acts out rituals of punishment against them as some awful form of human sacrifice.
I think this second citation is much more telling. Crime is sport in the US. All the way back to the black hat wearing cowboy to OJ and Scott Peterson, we have a love affair with criminals, and are addicted to punishment. It makes us feel tough and reinforces other false ideals in our culture (morality, justice for all, bravery, etc). It's unfortunate because what Decius says is correct in that it's very easy to cause someone severe trauma just be accusing them of wrongdoing and publicizing it. RE: Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? |
