A System Bereft of Justice

[indigobusiness]

A System Bereft of Justice
by Paul Craig Roberts


While enjoying Christmas, good food and drink with family and friends in the warmth and comfort of your home, take a moment to remember the falsely imprisoned. Think about how your own family would handle the grief, because wrongful imprisonment can happen to you.

In a just published book, Thinking About Crime, Michael Tonry, a distinguished American law professor and director of Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, reports that the US has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any country on earth. The US incarceration rate is as much as 12 times higher than that of European countries.

Unless you believe that Americans are more criminally inclined than other humans, what can explain the US incarceration rate being so far outside the international mainstream? I can think of the following reasons:

In order to prove that they are "tough on crime," politicians have criminalized behavior that is legal elsewhere.
Many innocent Americans are in jail.

snip

Government routinely breaks the laws. So says Judge Andrew P. Napolitano in the current issue of Cato Policy Report and in his book, Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws. Judge Napolitano reports on cases of torture, psychological abuse, and frame-ups of innocents that he discovered as the presiding judge. Any American naïve enough to trust the police and prosecutors should read what Napolitano has to say.

snip

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts86.html

[ixion]

1. this is so true

Thanks to the privitization of the prison system, gung ho 'supercops', the so-called 'War on Drugs', we here in this 'free' country have millions of non-violent offenders behind bars.

People who are innocent, pot smokers, recreational drug users -- people who are otherwise functioning members of society who do not steal or cause bodily injury to others -- are rotting away in little concrete boxes because these 'moral' politicians want to 'help' them. :eyes:

[indigobusiness]

2. It is so utterly wrong. This part is chilling:

Torture has become routine in American prisons. The goal of the torturers is guilty pleas and false testimony against innocent defendants. The torturers succeed. Napolitano reports that "fewer than 3 percent of federal indictments were tried; virtually all the rest of those charged pled guilty."

Does anyone seriously believe that the police are so efficient that 97 out of 100 people indicted are guilty?!

The cherished code, "you are innocent until proven guilty," no longer holds in America. You are guilty when charged. You will be tortured or abused and threatened with more charges until you agree to a plea bargain.

[teryang]

3. High profile targets? Give me a break!

The judicial system targets the least among us, the poor, the ignorant and the mentally ill.

The system indisciminately takes people into custody often based upon false complaints and police too busy or unconcerned to undertake a proper or thorough investigation. Those too poor to post bail remain in pre-trial confinement. The only way to get out is to plead. If you want a trial you may have to wait months or as this article points out longer. Recidivist, enhancement statutes, and mandatory sentencing guidelines are so draconian, the innocent cannot risk trial for felony offenses. For example, a misdemeanor defense lawyer may have 30 or 40 cases ready for trial at any one time, but can only get 2-3 trial days a month, if he is zealously agressive (which is unlikely). A felony lawyer is lucky to try one or two cases a year because it is too risky.

Prosecutions for marijuana possession serve as the entre, for both violation of your fourth amendment rights and your introduction to the criminal justice system. License revocations for drug offenses and retail theft along with DUIs and other traffic offenses virtually guarantee that you can't make a living, that you will violate probation, and be back in jail before you know it.

There is a cold, calculating, devil take the hindmost attitude among ordinary Americans concerning these very important social issues, until they or one of their loved ones is victimized by it.

The mentally ill spend time incarcerated in prison and jail because competency and sanity evaluations are misdirected and the country's mental health system (like the justice system) serves only the well to do. State governments keep paring down the justice system, cutting budgets for judges, attorneys, and necessary court costs, forcing cases to be plead because anything else gums up the works. It is intentional.

[indigobusiness]

5. Very astute and well said.

We seem to be developing a ruling class of socially criminal hypocrites.

"There is a cold, calculating, devil take the hindmost attitude among ordinary Americans concerning these very important social issues, until they or one of their loved ones is victimized by it."

This resonates with me, and illustrates the selfish core of the American soul.

[imenja]

4. I thought we had the greatest number or prisoners

not just in proportion to the population. Does anyone know if that is true or not? I remember reading that we passed China in our prison population a few years ago.

[indigobusiness]

6. It wouldn't surprise me

but I can't say for sure.