Criminal Justice System Reform

In its current state, the justice system is imbalanced. It is clear that prison time and death penalties are dealt out along the lines of economic class. Because of racial tension in the US, brown people make less money and are turned down for promotions more often. In our country we have many poor but the majority of our poor are brown. Not only is economic and racial injustice built into the structure of our justice system but also there seems to be a rush to sentencing. Mediation is not currently but should be an integral part of the justice system. Upon becoming part of the system most offenders return again and again—each new offence growing in magnitude. Juvenile offenders enter the system at a young impressionable age and often leave the system with bigger better ideas on how to commit crimes. Violent criminals are caged with non-violent criminals, often times leading non-criminal behavior to escalate to violent behavior. We leave these citizens behind the way a bad parent disowns a child who has done wrong. It really is a shame that we spend money to make these people disappear and very little money to educate them in new ways of living. Every prison inmate is a reminder of our own failures as a Nation.

We are now a prison society. Marlene Martin tells us in her article “The hidden casualties of war” at counterpunch.com that “The number of people behind bars in the ‘ land of the free’ is grown as large as the combined populations of Atlanta, Miami, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Pittsburgh.” In the United States we have more people in prison per capita than any other country. Rather than dealing with our problems by understanding the circumstances and motivations that brought about these injustices we choose to lock our citizens away and forget about them. Human beings are drawn to acts of crime for a diverse many reasons—homelessness, broken homes, abuse, greed, social inadequacies, angst, boredom, lack of opportunity, economic need, mental illness, drug addiction, unrecognized intelligence, fear, and straight up malice to name just a few. Even the most innocent among us is guilty of some prosecutable offense, yet as a society, largely, we do not believe in redemption for the misguided. Those who pay their debt to the criminal justice system are forever tainted in the eyes of society. They are denied the right to vote and access to jobs is limited. We expect them to live functional lives in a country where they have no voice. Without a voice, they are left with very little control over their own existence. At the very least their ability to aspire is truncated. This is just sad. Furthermore, the parole system is overworked and underpaid. It seems the sole purpose of this system is to keep close enough tabs on parolee’s so that they may swoop down quickly to enforce misery’s limitations. Perhaps our money and our time could be better spent facilitating positive transitions back into society from the world of prison. I would not imply that all offences should be mediated or forgiven. There are some crimes that illustrate an obvious lack of understanding for right and wrong. Some offenders cannot or do not have the will to redeem themselves. This fact does not give us an acceptable excuse for having built our criminal justice system in such a way that it addresses every injustice as a worst-case scenario. By doing this we willingly sacrifice American citizens that could offer their contributions to the solutions we so desperately need. Our money should be working for us, rather than against us. We waste our tax funds on storage rather than using them to fix our problems. We are better than this.

• Embrace Mediation: At the very least, Our Children deserve the benefits of mediation when they make mistakes. When we mediate small-scale injustices we, by default, create a better sense of community and offer examples for our children to live by and aspire to.

• Reform the Death Penalty: There is wide speculation amongst criminal justice scholars that the death penalty, as it is enforced today, is economically and racially biased. There must be reform and while that reform is negotiated we must mandate a moratorium on all death penalty verdicts. We owe this much and more to every American.

• Violent VS. Non-Violent Crime: Is it necessary to house these offenders together?

• Parole officers should have lighter caseloads and should offer equal focus to the positive transitions of their parolees.

• Citizens who have paid their debt to society for felony crimes should be allowed to vote.

• Abolish the felony murder law and reduce the number of children in prison. Daniel Macallair in the San Francisco Bay View tells us that:

“According to the Human Rights Watch study, 26 percent of the children in the United States condemned to permanent imprisonment were sentenced under the felony murder law. The felony murder law mandates that even when someone is only marginally involved in a homicide, they are held to the same level of responsibility as the primary perpetrator, even if they had no intention to harm anyone and possessed no weapon. European countries and many states have abandoned the felony murder law as unjust, but it continues to be practiced in California

Justice in the United States is a function of individual state laws and discretionary charging practices by prosecutors. As it is now, 42 states allow children to be sentenced to prison without the possibility of ever being released. Of these 42 states, six – California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri – account for more than 1,500 of the 2,270 total

Many of these children committed their crimes when they were 14 or younger, but the laws make no exception and show no mercy. Judges have no discretion, and they must impose the mandatory sentence of life in prison without hope of release.”

Prison Rehabilitation: Our prisons are filled with the mentally ill. Those who are not mentally ill are deeply wounded by the evolution of their lives. How long will we continue to see these facts as THEIR problems rather than OUR problems? We sacrifice our innocent people to less than desirable experiences everyday because we are too lazy to offer competent psychological support to the seemingly unworthy. Repeat offenders often commit the same crimes for the same reasons. We could put an end to much of that by empowering those who CAN change. It is this same process of rehabilitation that can predict how appropriate rehabilitation is on an individual basis. Particularly, in cases of crime resulting from drug addiction and history of abuse the option of rehabilitation is promising. Every time a repeat offender violates the safety of an innocent citizen, we should blame ourselves because we COULD do this better but we choose NOT to because largely in this society we only care for the seemingly righteous but we are all guilty.