Locked Up, Locked Down, and Goodbye (Part 1)

A couple weekends ago a police officer in Fort Worth, TX killed a woman in her own home while her eight year old nephew was there with her. The victim was a black premed student. The perpetrator was a white police officer. This dynamic is nothing new and sadly these occurrences are frequent and all over the country. Every time this happens, there's a cry for training, accountability, transparency, and other catch phrases/feel good lingo. There have been a couple of police officers who were found guilty of murder and sentenced to jail sentences in the last year (Jason Van Dyke - murderer of Laquan McDonald and Amber Guyger - murderer of Botham John). This happens too infrequently when compared to the number of police officers who are murderers who get away with it. This is not the topic of discussion here but it is a basis of the overall point of a totally broken justice system in the United States. Race and class are the ultimate indicators of whether it is more or less likely that justice will be served. Justice in this case is thought to be a punishment for the perpetrator that gives the victim solace and a chance to recover. It should be equal in brevity and proportion to the crime. Unfortunately, punishment is usually served as a jail sentence or probation term. These both result in the perpetrator becoming a part of the system and having difficulties living a "normal" life afterwards if there is an afterwards.

There is an abundance of statistical data which shows how the justice system disproportionately impacts black, brown, and poor people when compared to their counterparts. Watch 13th by Ava Duvernay, read "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander, watch any public court cases, look up Department of Justice reports i.e. Ferguson reports, watch the any interview of Cyntoiya Brown etc. There is information to be read and processed wherever one may want to look. Many of the works arrive at the same conclusion that black, brown, and poor people are those more likely to be imprisoned even for the same crime committed by a wealthy or white counterpart and much more harshly punished for said crime. Removing race from the argument, then poor or less privileged individuals stand to be overly prosecuted for crimes they do and do not commit. For crimes of which they are convicted. The occurrences of the number of people who are innocent and wrongly convicted in prison is much more likely than one wants to admit. These people not only include minorities but also people from poor families in rural and urban areas. These people are many times held in jail for extended periods of time before even being convicted because they cannot afford to post bail before the trial. So these "innocent until proven guilty" individuals are immediately treated as guilty criminals. See information about the Louisiana Criminal Justice system, private prisons, incentive programs, and ICE contracts, New Jersey bail program abolition, etc.

How can a sound justice system support and explain statistics which paint a distorted picture? Why is it acceptable for citizens to be excluded from the rights promised by the Bill of Rights because of race or class? How can such a system be proven to be effective, necessary, and justified? These very questions are leading me to understand and further empathize with those who are prison abolitionists. I am definitely able to stand on the principles of and with prison/justice system reformers, but I have been hesitant to be able to say just throw the whole system away. Marc Lamont Hill and Jouelzy have been those who I see most supporting prison abolition and I've just nodded and shrugged like yea okay, that's a pipe dream. And this is coming from someone who's father died in prison, who is mad at the system, who has been disadvantaged and conned by the system. Yet I was not definitive in wanting to do away with that very system. Well it's getting harder and harder to want reformation and not abolition. There are so many problems in every step of the process in the system that I really cannot see any other way.

Let's start with the police encounters after the commission of a crime. There are good detectives and good patrol officers but then again there are bad ones too. Those bad ones taint the system and sway the judgments. These bad apples have a history of padding the books. They find "the guy", "any guy", "a guy", of course he did it, and of this they are sure. They work with the state's office to develop the narrative of the crime and the story of why this is the right guy. If he is innocent and cannot afford a lawyer the accused is penalized for this. He sits in jail waiting for trial. He is mistreated at the expensive of the taxpayers while waiting to prove his innocence.

Then the court system is next to take advantage of the accused. In the actual courts there are more injustices to be committed. The state just wants to win a case, the public defender just wants to clear a case, and the judge wants to get to the next case. In the case of the state, they are in the habit of offering absurd plea deals to the accused. The plea is usually only 1/2 years off of the maximum sentence to give the allure of a manageable term. The state wants to avoid court at all costs because it becomes time-consuming and inconvenient. The public defender wants to help the accused in the best way possible, but sometimes they can be so overwhelmed they aren't even sure of your case specifics and they encourage taking the deal. Take a plea even if it means you are admitting to committing a crime even if you did not. Think of Kalief Browder's experience. His story has all of the previously mentioned elements. He decided to actually go through the system as it is his right to do and now he is dead. Dead from being irreversibly damaged, not rehabilitated, not saved, not punished for his crime, he was innocent. Isn't this supposed to be against the rules? Isn't this attorney supposed to fight for the defendant's rights and freedom? Should this be a case for negligence and in multiple occasions-disbarment? I don't know I'm just thinking out loud. The next body in the court is the jury, these 12 strangers who are supposed to be peers of the defendant. The jurors are rarely peers of the accused. 12 people carrying in their own bias and circumstance looking for the opportunity to make it right. Lastly, the judge who sits and presides over the cases and technicalities. The judge has the gift to listen to the case but not make the decision of guilt or innocence(unless it's a bench trial). The judge takes sentencing into account and will award time and punishment based on the facts of the crime. In this practice cases with seemingly identical facts result in drastically different terms and punishments, even when tried in the same county. This difference usually is because of race and wealth. See information about the judge in PA who was working with the private prison/detention center to keep it full so he could receive kickbacks. He was sentencing minors to long term sentences to the detention center so he could get the kickbacks. Literally selling them out.

In this one example five people can dramatically skew results and impact the defendant's life for forever. This is then repeated all over the country resulting in the current system which has millions of US citizens in prison, and some unknown amount of innocent people in jail, some guilty people over sentenced, and other guilty people under-punished. Just think of places like Chicago, where one rouge detective sullied hundreds of cases. There were so many people in Illinois prisons under suspicious circumstances that there is a moratorium on the death penalty. That's insane to even process. Yet, the state hasn't freed all of those people on death row and re-tried their case or redone the investigation...they are just privileged enough to sit in prison instead of being legally murdered.

Then there are the cases that take forever to be solved, which is a whole other convoluted system resulting in more injustice than justice. Well this is about as long as I like to keep a read, so I'll continue this conversation to part 2. Part 2, will be about the money and why it's not even being spent in the most efficient manner for society. It is spent in the most beneficial manner for the private prison system. The laws are meant to keep inmates coming back and the billing continues.