This essay comes from a friend of a friend. I do not know who she is. However, I have heard many stories from people who believed in the criminal justice system in this country, until they or a member of their family learned first hand that their experience was the polar opposite of what they had believed. This is one mother’s reaction to such an experience.
July 26, 2015
What I want people to know is what I’ve learned over the past two years – how my life is upside down both philosophically and emotionally. Philosophically, because what I learned, believed about our justice system is just thrown under the bus. I am angry. Angry at people who are charged with our wonderful, ideal system and have perverted it and made us all accomplices in torture and harm. We were standing shoulder to shoulder with prison guards who abuse prisoners; DAs and police who lie, who give up honesty and integrity to convict.
We became part of the problem. Only we didn’t even realize there was a problem. They lie. They suck us in to be their accomplices. We asked no questions. We believed them. No. We believed the idea of a system. We believed they were the embodiment of truth. They kept us safe from people who would harm us, who were really terrible people.
But what do they do? “Lose” evidence, lie to protect themselves, serve as judge and jury to convict whom they have decided is guilty. Screw looking at evidence. How did they get to the place where they are in such a hallowed system of our country, protecting our country’s ideals, being the keeper for those ideals and now corrupting those ideals.
Am I naïve? Not now. Was I? Yes. But I’m in the company of the majority of our country. I listen over and over and OVER again to “I had no idea how this system works! I was shocked to learn how it really works.” Problem is – no one does know until it happens. No one believes until it does happen.
I’m angry that I was blindsided. Is it my fault? Should I have known better? WHY SHOULD I!?!! Where’s the disconnect here? That our system as taught to high-schoolers is just too much of a fairy tale? I should know better than to believe such a fairy tale could actually work? Are the people in the justice system just laughing at me for being so naive?
Or is the disconnect in how people have subverted the ideal? The people who have gotten used to having it their way? People who have decide they are smarter than tedious “truth and justice” and will improve a hopelessly naïve system?
Are we in The Matrix*? They have created this fake world that they’ve sold us on that every thing is right in our world, that they have the knowledge and expertise to keep it the ideal it is.
But behind their words and assurances that create the perfect illusion is a world of crumbling, moldy, derelict laws. A blighted world wildly out of control with more and more laws, penalties, and incarcerations for longer and longer times. A world destroyed with smoking embers, blown out, burned down buildings, haunted people. Out of sight behind the illusion they create with their paternalistic, mesmerizing lies! Do we choose to believe their lies because it’s just easier? No! I think we believe because we truly believe that they are the pillars of our justice system. We hear their excuses—which they call “reasons”—and that reinforces what we already instinctively believe.
But now pieces of their façade may be cracking. Can they hold it together and continue to make us believe their fake world? We know what is really behind their world of “safety, justice and truth”. We’ve seen and heard the destroyed lives, the money taken from society and spent to warehouse people and then return wasted people with wasted lives and difficult options. The LIES – The harm – The self-supporting arguments.
What will it take to bring down the phony façade of a tough on crime, retribution, vengeance model of justice and return us to where most people already think we are: convicting wrong-doers but with consideration of mitigating or extenuating circumstances, incarcerating only people who are a threat and then rehabilitating them so they can live as successful citizens. Giving people a chance to pay for their crime and then re-joining society. Being humans helping humans.
My passion. I want people to know what I’ve learned. I want to shock them awake to what our criminal justice system has become. No, ladies and gentlemen, it is not what you believe it is.
Unfortunately, most of you will never really find that out. No, it’s not fortunate that you will never have a loved one, or yourself, caught up in this horrible system. It’s not fortunate that you’ll never have an accusation made at you of something you never did. It’s not fortunate that you get to keep living oblivious to how our criminal justice system has lost its way in mandatory sentencing. Because unless you are unfortunate enough to have personal contact with this devastating system, you won’t try to do something about it.
(From Wikipedia: The Matrix movie depicts a dystopian [an imaginary community or society that is undesirable or frightening] future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality called “the Matrix”, created by sentient machines to subdue the human population,)
Personally, I find what she has to say believable and compelling.
14 Responses to “A Mother’s Outrage”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Thanks TC–makes my heart grieve for the justice denied. Oops–please delete other one in moderation.
I'll delete the first.
Thanks
Cross posted to Care2 at:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/663679641/3921391
A very worthwhile re-post!
https://www.7thstep.org/blog/2015/08/28/a-mothers-outrage/
The injustices done to the guilty probably pale in comparison to the justice denied to the innocent – but both are happening and both are, in my opinion, appalling, shameful, and unworthy of our nation. And mostly avoidable. I will probably sound like a broken record here, but government is intended to serve the people; like any other servant, it is not going to do its best work if it is systematically starved and beaten. I am so tired of hearing people complain "Liberals just want to throw money at problems." No, we don't But we don't expect to get silk purses out of sows' ears either. An appripriate amount of money, translated into adequate supplies and adequate manpower, and an appropriate amount of oversight are both needed to get the job done RIGHT.
Of course, too many in our society seem to think that prisoners have NO rights (innocent or guilty, it doesn't seem to matter, or else they think being locked up is the same as a conviction). I suppose they are the same people who can't see why their taxes should be used for schools if they have no children, or if their children are grown. Try to get it through their heads that the quality of one's own life depends heavily on the quality of the people around one, and you will soon feel like you are trying to teach a pig to sing (spoiler: it wastes your time and annoys the pig).
The one recent glimmer of hope is that the Senate criminal justice reform package made it out of committee on a 7 -5 vote to be heard on the Senate floor…sadly the chair prevented some good amendments being considered for the package–perhaps from the floor?
A powerful essay from the heart.
A mother's pain to which I can't even fathom her depth of loss. No words typed here, will or can take her pain away. What a story of the injustices done in the criminal justice system.
Thanks, TC for this.
There is nothing specific in this story, not even an alusion to what apparently happened in this woman's life, but, if you read "The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," by Michelle Alexander, to which I have referred onC2 numerous times, you will get the full story.
The prison system as a Penitentiary, a place to which offenders can be sent so that they can meditate on their actions, and become "penitent" was a nice idea, perhaps, but prisons are not, have for a looong time not, designed to reform, but to punish, and then to warehouse people of color, furthering the destruction of any semblance of cohesiveness of family for young people of color. This virtually guarantees that people of color will not grow up with a sense of worth, of belonging to the larger culture, the one which tells them that their lives do not matter.
The system also takes away the right to vote, even for people convicted of minor drug offences, with which we members of the "in crowd" could easily get away. So, even before Alabama closed its DMV offices, just recently, we had well over a million people taken from the voting rolls. And, I' willing to bet this has historically occurred in many more "red" states than "blue."
Thanks, Mitch. The lack of detail struck me also, and I fear some of those who already "don't get it" will find it too vague to convince. But seriously, if it were your son, or your husband, or daughter or wife, would you want to post all those details which are in many ways only a distraction? Like stripping to the skin in public, it would be.
Personally, the saddest phrase in this essay is …
The reason is because that question goes to the very basic premise of our judicial system of blind, impartial fairness: that there really IS a blindfolded lady holding the scales of justice.
Far too often and for far too many people, there is no blindfold … there are no scales.
There are scales… with thumbs.
I couldn't open this last night, now that I have, I am so sad. I have referred before to my nephew's incarceration, and how he and his family were treated, for a minor crime, in a county jail. HOw much more horrible the conditions must be in real prisons. TC, your compassion and dedication to your guys should be the standard in all prisons,not just the exception. I feel that people who are imprisoned should be given a chance to rehabilitate themselves, get educated, and move on after their terms are ended, Sadly, we all know that is not the case.
I know a couple of people screwed over by the system. One was lucky enough to get probation, while the "mastermind" got away scot free..another, who I only met a few times, but whose son was friends with mine, was totally railroaded. He spent over 15 years in prison, lost his home & business (but not his wife & family). Finally a new lawyer agreed to take his case & started a real investigation – suddenly the State decided they would release him if he took an alfred plea (so he couldn't sue). He would not plea guilty, always claimed to be innocent & could have gotten out in 7-10 years IF he would say he was guilty. So he took the alfred plea & they let him out almost 6 mo. after he did that. The alfred plea just says he agrees that the State had a convincing case to begin with – oddly enough, all the evidence was bull$hit. The "crime scene was bulldozed before he was even arrested…it's all weird & we never believed the crooks running things around here. But he is out now & he & his wife went to another state to be near their older kid. My sons' friend stayed in Illinois & we still hear from him occassionally. So yes, we know to never trust "the system".