This anonymous essay comes from a friend of a friend with whom I do volunteer work. 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 both believable and compelling.
14 Responses to “A Mother’s Outrage”
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I cannot disagree with your assessment nor her assessment. In CA some said the prison system grew too big too fast such that most of the rules and regulations that guide and restrain state agencies were ignored and perceived erroneously to not be applicable. This growth followed soon on the heels of a coordinating agency battling the legacy of each warden operating what many called a fiefdom–and remnants of that culture remain to this day. I suspect similar lack of accountability and independence coupled with power played out in a large number of other criminal justice agencies across this country, with disastrous results.
You, TC, and jl and I find what she has to say both believeable and compelling because we already have reason to know it is true. But the people out there whose mantras are "If you don't want to be in trouble with police, don't break the law," "If you don't want to go to prison, don't break the law," "People who are in prison are there because they broke the law," – this will not even begin to convince one of them. Not one. They will not even hear it as a whine (maybe a faint buzz.) To rise to the level of whine it would have to provide specific examples of how people have been treated by the justice system. We have had that evidence presented, and we have all seen how people merely blame the victims and move on.
This mother in pain gives a great deal more benefit of the doubt than I would to those who choose to believe the lies. I think that choice is plain and simple evil. Those who choose to believe do so not because they want to believe, not even just because it is easier, but because to face the truth would mean admitting oneself complicit in the evil. And the truly evil cannot stand to do that. As Scott Peck said, they are the "People of the Lie."
It grieves me to say you make excellent points and undoubtedly are right about many. When the data says 62% of adults in the US experience at least a year of major poverty, more people need to find a "them" to feel superior to or better than and become complicit in the evil.
Joanne, I have heard that tripe more than once when I post anything that suggests we don't have a perfect justice system. Most people have no idea of what really goes on with our courts, police, and prisons.
JD, I agree with you up to a point, buty I think there is another consideration here. Admitting the truth acknowledges not only complicity in the evil, but also, responsivility to do something to help change it.
Or lawsuit liabilities according to the lawyers for law enforcement and correctional agencies.
Yes, you're both right, but TC's comment is more likely to be general because it is more likely to be subconscious. If a lawsuit even occurs to you, you have already admitted complicity, deny it as you will.
If you are just complicit as a citizen, rather than a victim of abuse, you have no standing to sue.
She has seen the other side, alright! Until you have seen it, you won't believe how crooked and perverse life inside a prison is. Everything is upside down and downside up in there. What could be a slight on the outside could be a reason to get you killed on the inside! Believe that!
Having seen the justice system at work with my nephew, I fully understand this lady. I realize that my nephew was not treated as badly as he could have been, but the circumstances he found himself in, and what it brought to our family was shocking to all of us. We believed the lies we had been taught before he got sent to jail. He was treated as a subhuman, and we, his family, as suspects, as long as he was jailed.
The pain of this mother can be felt and understood to a certain degree because many of us have seen how all aspect of the criminal justice system are tainted, if not personally then from the many reports and articles that you have posted here, TomCat, and from those posted on sites like Care2 or other progressive media. Of course a true understanding of the pain is restricted to those who've had similar experiences with how this justice system functions in one area or another, from racial profiling by cops at the beginning of the chain right up to the incarceration which is only set up to punish as much as possible for the lowest cost possible and not to help those incarcerated to better themselves, reintegrate back into society and stay out of the closed circle of re-offending and punishment. There are few second chances given in the current system, and from this mother's story there seem to be very few first chances for some either.
However, this criminal justice system is a reflection of American society, and if it is going to change for the better, then this society needs to change for the better first. Voting Republican is obviously not the way to go, voting Democrat would be much better, and vorting for Bernie would be best.
While I agree overall, I have to be fair. Bill and Hillary wewre willing partners on in the tough-on-crime movement that funded prison construction, lengenthed sentences, established manditory minimums, declared prisoners are not worthy to receive Pell Grants, cut rehabilitative services, and more. Democrats must npt throw people under the bus fearing another "Willie Horton" style attack from Republicans.
This mother's anger and anguish is very palpable, believable and compelling.
There are too many incidents in both of our countries, although I think more in the US. I think of the Robert Dziekański killing in 2007 at the Vancouver Internatioinal Airport at the hands of RCMP officers.
Four constables were later brought up on charges and at least one is in prison. Dziekański's mother still asks why!
Steven Truscott "…was wrongly sentenced to death in 1959 for the rape and murder of classmate Lynne Harper. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He continued to maintain his innocence until 2007, when his conviction was declared a miscarriage of justice and he was formally acquitted of the crime though not declared factually innocent. . . . He was released on parole on October 21, 1969 and his parole restrictions were lifted on November 12, 1974."
David Milgaard "…was wrongfully convicted for the rape and murder of nursing assistant Gail Miller. He was released and compensated after spending 23 years in prison."
These are 3 well known Canadian cases. There are many more US cases that I have learned about that run the gamut of prosecutorial misconduct, evidence issues, poor defence, police shootings etc. Some we hear about in the news, others through such organisations as Amnesty International.
The phrase "If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem." is so apt.
Thanks for your replies. I understand that the author could not believe that others would be interested in what she had to say. This article has had much mofe traffic that my tribute to MLK's Dream speech!