CRIMINAL JUSTICE RE-FORM
by Ruth A. Sheets
Last week I completed a survey from an organization called
“Restoring Justice.” It caused me to stop and think about the whole
concept of criminal justice and the imperative that it be reformed or rather,
reworked. Here is an expanded version of my response to their survey.
The criminal justice issue closest to me is the “school to
prison pipeline” that is alive and well in many communities, particularly
communities of color. I ask into the wind, how can such a thing exist in
an “enlightened” nation. I wonder all the time what great things could be
done by those young people had they not been shuttled into prisons. As a
teacher I see the hopelessness in a community where violence and gangs have
been allowed to take over the hearts and minds of young people. A giant
prison stands in our city and the kids regularly see it. They become used
to the idea they might end up inside at some point. That is a crime and a
disgrace!
Poverty is a critical force in my city of Chester.
Some young people see guns as their way to power, prominence, and
survival. It doesn't work out, but they keep believing it will which
often brings a life (or death) no one should ever be corralled into as animals
are corralled before being led to the slaughter.
What we need is hope and real resources to bring about a new
vision of what life should be. We need opportunities for young people to
try out different careers, to share their creativity, to live without the
knowledge that they may go days without food. They need the assurance
that they have a voice, that they matter which prison can’t
provide.
Chester is a food desert. Junk food is readily
available, though. Most home owners don't have the funds to maintain
their homes as they would like to. Landlords and absentee landlords don’t
seem to be able to do much better, by neglect or lack of funds themselves.
Police here only seem to respond after an act of violence,
after a death or injury. I have heard residents say that police know who
have the guns and how they come into the hands of young men, but do nothing to
stop it. Perhaps the police are ensuring their job security.
Perhaps they are OK with our young men and women filling up the prisons.
Perhaps they simply are overwhelmed and can’t function as needed. In any
case, the situation is unacceptable.
I can’t help but feel as though kids are singled out from
very early ages as targets “to be watched,” criminals in training. Those
kids may have problems in school. The challenges of education for some
children can let them slip through the widening cracks that lack of support
resources causes. Sometimes gangs or crime can help them feel important.
Poverty is plentiful here. Research has shown that
poverty is devastating on every aspect of life. It contributes to a whole
range of physical and emotional conditions including asthma, high blood pressure,
heart disease, obesity, generalized anger and depression, and more. It’s
often hard to think clearly when hungry or worried where the rent money is
coming from. The children feel and are impacted by the anxiety of the
parents.
Poverty’s devastation manifests in many ways, some of those
ways are disruptive, even criminal. Knowing what poverty can do should be
the trigger that puts into motion many community resources on behalf of our
precious children and their families. They should not have to face alone,
this poverty that is not of their own making. Minor acts of anger,
vandalism, insubordination should not be a child’s ticket to the criminal
justice system roundup, not if we care about our kids and our
communities.
When a “crime” is committed and someone is arrested, the
city’s people seldom have money for bail. They can’t afford a lawyer and
must settle for a public defender who may well be dedicated and caring but has
hundreds, even a thousand clients to defend. Prosecutors these days
offer outrageous plea bargains that force kids to plead guilty whether or not
they are , for fear a jury might give them an even worse penalty. That is
no way to treat human beings, particularly children and it is not
justice. But, we not only allow this plea-bargain railroading, we as a
society encourage it as a time-saving measure. We justify it by gratitude
it’s not our kid and that kid must have done something even if
not this particular crime. – “guilty until proven guilty (or maybe not even
proven guilty ever).
People do not come out of prison unchanged. Sometimes
they have grown up in prison and learn to see their actions as the negative
acts they were. Others are so bruised and battered by the experience they
come out looking to hurt others the way they have been hurt. Prison
lessons may be helpful for a few, but is it worth the risk, the agony of time
behind bars?
We all need the system to change even if we don’t know it
yet. Our people are too precious to languish in prisons. Our kids deserve
better. They don’t deserve to have parents in jail. They don’t need
to be in jail unless the crime is serious (murder or close to it). Even
then, it is likely the young “criminal” is dealing with a mental or social
illness in addition to facing the results of a plea bargain or court
decision. Quality mental health treatment should be mandatory
The only way we as a nation will be able to manage the
re-visioning of the criminal justice system is to look at it with open minds
from the ground up. We must begin with our basic assumptions about crime
and punishment. We need to look at who benefits from the system as it is
now and acknowledge that these forces will do everything in their significant
power to insure that any changes that occur will, at most, be minor and
on the fringe. We the people need to push through anyway so the system
can for the first time ever, actually provide a reasonable level of security in
our communities, supports for families who have had encounters with the
criminal justice system, and a new means of rehabilitation.
Training for protect and serve officers in communities must
be extensive and their actual tasks must be spelled out as well as the way they
use their authority. That should be true as well for prison staff
(whatever that looks like), judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and
everyone who has reason to work in the new justice system.
It is time we all begin thinking about what we need in our
communities rather than what makes us feel safe from everyone who scares
us. Because criminal justice has become so integrated into everything we
do, as we work for change, we will need to actively address systemic racism,
our culture of rape and misogyny in general, our xenophobia while we are expecting
people from elsewhere to pick our fruit and vegetables and clean our
toilets. The crimes against the people that the very wealthy perpetrate
are no less significant than the crimes committed by the poor and their money
should not give them any advantage.
Hatred, anger, fear, these emotions are strong and can make
us feel powerful, but they can be destructive. Right now, they are mostly
allowed to white men who seem to be able to wield all three with impunity
unless they are really poor. Everyone should learn to manage those
emotions within themselves instead of taking their feelings to the streets to
hurt others.
