Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 3)

 [Continued from Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 2). sch 3/26/23.]

I am not writing against all punishment, let alone my own. I mean only to question the utility and justice of our criminal justice system. These thoughts predate my own arrest. It is my arrest that lets me say them; before I thought them bad for business.

I do doubt my position for debating justice. I never favored the positivists - that justice was what the government said was just. Also, I never cared much for Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr after reading his declaration that the law, not justice, was the judge's job. Let us define justice simply as fairness. As an example, let us go back to Measure for Measure:

 ISABELLA     Alas, alas!
    Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
    And He that might the vantage best have took
    Found out the remedy. How would you be,
    If He, which is the top of judgment, should
    But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
    And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
    Like man new made.

I have two questions:

1. Is a twelve-year sentence for a non-violent, victimless crime a good thing?
2. Would you say it was a good thing for you or your child going to prison for 12 years for a non-violent, victimless crime a good thing?

If you answered "no" to 2 but "yes" to one, I say you are an unjust hypocrite. I think giving the same answer to both questions is a sign of a just integrity, if morality begins and ends with the law.

My father finds our federal criminal justice system asinine. I see it as self-aggrandizing and asserting authority to underpin its self-aggrandizement.

A sentence is fair if its duration is not so much as to embarrass as overkill. I admit questioning my sentencing for a non-violent, victimless, first-time offense as overkill when compared with federal sentences such as bank robbery, or for reckless homicide under Indiana law. I have trouble seeing the common sense in my sentence.

Who will challenge the federal sentencing system? No one. Jobs depend on it, from police and correctional staff to cabinet officers to legislators. There remains still a difference between crack and powder cocaine sentences that can only be explained by hysteria and racism. [This is one thing that has changed only recently and incrementally over the past 13 years. sch 3/26/23.]

I do not expect to change anyone's mind about how to deal with crime. Crime and criminals are rightfully unpopular. But remember, everyone can be a criminal. You or a relative could be sharing a cell with me - it needs no more planning than did my own incarceration.

sch
 

[To be continued in Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 4). sch 3/26/23.]