Criminal Justice


I love Orange is the New Black. I love the questions it raises about humanity, morality and our country's jacked up criminal justice system. While at TCU I attended a seminar held by falsely imprisoned men who had lost decades for crimes they didn't commit. I have such a passion for criminal justice and it makes me sick that we throw people into a system that only hardens them and encourages recidivism. I'm all for justice. But I'm also for humanity.

I can't even explain the many ways my heart broke hearing these men talk about how they were scapegoated for crimes they didn't commit. One of them wasn't even in the same state as the crime when it was committed! It's absolutely unreal...the horror stories that are out there told by people who have lost huge chunks of their lives to a broken system.



And who do we have to fix this system? Politicians who don't care? Prison administration who just wants to fill racks and cut costs? Who is the advocate for mistreated inmates? Who is there to prepare these people for live outside of the prison walls? At the seminar, one man said that he had ten dollars in his pant pocket, no phone (since he was incarcerated prior to their invention) and no ride. In the dead of night he was spit out onto the street like an animal and left to fend for himself - and this was a man who hadn't even committed a crime!

Profiling is real. Prisoner abuse is real. Innocent people going to jail is real. We live in a country that would rather throw people in jail than try to rehabilitate them, even if they're just low level offenders; while all that does is end up hardening them, setting them up for failure, getting them so used to life in prison that they can't imagine going anywhere else. There are ex-cons out there who deliberately commit crimes when they get out because they have no where else to go, because that was the only life they knew and could imagine living.

I just don't understand how it is 2016 and America has the highest number of prisoners IN THE WORLD. Just slap a "criminal" label on them and lock them away...that's all this country does. We fill quotas, fill beds and then turn a blind eye. And the only way things are going to change is if changing it helps our bottom line. Because this isn't the country that was originally built - this is a heartless machine concerned only with the bottom line.

Well guess what? Fixing our justice system will actually help our bottom line! It means more rehabilitation, less bed-filling, actually giving a shit about low-level offenders and viewing them as people who need help rather than hardening. Do you know how much tax payers and states would save if we fixed the system instead of feeding people to it? 

I am so incredibly disturbed by our educational system, by our justice system, by our disregard for the elderly and the poor. And what can I do about it? 
I play bingo with the elderly, I try to help the poor, I'm a teacher...but I want laws to change, I want our country to have a sense of humanity...to see the green in someone's eyes before they grab at the green in their pockets. This life...it isn't every man for himself...so whenever you can, wherever you can, throw someone a life jacket. 



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