Blue Notes from a Red Zone

And Justice for All?

No matter how many debates range about the Pledge of Allegiance, or the Bill of Rights, or what the founders meant in the Declaration of Independence, there is one thing we can all agree on: the United States was founded on the nation of “liberty and justice for all.”

Unfortunately, these are the precise concepts we can’t seem to get right. We start trading liberty for security every time the road looks a little rough, despite the fact that “less freedom equals greater safety” is a false equation. The “Patriot” Act is our latest egregious foray into curbing civil liberties in the hope of avoiding harm. Just yesterday we had the spectacle of the FBI telling us that yes, they had wiretapped the wrong people indiscriminately, and they were keeping the tapes, but heck, they won’t really listen to them for long. At the same time, we had the generals telling us that the incidence of world-wide terrorism is certainly on the increase, a regrettably lagging “indicator of success” in our war on terror. The evidence of encroachment upon our civil liberties is everywhere. The evidence that we are safer as a result is not quite so easy to pinpoint.

However, tonight I’m more concerned with the “and justice for all” portion of the pledge. Because I don’t think we understand the concept of justice any better than we understand the concept of civil liberty.

Earlier this week, I received yet another horrific forwarded e-mail, which inadvertently pointed out how easy it is to assume “justice” is only for people like us, and “for all” was a slip of the pen. The e-mail was in regard to the Arizona sheriff who uses barbed wire to enclose tent cities housing 2000 inmates, in heat reaching 138 degrees (heat that shattered windshields and prevented aircraft from landing). The e-mail, which was reported as factual on www.snopes.com, gleefully recounts a long list of sadistic, inhumane practices carried out on a captive audience. These include the use of chain gangs for men and women at no pay; the reduction of meals to twice a day (with moldy bologna sandwiches frequently on the menu); and constant humiliation (such as clothing male prisoners in nothing but pink boxer shorts and pink socks). Sheriff Arpaio makes money on the meals by charging inmates $1 a day for food that costs only 40 cents, and brags: “It costs more to feed our police dogs than our inmates. The dogs never committed a crime, and they’re working for a living.”

The e-mail, and the fact-checking, go on and on, but it’s all just more of the same. And it is all absolutely sickening.

Let’s start with the fact that this is a county facility, which means that everyone confined in it is either awaiting trial, or has been convicted of a misdemeanor. Our brave sheriff and his followers may revel in treating criminals in conditions that would earn closure from agencies regulating cruelty to animals, but the “criminals” they are treating so abominably are not your stereotypical rapists and thugs, but are individuals who have not been proven guilty, or who have been convicted of minor offenses, such as possession of small quantities of marijuana, or bouncing a check, or writing graffiti on a fence.

Let’s continue with the fact that the police are not 100% accurate in their arrests, nor are they able to arrest everyone who commits a crime. It’s a pretty safe bet that the brothers in the elite fraternity houses who smoke pot and drink beer in the basement are less likely to be arrested than their impoverished neighbors two blocks over who are sitting in a parked car. And, should by some mischance the well-connected frat boys get arrested, their chances of receiving a jail term are markedly less than those whose recreation takes place in broken-down vehicles. They have all committed the same crime, but the standards of “justice” are markedly different. Also, let us not forget the poor, 73-year-old woman in New Orleans, who was arrested for looting while retrieving a sausage she had stored in a cooler in the trunk of her car. The owner of the store she had supposedly looted kept stressing that the store didn’t carry the sausage the woman was holding, and that even if they did, the woman was more than welcome to whatever kept her from starvation. But it didn’t matter. The woman was held in jail without power, in the heat, for days on end, and the police have yet to drop charges.

Next, let’s address effectiveness. Of course, one e-mail stated, no one incarcerated by Sheriff Arpaio is going to commit another crime. But where is the evidence to back this up? In my experience, treating people like the dregs of humanity rarely produces positive results. Instead, it increases alienation, the knowledge that no one gives a damn, and a further push toward the outskirts of society. The greatest gains in preventing recidivism (and there is plenty of evidence to back this up – check the Florida Department of Corrections website, for one) are achieved when inmates receive substance abuse and mental health treatment, vocational skill training, educational opportunities, and discharge planning that assists inmates in finding jobs, housing and meals. The costs of rehabilitation are significantly less than those of repeated incarceration, and yet we continue to invest heavily in prisons, and cut back on even the most modest of rehabilitation programs.

I could go on, but to be honest, it’s all beside the point. The reason this e-mail appalled me so greatly was the fact that there are huge numbers of people eager to see others degraded and abused. They assume their own superiority, and without knowing a single man or woman incarcerated in this hell hole in Arizona, they have concluded that every one of them deserves to be treated as animals. When I mentioned the Arizona jail to others, most recoiled in horror, but there was a lot of “it’s jail, not Club Med,” as well. Others thought it was funny. When I said, “these people are in for misdemeanors,” they said, “oh, that’s wrong.” But their first reaction was to enjoy the misery of others. And as long as there are enough of us ready to judge without thought, then the entire system of judgment will be forever flawed.

posted by Lenore Wilson @ 11:51 PM