a rant. about the lack of justice in the world

[lirazel]

Dear state of Nebraska,

HOW THE HELL CAN "WILLFUL CRUELTY TO CHILD-POSSIBLE INJURY OR DEATH" BE A MISDEMEANOR? SOME TRAFFIC OFFENSES ARE A MISDEMEANOR! UNDERAGE DRINKING IS A MISDEMEANOR! BREAKING THE LEASH LAW IS A MISDEMEANOR! SOMEONE HURTING THEIR CHILD SHOULD NOT BE A DAMN MISDEMEANOR!

I just do not understand how our criminal justice system works. It's so deeply broken. In almost every state, assault on a stranger carries stronger penalties than beating your spouse or child. WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THAT THINKING? I just...I know it's got to be a holdover from the days when a man's wife and children were his (lawful) property and you weren't supposed to interfere into someone else's home. But dammit, we are no longer living in that time. Domestic violence should be taken SERIOUSLY.

Not to mention sexual abuse/rape. Especially of children. I think there should be a one-strike law. Seriously. Lock someone up forever if they sexually abuse or rape a child. The end. Or create some kind of community somewhere in the middle of nowhere in like Alaska or the southwestern desert where when child molesters have served their time they can have a "normal" life in the sense of having a job and living in their own home and going bowling or whatever but without any children in the community for them to hurt. There has been almost no success in "curing" people of pedophilia and we have to protect our children. I'm not usually a "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" kind of person, but in this one area, I absolutely am. (My recent reading on Warren Jeffs and the FLDS probably spurs a lot of this thinking—there were cases of forty or fifty year old men “marrying” twelve and thirteen year old girls and then getting five years in prison. FIVE YEARS. YOU CAN GET MORE THAN THAT FOR A POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA CHARGE.)

If you rape someone, you should be in jail for a very long time. Same if you murder or otherwise violently attack someone. Violent crimes are a legitimate reason to lock someone up. But other than that, prison sentences should be short and other modes of punishment/rehabilitation should be used. (Especially if you’re not going to lock up anyone for white collar wide-scale financial fraud of the type that ran our economy into the ground but you are going to lock up a kid who has a joint in his pocket.)

Marijuana should be completely decriminalized and non-violent drug offenses of other types should have VERY short confinement sentencing (honestly, I think it would be great if we went the route of the Netherlands and decriminalized everything and had government rehabilitation centers for drug addicts, but that will never, ever happen). Prostitution should also be decriminalized--keep solicitation as a crime if you want to, but when the average age for a "woman" entering the sex trade in this country is THIRTEEN YEARS OLD and everyone knows that prostitution is the last resort of desperate people, those people should not be treated as criminals for doing what they have to to survive, especially since it makes it nearly impossible for them to escape that life later if they want to—who’s going to hire someone with a sexual offense conviction on their record? (I actually have really complicated feelings about prostitution morally, but that is another post.)

Also we absolutely have to do away with the death penalty in this country. The question of whether capital punishment is ever acceptable isn’t even on the table (I happen to think reasonable people can disagree on this subject, though I know many disagree). It doesn’t matter whether it’s morally acceptable. The way in which it’s currently used—the reality we’re living in—is a study in perpetuated injustice. It’s hopelessly racist—look at the stats of rates of capital punishment for a black person killing a white person versus a white person killing a black person sometime and prepare to throw up. And we also KNOW FOR A FACT that we have executed many innocent people in this country. This is not acceptable. Period. We have to outlaw this.

None of this will happen. There are too many people invested in keeping the status quo. Pharmaceutical companies are completely dedicated to keeping marijuana illegal so that people can’t treat their pain through its use instead of through their costly drugs. People who flat-out do not care about poor women are never going to decriminalize prostitution. And in a world where the first reaction to a rape claim is ALWAYS figuring out a way to blame it on the victim, it will never be prosecuted the way it should be (I cannot even bring myself to think about the recent case with the girl who committed suicide after being raped by her teacher and he got a slap on the wrist because the judge blamed HER. AT FOURTEEN). On top of that, new studies show that when white people find out that the criminal justice system (especially the death penalty) is racist against black people, they become MORE likely to support it. Our world is hopelessly, hopelessly screwed up. There is so much we need to change. But the people in charge are invested in the system, in the pockets of lobbyists and people who make donations to their reelection campaigns. Honestly, sometimes I feel like giving up completely on a search for justice. It seems like a Sisyphean task.

My job has made me trust the criminal justice system LESS because I’ve seen how it actually works. That is not the way a free people should live. Not that the US is really the bastion for virtue and freedom that we pretend to be—between drone strikes and consistently pissing on the concept of Tribal sovereignty in this country, we’re basically a bunch of bullies who just so happen to have the biggest stick to beat down the little guys with.

Ugh. I’m so sick of the world.