Courts & Prisons |
Our Failed Criminal Justice System Anyone
who has lived both in the United States and in a Western European country cannot
help but to notice that western Europe, whose culture resembles ours, has a far
smaller crime rate than we. The evidence is the recidivism rate. A recidivist is
someone who commits more than one crime. The European recidivism rate is 20%.
The American recidivism rate is 76%. The
principal reason for this discrepancy is that our prisons foster and encourage
recidivism, while the European prisons succeed in bringing about rehabilitation.
Our prisons, like all prisons everywhere, deprive the prisoner of his freedom.
That is the entire punishment in European prisons. European prisons, and
particularly Scandinavian prisons, treat prisoners in a humane fashion. The
prisons in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, as in other countries,
are furnished like hotel rooms. Prisoners live in apartments with good
looking furniture. They have access to television, books, and radios as well as
newspapers. They can receive visitors who may stay overnight and they are given
opportunities to learn useful trades. Our
prisons are a nightmare. They consist of staggered cells, few if any visitors,
and harsh treatment by brutal guards. Scandinavian prisons encourage friendship
between guards and prisoners. In sum, European prison employees remember that
the prisoner remains a human being who has human needs and feelings. Our prison
employees are sadists who enjoy treating prisoners in a cruel and dismissive
manner and therefore do not allow them a chance to respect their fellow men, as
they are not respected by the prison guards whose sole purpose is to make life
as unbearable as possible. As a result, most European offenders go to prison
only once and only one in five ever become offenders again. Our prisoners go to
prison numerous times, as three out of four are recidivists.
Our
prisons are big business. Not only the prison administrators and other prison
employees benefit from large numbers of prisoners, but those who supply our
prisons with food, clothing, electricity, water, and much more, make a lot of
money from supplying prisons. Therefore it is in the interest of prison
employees to make sure most prisoners come back, as the income of the employees
and outside suppliers is dependent on large number of recidivists. This is not possible in Europe
because there are few repeat offenders, so that the income of the prison
employees cannot depend on recidivism. Europeans also have a smaller violence
rate than we. In Europe, the murder rate is one per hundred thousand
inhabitants. Our murder rate is 6.4 per hundred thousand. Because our
Constitution includes the right to own a firearm, 35% of whites own a gun.
Whites constitute 85% of the American population. No more than 2% of Americans
are of East Asian extraction, and 13% are of African origin. Afro-Americans own
25% of legal guns but obtain a large number of guns by illegal means. This leads
to a large number of murders and assaults with deadly weapons within the black
population. The American black community suffers great disadvantages, not only
because of poverty, but also because over 80% of black children grow up in one
parent households without the presence of their fathers.
This leads to a vast rate of criminal behavior and a reasonable
prediction that a large portion of newborn black children in America will be
imprisoned as adults. Our criminal justice system also
punishes political opinions. This is prohibited by our constitution.
Nevertheless, our two tier criminal justice system penalizes Republicans while
allowing Democrats to commit all kinds of crimes without being prosecuted. Unlike
all European countries, we maintain the death penalty in 28 US states, the
federal government, and the military. The
so called death penalty exists in this country although it is evident that the
death penalty does not deter murder. In
sum, it is certain that our high crime rate is largely caused by our criminal
justice system, which could be altered to lead to a much smaller crime rate if
our politicians were willing to replace brutality with
a humane criminal
justice system. Shalom u'vracha. |