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How the failure of our criminal justice system is a success to those who have prepared fertile ground to cultivate crime and profit from human suffering
By James Kor
Hiding in plain sight and loudly pointing fingers everywhere but at itself, the U.S. criminal justice system is the biggest, most lucrative yet harmful racketeering scheme ever operated. But, having become increasingly predatory and visibly counterproductive, the time is ripe for people to reexamine previous beliefs about that system. Let these easily verifiable facts serve as an apt preface to this free speech coming from an eyewitness who has sat in the front row since age seven in 1963.
- Plato wrote (circa 400 B.C.) that criminals exist because of poor education, a bad upbringing/training, and/or an evil constitution/government;
- The ancient Latin phrase, magnum emolumentum est justitia confirms that justice has been recognized as a very profitable business for millennia;
- In his book, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn wrote of Joseph Stalin’s government (USSR) looking at prisoners from an economic point of view; - John Steinbeck said the same in The Grapes of Wrath about California justice:
“He tol’ me up there the deputies got to take guys in. Sheriff gets seventy-five cents a day for each prisoner, an’ he feeds them for a quarter; If he ain’t got no prisoners he don’t make no profit.”
More informed about the subject than most, Nelson Mandela was not mistaken either when, in 1997, he voiced the truth that governments cause crime. Others had long recognized and been saying the same thing. But here in our purported EQUAL-JUSTICE-UNDER-LAW America, how could such an evil possibility become a reality? Why would a government supposedly of, by, and for “The People” cause crime when its most important duty is to do the opposite, by protecting the people? Why? Because profit is one thing, justice is another. So, subject to the control of an absolute monopoly (government) that profits through perpetuating and increasing its power, which of the two prevails in the obvious conflict of interest: profit or justice? 2+2≠5.
People? For yourselves and your children who rely on you to hold your government more accountable, might you now open your eyes and muster the courage to demand changes and the imposition of consequences for those who would seek to continue profiting from the broken status quo? The United States has the dubious distinction of being the most violent industrialized democracy in the world. Crime, mass incarceration, epidemics of wrongful convictions, mass shootings, unprecedented numbers of police beatings and killings of citizens, openly corrupt courts, and truly obscene financial costs attached to it all are part of what makes up the visible complexion of injustice and institutionalized racism in America.
“A just system of human government is stable, but violence resonates in the unjust society.”
-unknown
George Bernard Shaw said, “We shall only be governed as well as we deserve.” If American Society deserves to be made safer, it must first put aside differences that are less important than the collective safety of an entire population. Honest answers to the most pertinent questions are of paramount importance if people are going to be brave enough to confront reality; Why did government officials pass laws prohibiting the education of “Negroes” in the 1800s? Good people can surely see that, since then, each preceding generation of African American parents has been less capable of assisting in educating its children. Moreover, it doesn’t take a genius intellect to see that this is a huge part of how racists in our government have made certain, for centuries, that disproportionate numbers of Blacks would be imprisoned and permanently neutralized as a voting, political class. Another question going directly to the roots of the issue is this: Why has the potential for rehabilitation of criminal offenders been intentionally obstructed and/or sabotaged by government officials, for decades, even into the 21st century? Look at the ABCs, people. Poor education? Bad training/upbringing, a vicious government, or an inadequate constitution? In citing these factors, Plato pointed directly at what a bad, predatory government could intentionally facilitate to create criminals and cause crime. So, it is no accident, anomaly, or naturally developing consequence that the U.S. has consistently maintained the highest rate of repeat offenders in the world. This should be seen not merely as being harmful to our society but embarrassing as well, particularly for those who view themselves as patriots. It seems obvious that everyone, including the most patriotic, should feel ashamed that such abysmal failure has been wrought in their names. Why angry? Because it has been through the selfish interests of the few that the U.S. justice system has been made inferior to that of many other nations while many continue to suffer.
For instance, in the 25 years after it redirected its criminal justice mandate towards safely reintegrating offenders back into society, Canada reduced its rate of repeat offenders to less than half of what it had been previously. Basic cause and effect tells us that good people with good motives get good results. A very telling coincidence shows itself when one considers that even the communist country of Cuba was able to accomplish the same thing by ensuring prisoners’ rehabilitation (13-15% recidivism rate.)
The 2+2=4 social math is mind-boggling in its simplicity: more criminals and more repeat offenders equals more crimes, equals more victims, equals a less safe public, equals a diabolically lucrative racketeering scheme hiding in plain sight. People of all political beliefs, all ethnicities, all religions, and all demographics have been suffering and continue to suffer. The people also have to pay for this sort of oppression, being pimped off as a public service adds great insult to grievous injury. You’re not amongst the oppressed? Well then, in your “mind,” the government is made up of “the good guys in white hats incapable of such evil.
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
-Steven Biko
The famous author Herman Wouk (The Winds of War, War, and Remembrance) opined that the single greatest factor allowing Hitler and his Nazis to perpetrate the Holocaust was German citizens’ “will to not believe” their government could do such evil. The writer Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead) touched upon this same, apparent human trait of people willing themselves not to see, not to believe. To accept the truth within this essay should be at least the voluntary acceptance of the impetus to make oneself more informed. To will oneself not to believe may give automatic validation for not doing or saying anything beyond the reading; but what about the children, the young people who are less obligated to hold the government accountable? Do we show love by leaving the problem for them?
This writing is intended to resonate in the hearts of all but, most compellingly, within those who are intelligent and vigilant enough to sense that this nation is nearing the point where big things are going to break. And the stupidest thing anyone can do is to trust the people who have caused it all. They are such low, cowardly human beings, most particularly the judges, that collectively, lack the integrity and decency to accept responsibility for any of it. Let all the visible harms, wrongs, and injustices manifesting themselves daily now serve to punctuate this writing!
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- To see the truth about America’s drug war and all it has cost, view the four-video collection, America’s War On Drugs;
- To gain a vigilant citizens’ perspective on how America’s corrupt judiciary has actively participated in causing the epidemic of wrongful convictions of disproportionate numbers of people of color read the following:
- The Complicity of Judges In The Generation of Wrongful Convictions, by Hans Sherrer
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- Read or ask questions of a lawyer, law professor, or constitutional scholar who has read the legal challenge to the purported “habeas reforms” of the Anti-terrorism Effective Death Penalty Act in Case No. S275842, California Supreme Court. Kor v California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (the most unfair, unconstitutional, trial, appeal, habeas process anyone has ever heard about)
The police, prosecutors, judges, prison guards, politicians, et al., are not “the good guys,” primarily concerned with the rule of law, doing what is right, or protecting the public. To sledgehammer that point home, this essay concludes with a hypothetical followed by an IQ test question: There is a button that can be pushed. If it is pushed, there will never be any crime committed, ever again. No criminals. No need for police, prosecutors, criminal court judges, no prison cells, and no more millions upon billions of taxpayers’ dollars to misappropriate every year. But the public is 100% safe. Test your IQ with an honest answer: Do the human trash I’ve written about in this essay push that button?
