COURTS, EFFICIENCY, AND THE DEMISE OF HUMANITY

Dennis comments ♦ June 20, 2021 ♦ Leave a comment

   Opinion by Dennis L. Blewitt, J. D,

Her husband called.  He was in jail for armed robbery.  He was an addict and desperate.  His wife, an addict, had been kidnapped by a group of sex traffickers and rescued by the FBI.  However, there was a failure to appear warrant from Ft Collins.  The initial felony was for introducing contraband into the jail, not intentionally, but because she couldn’t toss it before her arrest, when arrested for a disturbance at a motel.   She too was an addict.  While incarcerated in Ft. Collins, she tried to enter a rehab program, but she was homeless, with a jailed husband, and was held as a material witness for the FBI with a cartel bounty con her.   She had been sold as a teenager, had no High School diploma, suffered from Hepatitis C, Epilepsy, Delayed Stress Syndrome, The District Attorney was tough on crime and prosecuted, not just merely for possession.  Rehab programs, a private, wanted payment, which was impossible.  After 6 weeks’ confinement, a judge put her on probation.  He also added about $2000 in fees.  He knew or should have known this was impossible, but, like a good marionette, followed orders.  This relieved the judge of any responsibility.  Also, as an ex-prosecutor, he believed that addicts were scum.

            She tried to stay clean, but, since she was homeless and at the mercy of strangers she met on the street, she relapsed.  These same judges are the first to lecture the peasantry about taking responsibility for themselves.  This, even though it has been almost 100 years before scientists discovered that environment was a large factor in creating a criminal.  Again, shifting blame away from a corrupt and anonymous system is a good way for the simple mind to ignore humanity.  It is easy to apply “the spirit of Capitalism” described by Max Weber in this instance.  It goes like this: “God has rewarded me with a fairly good life.  You are poor and homeless.  God is punishing you because you are not worthy or bad.  If God can punish, so can I.  Therefore, I don’t have to consider how privatization, and specialization has affected you.  God has already decided. Go prostitute yourself for money, drugs, and, most importantly your court costs.  You can always find a dumpster to sleep in.”  We are a competitive Christian nation, not a civilized society.  Societies stifle individual efforts and accomplishments.  God protects the good from my boundless greed and punishes the bad by allowing me to exploit them.  The Christian nation has no obligation to its residents, who are entirely responsible for any and all circumstances.  The nation has no responsibility other than promote business, profit, and individuals fit enough to survive.

            How can this happen?  It has been 60 years since I took my first graduate course in criminology.  At that time, there were courses in corrections, counseling, budgeting, support group building, etc.  The curricula ended in a master’s degree in correction.  That degree is no longer offered because there are no jobs for such trained people.  Since privatization, skilled, trained empathetic people have no place in the Court Supervision system.  The probation officer’s job is not to help people and cut recidivism, but to increase the bottom line of corporate profits.  Correcting isn’t profitable, is costly and labor intensive.  Ignoring problems and applying policy is cheap and easy and has the effect of built-in obsolescence, guaranteeing future profits, explaining why a rate that was constant for 40 decades, exponential growth in prison rates from 100, to 450 prisoners per 100,000 persons, since the election of Richard Nixon. The largest private prison system had $1.65 Billion in revenue  last year.  Essentially, the District Attorneys and Judges have become shills for greedy, profiteering business enterprise.  Since officials market fear, this is sold as the cost of a safe society.  Complete and utter horseshit!

            So, we must ask ourselves.  Do we want to continue putting judicial robes on Prosecutors?  Is the purpose of the third branch of Government to punish and benefit corporations or to benefit society?  Should we continue to allow judges to cop out and blame everything on the legislatures, rather than use their inherent supervisory powers?  Should we tolerate officials that promote a police state or rid ourselves of them.  Do we want to continue to train police to murder us or to help us?  Do we ignore research, common sense, and justice or demand that justice and betterment of society take priority over profits?  Do we hold the corporations liable for the damage they cause by not insisting that they hire trained staff instead of goons?  Do we make the Attorney Generals of the country personally liable for the murders by police that result from their police training?  Do we want efficiency, or do we demand justice?  Please let me know.

            The police state propaganda machine excuses police misconduct and murder with the Nazi war crimes Nuremberg defense of “just following orders,” to the American excuse of “following procedures” or “training.”

            Every “subhuman” shipped off to a camp to obtain “freedom through work” was lawfully placed there by judicial order pursuant to a Reich Stadt law, for which the defendants would refuse to obey or take responsibility.

            Fellow citizens aren’t commodities.  Citizens don’t exist for the benefit of business.  Profit motive supremacy has no  place in a caring society.  We must leave the state of nature and become a society again.  This must change.  Reinstitute Corrections as a career and valid area of study.  Re-emphasize fairness instead of efficiency.  Make judges seek fairness, not expediency. Do not allow government entities become profit centers.  Make all fines, fees, and revenues go to the general fund, controlled by legislatures and the people.  Don’t go gently into oblivion.  Do as Dylan Thomas mandates and “Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.”

            Demand justice, fairness and putting the people first.  Re-establish common law, not Roman law of conquest.  Take profit motive from government.  Make government work for the people, not commerce.  Stand up to those who prize profit and efficiency over humanity.  Demand justice,  Demand fairness, demand equity, Demand corporation be subordinate to people.  Demand a government of people and for people, not soulless, lifeless, ghosts called corporations.