SEEKING JUSTICE WITH EQUITY

Seeking Justice With Equity
Lloyd Winburn
          We acknowledge and take great comfort in those things that are Right With America. There are so many good things about our country that we would not even try to enumerate all of them.  We believe, however, that there is one glaring “wrong.” The wrong we address deals with the justice system.
          There is no way we can foster democracy around the world and adopt the practices of our adversaries.  Being the country in the world with the largest prison population cannot or should not be a source of pride for us.  Being the last major hold-out favoring the death penalty cannot speak much for our “Judean-Christian” heritage.
          Abandoning all hope for diplomatic and economic solutions, we have come to the place were we try to solve all the World’s problems with arms and armaments… Power and arrogance; bravado and the feeling that we know everything and everything we do is right.  We lack humility and charity.
          We cannot do what our enemy does and call it right.  The degree of harm done to our reputation and heritage in Iraq and Afghanistan by mistreating prisoners will take years to wash away. We must look at what has happened far back into our system of justice here at home and abroad.  We must be consistent with our mercy, understanding and faith.
         It is only a matter of a few degrees from what has happened in that infamous prison in Iraq and what happens here in the jails and prisons.  We arrest people by profiling and incarcerate them through error and “rush to judgment.”
          Citizens and foreigners are damaged financially, by besmirched reputations, false imprisonment… all in the simple claim of some supposed harm to our national security, our pride or our property.  We execute mentally retarded individuals.  We try teenagers as adults. We have lost the ability to forgive while not forgetting crimes against us.
         There are practices in prison facilities of the lowest classification of security that are in place only at the whim of wardens or associate wardens or lesser jail-keepers. While discipline and security are important, rehabilitation release are the prime objective of the prison system. The judge does the punishment when he removes the offender from society and puts him in the care of the Bureau of Prisons.  Any other punishment should come as a result of the offender not being a model inmate and proving it by overt violations of the rules in place.  There are many examples of acts by officials, enough to warrant a review of the practices with a view to making corrections.
          Inconsistencies in policy, varying by measurable degrees prison to prison should be standardized.
          We hope to be able to show up some of these consistencies along with errors of judgments by officials with a view to having them corrected.