"It is for the man in public life," he wrote, "to establish the relationship between political justice and injustice, between what is useful and what is harmful to society."
In this vein, the Roberts Supreme Court clearly favors the established and the powerful. Down the pecking order, the realities of the Philadelphia prison system make it clear Beccaria's tenets are a joke. The proportion of African Americans arrested for drug crimes and the months and even years inmates are forced to wait for a trial -- in the face of a 180 day rule -- puts to rest any notion of fairness and swiftness of justice. When seen through Beccaria's Enlightenment vision, the criminal justice system in Philadelphia is nothing short of shameful.
When you move out into the greater world, the scope of the Drug War disaster becomes even more apparent. I'm reading the great Charles Bowden's latest book Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields and it reveals a truly profound stench.
Already known for drug-related violence, Mexico was sent into an incredible paroxysm of violence following the controversial squeaker election of the right-wing Felipe Calderon as President in 2006. Under US pressure, he mobilized the army into northern Mexico. In 2008 alone, Bowden reports, nearly 6000 Mexicans died in the violence, "a larger loss than what the United States endured during the entire Iraq War."
The violence is horrific, with corpses boiled in 55-gallon drums and, in one case, a man's face stitched to a soccer ball sent to his relatives. Bodies are dumped everywhere. Young poor woman working in the many small factories in Juarez are regularly found raped and murdered. Women who survive horrendous gang rapes often end up mad at a mental clinic in the desert.
No one talks; the police stay in their offices; reporters just stick to the facts -- lest they be gunned down or worse. The cartel seems to have the military out-gunned.
Bowden, a man who has immersed himself in this harsh world for decades, writes that there are two Mexicos.
"There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war against the evil forces of the drug world." It is equipped with newspapers, courts and laws and is seen by the US as "a sister republic."
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