Of course, the US justice system, if it can even be called that these days, is also rife with racism. The BJS reports that although blacks do not commit crimes at a rate significantly different from whites, they account for 39.4% of the US prison population, while accounting for only 13.1% of the general population. Hispanics, who account for 20.6% of the prison population nationally, represent only 16.3% of the population. Another way of looking at things: In 2010 black non-Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 4,347 inmates per 100,000 in the US. White males were incarcerated at the rate of 678 inmates per 100,000. Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 1,755 inmates per 100,000 U.S.
We've all heard it. Everytime someone does something and it makes the news, the response you hear in conversation is "They should lock "em up!" Rarely does the notion creep in that a criminal suspect is sick, needs psychiatric help or needs addiction treatment. Nor is poverty ever mentioned as a cause for some crime. In America, we are supposed to hunker down and endure our fate if we have no job, even if that means our kids have nothing to eat.
In Mississippi, a news story recently reported that a young boy had been sent to reform school because he came to school with his sneakers painted black instead of wearing required black school uniform shoes. It didn't matter that his mother came in and explained that they had no money for the mandated leather shoes, so she had tried to conform by painting his sneakers.
In 1997, a homeless man in California named Gergory Taylor was sentenced to 25 years to life(!) for breaking into a church kitchen and trying to steal a loaf of bread. After 13 years behind bars, a judge reduced his sentence to time served and let him out. The initial outlandish sentence, and the outrageous amount of time he did serve until his release was the result of that state's "three strikes and you're out" law, which says if you commit a third offense after already having been convicted twice of crimes, you get the 25-to-life sentence, regardless of the crimes involved. Judges are allowed no discression. In Taylor's case, his first crime had been stealing a woman's purse, and his second had been attempted robbery. Neither of those prior crimes had involved any violence. No matter. It was his third "strike."
The nation's criminal code keeps getting bigger each year, too, as charlatans in elected office at the local, state and federal level keep piling on new crimes to punish.
Louisiana State University Law Professor John S Baker, Jr., writing in 2004 in a publication called The Federalist Society, noted that as of 2003, there were 4000 criminal offenses carrying criminal penalties listed in the US Criminal Code. That, he said, was an increase of more than 1300 offenses over 1980. (In general, he notes that many more crimes are added to the list in election years than in non-election years.) The Heritage Foundation reports than the number of federal crimes had grown by another 450 to a total of 4450 by 2007.
Prosecutors for federal crimes often don't even need to prove intent to commit a crime. Thus, for example, prosecutors have argued, with some success, that a person can be convicted of aiding and supporting terrorism under the post 2001 anti-terrorism laws, for innocently donating to a charitable organization that, while itself not involved in funding terrorism, might have sent some of its funds onward to some second organization totally unknown to the initial donor, which did contribute to a terrorist organization. Incredible? Well, how about the father and son who went on an innocent dig on federal land to look for Indian arrowheads -- something that used to be considered a fun hobby --and who were arrested in Idaho by federal authorities under a new law that made it a felony to dig on what was an unmarked archeological site. The 68-year-old Eddie Anderson, a retired logger, and his son ended up pleading guilty and getting slapped with a one-year probation sentence and a $1500 fine each. The joke is that the National Park stores generall sell arrowheads, all of which, if they are real, were "dug" from what by definition would be archeological sites.
At some point, and we passed it a long, long time ago, this punitive obsession in America has made the US not a "land of the free," but a land of the intimidated.
Everytime I'm driving and I see a police car behind me, I expect to be pulled over. Not because I'm doing anything wrong, but because increasingly, that's what police do. Recently, I was going shopping with my wife. We saw two cops outside of a squad car talking to a couple of kids by their car, in what clearly was some kind of incident. I wanted to park in a space two cars away. "Don't go near the police," she said. "I don't want to go near them. Something could happen."
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