Tag Archives: criminal justice

crime news

How do you rebuild?

You hear about stories like this on occasion. They trouble me beyond measure. I feel the need to express a thought or two about the consequences of stories such as this one.

I don’t know the origin of this social media meme. It certainly rings tragically true to me.

My question  of the moment is this: How do you build your life after spending years in prison for committing a crime that — in this instance — never happened? A young man broke down when his case was dismissed. I wish him all the very best as he seeks to build a life.

He is not alone. I hear all the time about individuals who are set free after spending decades behind bars. DNA tests are brought into play to determine whether these men (usually, they are men) were present at a crime scene. The tests disprove what prosecutors “proved” back when these cases went to trial.

A judge then releases these individuals. They are sent into the world after spending 10, 20, 30, maybe 40 years in the slammer. This is one of those instances that I have difficulty wrapping my noggin around.

How would you react? Would you be filled with anger at a system that imprisoned you wrongly? Would you feel relief? How about forgiveness?

These cases offer life lessons I never, ever want to learn. Then again, at the age of nearly 72 years on this good Earth, it’s not likely I would have enough time left to learn them if given the chance.

Science and technology have advanced far beyond what many of us ever could have imagined. The world of criminal justice is just one venue where we see these occasional miracles play out as individuals are set free.

However, I must ask: How do these advances prepare these folks to retrieve time that has been ripped from them in their relentless march?

As for the question posed in the picture you see along with this post about whether women should be charged — or jailed — for filing phony rape charges.

Well … that could be a start in restoring justice.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, State news, Uncategorized

Private prisons taking needed heat

1 Comment

Columbia University has ended its investment program with privately run prisons.

Why? Too many reports of abuse by prison officials.

The report of Columbia ending this particular relationship brings to mind an issue that’s stuck in my craw for years. I’ve never liked the principle of turning over corrections to private businesses.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/23/3672903/columbia-divest-private-prisons/

My belief is that corrections completes a public obligation circle that ought to remain part of the public’s responsibility.

I’m likely to take heat for thinking this, but that’s what I believe.

I look at this in a straightforward way, in my view.

The public pays law enforcement to catch criminals, to arrest them, book them into jail and file detailed reports on what the suspect allegedly did.

Then the public pays the salaries of prosecutors to make the case for the state or the county that the individual is guilty of the crime for which he or she has been accused of committing.

The public also conceivably might pay the salary of the defendant’s lawyer if he or she cannot afford private counsel. It’s part of the Miranda rights text that all criminal suspects are supposed to hear while they’re being arrested.

The judge who presides over a criminal trial is paid from the public trough. The public also pays the jurors — admittedly not much — to determine the suspect’s guilt or innocence.

If jurors convict the defendant, then in my mind it falls on the public to pay for the incarceration of that individual for as long as the publicly paid jury determines he or she should spend in prison.

I’ve long been suspicious of private firms running correctional institutions because the public needs to have ironclad guarantees of its oversight responsibility. The public needs full, complete and unfettered access to everything that goes on behind those walls.

We’ve marched a long way down the road already toward turning over much of our corrections operations over to private firms. I wish we could reverse course.

I didn’t have a particular problem when Texas went on a prison-building boom in the early 1990s to make more room for prisoners. A federal judge had ruled the state had violated inmates’ constitutional rights against “cruel and unusual punishment” by cramming them into prison cells. So, it fell on the state to make it right.

Would a private prison firm be compelled to respond in such a manner?

The public pays for suspects’ arrest, prosecution and sentencing.

The public has a responsibility, therefore, to complete its duty by housing these individuals.