Justice/Jails

If you are struggling to get your head around how racism works you will probably find it helpful to have a general framework as a guide. This one hour lecture from 2017 features an overview by Brown University Professor Tricia Rose of the structure of racism and how it works --->> read more -->>

Kristof and WuDunn’s book, Tightrope – Americans Reaching for Hope, spent some weeks on bestseller lists. Kristof is a well known reporter and writer for the NYTimes. It centers around the town of Yamhill OR and the people that Kristof grew up among. The stories of industrial decline, increasing inequality, --->> read more -->>

The Criminal Justice System In recent years many people have taken note of the US lead in incarceration in all its racist wonder. Our nearest competitor, Russia, lags by 40% while our competitor cohort, Germany, France, Japan, and so on, incarcerate a mere 1/10 or less of our world-leading rate. --->> read more -->>

Once again we return to our comedians for information about what is going on in the world. This time more on the fraud that is our judicial system. Turns out that one of our regular sources, John Oliver, has really made a demi-career out of just this topic.  

We read Evicted – poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew Desmond last year in our local library book group. Recently on a visit to Washington DC to the National Building Museum (401 F St. NW – Judiciary Square Metro stop) we came on an exhibit based on --->> read more -->>

The Louisiana Project: A Study of the Louisiana Defender System and Attorney Workload Standards – February 2017 by Postlethwaite & Netterville, APAC and the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants provides a startling example of the gigantic fraud that is the American legal system. Using standards for the number --->> read more -->>

It is not often that one can make a judgement that is nearly absolute in its accuracy. Most things in life are complicated, complicated by circumstance, money, class, family, just plain errors in judgement, execution, and on… But, when it comes to the American justice system you come face to --->> read more -->>

We have written earlier about the fact that effective legal representation and trial by jury is a rarity making one of our cultural icons a complete sham. As Jed Rakoff has noted: In actuality, our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors --->> read more -->>

Hudson NY and Its SWAT Team Even here in our little city of Hudson NY (population ~ 7,000) we have a police SWAT team, benignly referred to officially as the Columbia County Shared Services Team. There has been plenty of concern over its use here in the last couple of years, --->> read more -->>

Gun Regulation, the 2nd Amendment, and Scalia’s Majority Opinion Fire arms proponents make much of the  2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Supreme Court absolutely affirmed the right to bear arms as a constitutionally guaranteed right. Lost in this rhetoric is the fact that no rights --->> read more -->>

Mass Incarceration – The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander (download a PDF of this article here) It is well known and frequently cited that the US leads the world in jailing its citizens. In this case we win this standing not by a nose but by a mile. Within --->> read more -->>

Opioids and White Privilege The arrival of opioids as a national concern might focus your attention on the role of drug companies, doctors, and hospitals in creating this new addiction path. In the October 30 New Yorker Patrick Radden Keefe provides a through introduction to this in his piece, “The --->> read more -->>

“If New York were a separate country, its incarceration rate [for women] would be the 8th highest in the world. A woman in New York is 12 times more likely to be incarcerated than she would be in France.” The Prison Policy Initiative has released a new study “Women’s Mass --->> read more -->>

The US Wins Again – Incarceration in Global Context Americans love to think of the country as No 1 in every dimension. Richest, most powerful, most freedom, most dynamic economy, best healthcare, best sports teams, best education and on and on…… there are some things that we are No. 1 --->> read more -->>

Fairness, an equal shake, blind justice, jury of peers, rule of law…Amendments IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and XIV…. these are all ubiquitous and universally applauded features of American life. Like blind lady justice they are ubiquitous in every area of our culture. This system of justice makes us superior --->> read more -->>

Attorney General Sessions clearly knows no history, even that of his own lifetime. He is just another petty, cyclical political hack thrust into a prominent position. Nixon’s War on Drugs which Sessions is now re-intensifying began as a cynical campaign tactic. As described by John Erhlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy adviser: --->> read more -->>

A central dogma of American politics and culture is the rule of law. The ever present blind scales of justice are trotted out with such regularity that the briefest glimpse serves to remind us that we live in a country with a uniquely fair and just system of law. Of --->> read more -->>

Why waste endless words on this topic? I stumbled on this video, “The Drug War Is a Failure” by the Gregory Brothers via the New York Times. While poking about on YouTube I found more by these folks, “We Don’t Treat Alcoholics Like This” Then for fun here is their --->> read more -->>

I have noted here several times earlier about America’s longest war – the War on Drugs. Here is a graphic that displays the complete failure of our policies:  

Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy Last week this commission released its report,  “War on Drugs“. This once again brings into focus our longest war, Nixon’s War on Drugs. Here are the first two paragraphs from the executive summary: The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating --->> read more -->>