July/August Article: Crime, Punishment and Just-U.S.

 Crime, Punishment and Just-U.S. (part 1 of 2)

How ironic! While preparing to celebrate Independence Day, America owns the world’s highest prison rate (2.12 million incarcerated with 21% of them unsentenced), has “permanently” striped 5 million citizens of their voting rights, created private/for profit prison opportunities, offers select companies’ contracts for inmate daily essentials (e.g. toothpaste, underwear, cloths, shoes), manipulates both the census count and its fund allocations (N.Y.C. inmates become cheap laborers and are counted as residents of the prisons town).  

But, with a 500% crime increase over 40 years, incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety. “The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense for cunning, and the mastery of achieving unmet desire (Nietzsche); therefore, punishment can tame/break a man, but does not make him better (hearted)." So “Laws and institutions are like clocks that must be occasionally cleaned, rewound, and reset to fit true time (Beecher)” and the nature of a crime.

Emerson hints “crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is the fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower that conceals the pleasure, or urgency, of the crime.” Gibran adds “the murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder nor the robbed not blameless in being robbed. The righteous are not innocent of the deeds of the wicked and the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon … to then speak of he who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger and an intruder upon your world.” Right? Wrong! “The weak and wicked cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.” And though “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, bad people will find a way around the laws (Plato).” Point! “Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all (Aristotle).” But “any punishment that does not correct but merely rouses rebellion in whoever has to endure it is a greater wrong making those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.” “Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law (Sophocles).” Yet “Like children building sand-towers with constancy and then destroying them with laughter … some delight in laying down laws while delighting more in breaking them. So, let’s put it all into perspective and move on to a conclusion in next months issue, the online version, or my 2bspoken.blogspot.com where you can interactively dialog comments with me and others.

Crime, Punishment and Just-U.S. (part 2 of 2)

Where such conditions have come to thwart the individual moral compass, all races, cultures, ages, and economic classes living in urban, suburban and rural places will realize Crime Has No Limits!, Whether it be white collar (for entrepreneurial economic gain and fame) or blue collar (often from facing long term inescapable economic deprivation), whether physically violent or property related, crime has become good business for merchants, insurance companies and other institutions.

“But it is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, that you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and yourself” while chasing CAD (the automated Capitalist American Dream), when finger pointing public officials while negating personal accountability to both community needs and efforts made by local supportive services. We need communities like the 1630 Massachusetts Bay Company requiring a public loyalty pledge from its members (Oath of a Free Man). We need community members like the Young Lords, the Black Panthers, the Guardian Angels, and the picketing Catholic Marxist Priests of the 60’s able to break from racial, economic, and political divides to put local issues in local hands regardless of police and local official intent and reaction. Things simply got done! In addition to protests, abandoned buildings were taken and renovated, official offices were stormed and held hostage, food and medical supplies were distributed, educational after school initiatives were made available and crime was given a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) NOTICE as community self-affirmation steadily flourished. 

While organizing to minimize potential clashes, arrests and rioting, such actions eventually got a wide range of official address. Even the local police temporarily initiated CPOP (officers walking the beat) and PAL (police athletic league) projects in N.Y.C. to facilitate community rapport on a first name basis. Unfortunately, Reagan’s poorly planned and executed “War On Drugs” project of the 1980’s changed priorities and a dramatic growth in crime ensued.

Fellow citizens, history affirms resident anger without hate yields actions with positive results. Blatant and covert, Crime is everywhere. So, let’s pick a battle and stand against unjust inequalities while understanding that it’s not about getting more shady police presence. It’s about maintaining a rotating community presence through block association activities and crime deterring events able to gain the interest of elected officials community board support. It’s about nurturing whatever ripples exist in the community pond to become a wave of potential because the biggest crime to overcome is resident tendency to neglect guarding its communal heart. Oppressors can muffle the drum and loosen the strings of the lyre to distort the community cry for help, but who shall command God’s skylark not to sing the truth? To make ends meet, especially among the young middle and lower economic strata’s, crime has become fundamental to the individual “get the most for the least effort” notion of the American dream. And unfortunately, until community cries out NIMBY, racial and economic disparity in punishment for alleged crimes will continue for Just-U.S. to continually accept. So, cry NIMBY for all and not for JUST-U.S.

By jose M Yrizarry