Utter
Failure; It's Time to Rethink the Prison System
by Sylvia Clute, AlterNet
Posted on June 16, 2010
Source
Editor's Note: This article is based on the author's new book, Beyond
Vengeance, Beyond Duality, published by Hampton Roads.
Our criminal justice system is based on a curious
set of rules and a double moral standard. The state’s burden of proving guilt is pitted
against the accused’s right to thwart such proof. The state
claims to be the victim because its law has been broken, but if the
accused
lacks the resources of O. J. Simpson or Paris Hilton to defend himself,
he feels victimized by the state, and too often is.
What about repairing the harm done to the other victim,
the person who was robbed or raped? The prosecutor’s job is to win the case and
punish the accused, not make the victim whole. This means the victim’s
role is reduced to that of a mere witness for the state in its battle
to win by making the accused lose. For the accused to win, defense counsel
must try to make the victim appear as untruthful as possible. Caught
in the middle of the attorneys’ battle to win and make their
adversary lose, the victim often feels revictimized. If a plea agreement
makes
a trial unnecessary, this victim becomes irrelevant.
Is this a good system for getting at the truth? About
130 death sentences have been commuted since 1973 because evidence
later proved these people
were innocent. Is the prosecutor’s win more important than
the truth about the guilt of the defendant? In many of these 130
cases,
the answer was yes. Sam Millsap, a former Texas prosecutor, now
speaks openly
of having sent an innocent man to death by presenting weak evidence
that later proved to be false. Does this deserve to be called justice?
There is a better way, a form of justice that delivers fairness, mends
broken relationships, and helps us get at the root causes of crime. There
is, in fact, justice beyond vengeance.
Continue—Becoming our own jailers
