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The system is broken long before anybody even gets to prison. Here's how prosecution works
Step 1. You are presumed innocent, but go to jail anyway and spend maybe a week or a month or a year there, making collect calls to your friends/family begging them to sell the house to bail you out of jail.
Step 2. The prosecutor works up a list of the all of the most serious crimes that he can possibly associate with the incident, including all the conspiracies and possessions and intents and multiple counts to run consecutively. The defense lawyer explains to the defendant that he is looking at five to ten.
Step 3. The prosecutor offers a plea bargain, with time served, a fine, and some probation.
Step 4 The defense attorney says there is a good chance of beating some of the raps, but if you get a bad jury, you do really hard time.
Step 5. You accept the plea bargain.
Step 6. Now you have a criminal record, have lost your job, will never get another one, and you've lost your house and your family who are now on welfare or in a homeless shelter.. and have never had your day in court. You've been a pawn pushed around tby two lawyers at the golf course. This is the outcome in a huge majority of cases.
I think that the real problems are in American society itself. Not the prisons. American culture is really big on glorifying and admiring criminal behavior and violence. In many ways, it's a culture of death and destruction.
Also, many cities, especially inner city areas really drive people into the direction of living a criminal life. Lots of people in prisons were already criminals and gangsters by the time they were 10 or 12 years old because of their upbringing. They were told since little kids that a criminal life is cool, and seen that way of life all around them since they were little kids.
I don't think that the problems start in prison. But the prison and criminal justice system has a lot of flaws in other ways. In prison, criminals just becoming much, much worse. Prison just amplifies all the violence and insanity. Which is only natural when you put a criminal into a very, very dangerous environment full of other criminals.
It's like taking a wild dog and throwing it into a pit full of other wild dogs for a long time. Then releasing the dog onto the streets.
The system is broken long before anybody even gets to prison. Here's how prosecution works
Step 1. You are presumed innocent, but go to jail anyway and spend maybe a week or a month or a year there, making collect calls to your friends/family begging them to sell the house to bail you out of jail.
Step 2. The prosecutor works up a list of the all of the most serious crimes that he can possibly associate with the incident, including all the conspiracies and possessions and intents and multiple counts to run consecutively. The defense lawyer explains to the defendant that he is looking at five to ten.
Step 3. The prosecutor offers a plea bargain, with time served, a fine, and some probation.
Step 4 The defense attorney says there is a good chance of beating some of the raps, but if you get a bad jury, you do really hard time.
Step 5. You accept the plea bargain.
Step 6. Now you have a criminal record, have lost your job, will never get another one, and you've lost your house and your family who are now on welfare or in a homeless shelter.. and have never had your day in court. You've been a pawn pushed around tby two lawyers at the golf course. This is the outcome in a huge majority of cases.
I think that if you repeat a crime you've been punished for, the punishment obviously wasn't severe enough. Why repeat the punishment if it doesn't work? These people who get arrested many times for the same offense are embarassing. Most should get only one chance with a correctional punishment. Afterward, the person should be considered a habitual offender and hidden from society. (While I'm at it, why are sexs offenders the only ones registered? I'd like to know if my neighborhood has any registered murderers or drug dealers). Sorry, just had to vent.
Last edited by ESFP; 01-15-2009 at 06:20 AM..
Reason: spelling
The system is broken long before anybody even gets to prison. Here's how prosecution works
Step 1. You are presumed innocent, but go to jail anyway and spend maybe a week or a month or a year there, making collect calls to your friends/family begging them to sell the house to bail you out of jail.
Step 2. The prosecutor works up a list of the all of the most serious crimes that he can possibly associate with the incident, including all the conspiracies and possessions and intents and multiple counts to run consecutively. The defense lawyer explains to the defendant that he is looking at five to ten.
Step 3. The prosecutor offers a plea bargain, with time served, a fine, and some probation.
Step 4 The defense attorney says there is a good chance of beating some of the raps, but if you get a bad jury, you do really hard time.
Step 5. You accept the plea bargain.
Step 6. Now you have a criminal record, have lost your job, will never get another one, and you've lost your house and your family who are now on welfare or in a homeless shelter.. and have never had your day in court. You've been a pawn pushed around tby two lawyers at the golf course. This is the outcome in a huge majority of cases.
Until I was laid off I had a federal job (for 3 years) working with incarcerrated and homeless vets. The scenario you present is all too true, but only those guilty accepted those pleas as it was a sure thing rather than the very real possibility of a longer jail stint. Remember, 99% of the defendants have court appointed lawyers with little experience or care about their clients. In fact, a had lunch recently with a friend who is a court appointed attorney and he said it's just a proving ground to get trial experience for a much better job.
As you allude to, once a perso is placed in the system, they are usually trapped.
Last edited by BLAZER PROPHET; 01-15-2009 at 06:48 AM..
To me, I am a firm believer in crime, punishment, rehabilitation, forgiveness. We tend to be weak on the last 3- many criminals are never punished, very little true rehablitation takes place and there is never sociatal forgiveness.
My experience in working with "criminals" is that they usually don't know their release date. Then, they are pushed out in a matter of a couple of days, are lucky if they have a place to stay, no money, and if they can't find full time employment within 90 days have to go back to jail. When employers have 75 people to choose from for a job, they rarely hire the con. Fortunately the jails are so over crowded they usually don't go back to jail (although some do) and the only way to survive is crime. And the cycle begins again only now they are a two time loser.
As to rehabilitation, that's reserved only for those at the state 'pen' (for the most part) who have long enough sentences to be able to get into a prison run program. The common 180 day sentence offers no possibility of rehabilitation and they are usually the ones who cycle thru endlessly.
It's a tough thing. The stories I heard and things I saw were pretty darn sad.
Step 5. You accept the plea bargain.
Step 6. Now you have a criminal record, have lost your job, will never get another one, and you've lost your house and your family who are now on welfare or in a homeless shelter.. and have never had your day in court. You've been a pawn pushed around tby two lawyers at the golf course. This is the outcome in a huge majority of cases.
You had your opportunity to go to court, but you chose not to take it. No one can be forced to take a plea bargain, everyone has the right to present their own defense.
Just because the cops were able to find enough evidence of your guilt to make it likely that you're going to do the time for the crime you committed, doesn't mean you lost your chance to go to court.
Cops being good at finding evidence linking a defendant to a crime doesn't make it a conspiracy.
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