For many decades, a myth has flourished regarding the existence of justice in America. That myth holds that true justice abounds in this country, and fosters the false perception and erroneous belief that police, prosecutors, politicians, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, and other participants in our civil and criminal justice systems are all model human beings who never lie; never plant, conceal, alter, or destroy evidence; never commit or suborn perjury; always act in accordance with the law; never attempt to convict innocent people; and are endowed solely with high morals and noble motives.
Unfortunately, the truth and the reality of the situation is much sadder, darker, and uglier. The fact is that many police officers in this country are ignorant, arrogant, incompetent, corrupt, and worse. Many prosecutors, judges, bureaucrats, and politicians are hypocritical psychopaths or sociopaths who have found safe havens and insulated positions of power from which to lie, cheat, and steal, and from which to torment and even to kill helpless souls, with complete and absolute immunity from any and all consequences of their actions. Many lawyers are merely self-absorbed greedy fools, whose paramount and singular interest in life is avarice - the shameless worship and brutal acquisition of money.
The myth of justice in America has helped to bring about wrongful prosecution, false conviction, unjust incarceration, persecution, disenfranchisement, deprivation, and other forms of injury to and injustice for millions of innocent men, women, and children, some of whom are even executed or are allowed to die as a final and irrevocable injustice.
The existence of the myth also allows and encourages individuals in the different parts of our civil and criminal justice systems to condone, to reinforce, to aid, to abet, and to applaud the errors, omissions, and abuses committed by those in the systems' other parts. Evidence of this can be seen at all levels, from local officials and assemblymen to state and federal legislators; from public guardians, coroners, and correctional officers to police, FBI, and DEA agents; from prison administrators and public defenders to prosecutors, district attorneys, and attorneys general; and from private lawyers, insurance companies, corporations, and businessmen to judges in local, state, and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
No legal system in the world is more loathe or unwilling to admit or to recognize that it or some part of it has made tragic and egregious mistakes, or that it continues to engage in reprehensible conduct to the detriment of innocent citizens. In the criminal justice system once a false conviction has been obtained, or a wrongful sentence imposed, overturning it, securing a new trial, or convincing those in authority of the fact that an injustice has been done is often impossible. Innocent men and women are forced to spend what is left of their lives in prison, maligned, persecuted, and hated. Those who are fortunate enough to complete their sentences and to be released from prison, attempt to pick up and piece together the shattered fragments of their ruined lives. Some on death row wait in quiet agony to be murdered by a society which claims to know right from wrong, and claims to deliver justice to its people.
In both the civil and criminal justice systems, those without large sums of money are usually unable to pay for competent legal help, and frequently are doomed before they can even begin to seek justice. The most clever and capable legal talent is often sold to the highest bidder, with no concern for fairness or justice. The under classes have few champions - none of whom seem to have any power or ability to effect real, lasting, or significant change. Those people with the most righteous and deserving cases are often sold out - or frozen out - by a legal community whose primary occupation and preoccupation is greed and self-aggrandizement.
The pretense of justice for minorities, is an even more thinly veiled sham, with the prison populations thereof accounting for ten to twenty times more than the frequency of their numbers in the general population. While a proportionate share of crime is obviously committed by non minorities, a clearly disproportionate number of natives, blacks, and others are favored by society and by the justice system as targets, in order to satisfy an ignorant peoples' lust for retribution and vengeance, and to lull people into thinking that all is well with the world.
Prisons and penitentiaries throughout America are operated and staffed by a large number of racist, corrupt, deceitful, dishonest, conniving, hypocritical, and even arguably insane individuals, who, by example, and in a way identical to Typhoid Mary-like carriers of disease, pass on the worst of human traits and habits to inmates, who then take newly acquired or enhanced skills of anger and evil with them when they return to society. Inmates routinely watch prison guards sell drugs and other contraband inside correctional facilities, and repeatedly watch prison administrators disregard and disobey the law to further their own petty, narcissistic, egotistical, and illegal ends. At taxpayer and societal expense, inmates are thereby given expert lessons in how to be more cleverly deceitful - and how to avoid getting caught. The practice of using hypocrites and maniacs to guard and to govern prisoners is not unlike caging a vicious dog; abusing, torturing, and tormenting it; and then being angry at the dog because it is not docile or compliant. The morally diseased environment created by ignorant, bigoted, corrupt, racist, unethical, malevolent, and pathological prison administrators and guards is one of the major causes of recidivistic crime in this country.
While the myth of justice in America continues to flourish, the truth is that our nation's "justice" system is in an advanced state of cancerous and diseased decay, serving few, and oppressing many. The law, intended to be a well-spring of clear and pure nourishment for the human spirit, has instead become a stagnant marsh, with the waters of justice so polluted as to be unfit for human consumption. It has come to constitute, through its role as a social-disease-producing agent, a clear and present danger to all humanity.
But the solution to problems like these and rectification of widespread
injustice will not be achieved on the editorial page of a newspaper
or in a magazine. An editorial or commentary is quickly written,
quickly read, and just as quickly dismissed or forgotten. Often,
it is barely noticed or not even seen. The real solution will
be found only in self-discipline, and in the daily renewal of
a life-long commitment by all people to honesty and integrity,
with those who would be our leaders providing a true and righteous
example for others to live by.
Philip Shapland, a freelance writer, was a private investigator in Anchorage, Alaska for mare than fifteen years. As a consequence, he is a veteran observer of and participant in both the civil and criminal justice systems.