This article helps explain the reasons why our criminal justice system is a mess.
Some Disturbing Flaws in Our Criminal Justice System
by
Bill Cottringer
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
The main flaw our “criminal justice system” has is that it really isn’t a system per se, but rather a loose collection of three official entities—law enforcement, corrections and courts—which all have conflicting and incompatible goals, collectively based on wrong assumptions themselves. Here are the wrong assumptions that collectively contribute to the failures of our very expensive system of criminal justice:
1. The assumed goals of the system and its three components are in conflict within the component and between components of the system. This makes any positive outcome very difficult. How can a system trying to apply restorative justice, retribution, accountability, punishment, risk reduction, rehabilitation and penitence all equally and effectively, possibly be successful? This is much like a football, baseball and basketball team trying to play a golf game on a soccer field. What can you expect?
How do police officers reconcile their duty to catch criminals and take them off the streets to protect the public, with their immense arrest discretion of street justice? How do they ever gain the needed sense of making progress when they know what they do is only the tip of the iceberg and even when that effort gets slammed daily by the revolving door of the system? How do the courts really decide what a convicted criminal needs in the way of a sentence, given the many options from the menu of conflicting goals? And, what can prisons do to satisfy all their goals enough, especially balancing treatment and punishment in an environment that is not really conducive to either by its very nature?
Until we can agree upon what each component’s goals are to be, apart from what we have already wrongly assumed and which will all need to genuinely complement each other together collectively, then there is no system. This major overhaul is beyond doing anything about now in the immediate future, because we have allowed the non-system to get too big. But, some creative thinking about how we use language to define what our goals are, as well as what we have to do to achieve them, may be having a great deal with the degree of success and outcomes we actually get.
For example, take the term success. How you define it, both mandates what you have to do to get it as well as how much of it you will have if you do these things. That is very self-fulfilling and restrictive and may have little relationship to what true success is. Maybe if we redefine the goals of the system more precisely to allow us to become more successful in what we are trying to do to get that success, we will be more successful. That is what the whole criminal justice accreditation process is trying to do, but it if it doesn’t start out right, it doesn’t have much of a chance of finishing right. If goals aren’t clear and consistent, then neither will outcomes be.
2. The evolution of human consciousness has not gotten to the point of truly understanding the age-old central debate of free will vs. determinism, apart from our dualistic minds which inadvertently set up judgments about truth and value of one apparent opposite over the other. As it turns out, this is rather odd when they are really just two different sides to the same coin. This is just another limitation of words in our language, but a big one.
Our criminal justice system makes a very premature and arbitrary assumption that internal free will prevails over external determinism unless proved otherwise. What this assumption leads to is the arbitrary assignment of 100% legal responsibility and accountability for people convicted of crimes and then places them into the system where this same responsibility and accountability dissolves. Maybe that is the end game of dualistic thinking? Of course the option for a way out of this dilemma is the arbitrary relief of free will and responsibility for those legally defined as such, with the help of a psychiatrist.
An emerging but provocative perspective of free will today is that it isn’t quite as free as we imagine. A growing point of view, well worth considering is this one: Most of our present choices are really limited by past conditioning, We don’t actually realize the potential power of free will until we evolve our awareness of this reality and get ready to start questioning the many illusions trapping us. That in turn, gets us closer to the now moment, where we begin to notice more, especially focusing on what few choices are really under our control and letting go of all the rest. So the question for the criminal justice system becomes—where is a criminal’s real responsibility and accountability level at for their wrongdoing, for the sentence to be meted out justly in the true sense of that word? Here, the computer age can be put to good use.
3. The last wrong assumption of the criminal justice system is one that traps us all—being controlled by fear and distrust, when the truth be known, neither is not well founded. The criminal justice system and all three of its components were designed specifically to reduce fear and distrust of crime. But, so were many of our other institutions. The problem is that what little positive effect the criminal justice system has had on crime fear and distrust reduction, the media has effectively erased with its hyped up instantaneous coverage of newsworthy crime, now even available on hand-held devices during lunchtime. Fear and distrust are still prevalent and so is the absolute belief of free will.
A question has been asked many times—what would happen if all the criminals in prison right now, about 2.2 million the last count (excluding 4,5 million on probation or parole) where suddenly released? Considering these folks are responsible for much less than 1% of the crime going on, the honest but astounding answer is probably “not much.” Of course we would never be able to let go of our imagined fear enough, even knowing it is unfounded, to allow this to happen.
The real trouble here is that we are not really reducing fear and distrust because the criminal justice system isn’t being successful enough in achieving its goals. We barely make a dent in the recidivism rate from all the punishment and treatment that is being paid for by taxpayers without much of a return on their investment. If any improvement is realistic here, it may be finding ways to apply and carry out the sanctions more effectively, in matching a person’s responsibility and accountability levels and readiness for needed change.
I am not proposing any specific solutions to this problem, because I don’t have any the government will likely accept. All I am trying to do here is point out some wrong assumptions we have built this criminal system upon, which need questioning and reexamining before the building crumbles and the beginning and ending quotes can’t serve their purpose. This is about being more thoughtful about how we spend our time, money and resources in times when all those things are in shortage.
“Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.” ~Mahatma Gandhi.
William Cottringer, Ph.D. is Executive Vice-President of Employee Relations for Puget Sound Security patrol, Inc. in Bellevue, WA., along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer living in the mountains of North Bend. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence), The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree), and Do What Matters Most and “P” Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers) Reality Repair Rx (PublishAmerica), and Reality Repair (Global Vision Press) Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 652-8067, 425-454-5011 or bcottringer(at)pssp.net or ckuretdoc(at)comcast.net
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