IF YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO PRISON PAY ATTENTION....
by Kay Lee
March 14, 2002
It's not enough to just obey 'the law' anymore.
Did you know that it took the United States
200 years to lock up its first million prisoners? And it has only
taken 10 years to lock up the second million?
I know why the numbers are so overwhelming...
It's the same thing that's causing the people in prison to eat
less, go without, and be abused by under-educated, undertrained
'guards'.
And it's the same thing that's making so
many innocent people have to live the same nightmare as the guilty
-
It's the Drug War.
Human Warehousing is the direct result of
Mass Incarceration which is the direct result of the long-standing
Drug War.
I've spoken to several groups working exclusively
on Innocence in Prison. They tell me the rates for possibly innocent
people in prison are as high as from 10% to possibly 25%.
Whether accused of being a murderer or a
drug user, one quarter of the people we are so harshly punishing
could be innocent of the charges they were arrested for!
That really scares me - One out of every
33 people I meet (statistically speaking) is entangled with the
legal system.
Out of that 33, one out of four are possibly
innocent.
Eight of the 33 people suffering society's
'cure' didn't do anything wrong!
I'm not good at math, but by my figures (counting
me, my children and grandchildren), statistically speaking, two
of them could be destroyed by the law even if none of them ever
break the law.
The mistaken charges against my two hypothetically
arrested grandchildren could be for anything; 'planning to overthrow
the government', child molesting or, more likely (I would hope),
pot possession.
'Statistically speaking', two of the people
I treasure most could be forced to live as animals, work as slaves,
and cry for freedom.
These figures mean one thing:
The sheer numbers the laws against non-violent
activity are sucking in has caused a serious breakdown in the
triumph of justice for everyone. We pay for supporting these laws
in heartbreaking ways.
The Great Wrongs are multiplied by human
error.
WITNESSES MAKE MISTAKES:
Was it Stone Phillips who reported that there
had been 5,000 cases of mistaken identities from a year's worth
of eye-witnesses?
The number of prisoners who were sent to
prison on the testimony of one eyewitness, even when other evidence
did not support their guilt, are growing.
COP'S MAKE MISTAKES:
In their intense efforts to make the drug
war top priority, the Law allows certain citizens to break the
law in exchange for their help in trapping other citizens who
may or may not be breaking the law. They are called "Snitches"
or "Narcs", and can be the source of many innocent people being
crippled or destroyed by the 'system'.
Drug War Laws allow cops to arrest you and
courts to imprison you with no drugs in evidence.
The Drug War Forfeiture Laws allow cops to
keep money they get from seizing 'suspects' property. Soon departments
begin to depend on the seizures to by their new toys and cars.
Good enough reason to bust anyone.
I don't know the figure for last year, but
the year before that, about $540 million dollars worth of stuff
was taken from people who were never charged with a crime. (It
took an average of two years and more lawyer fees to get their
stuff back.)
Once arrested, particularly for drug charges,
the accused almost always plea bargain guilty, forced by intimidation
and threat, and often on advice from lawyers who are gleefully
cashing in on the numbers of cases they can squeeze into their
appointment book.
CLERKS MAKE MISTAKES
A typo is so easy to make when you're deluged
with work. And with two million prisoners, and another, what?
52 - 56 million moving through the system - paperwork that is
vital to the human being is rushed through by overburdened clerks
and low-paid temps who don't realize - nor care - that each stroke
of their keyboard can have serious consequences in someone else's
life.
LAWYERS MAKE MISTAKES
I have sat in courts just to see what's
going on. I see the 'public pretenders' stagger in, each with
a two foot high pile of files that he obviously scanned for the
first time minutes ago in the hallway.
I see them stand to represent people whose
names they have to refer to the file for.
I've seen the well-dressed lawyers who neglected
to interview or subpoena witnesses, or file paperwork in a timely
manner. They usually have spent the past few months avoiding the
client, and taking on more people's cases than they can possibly
effectively council for.
COURTS MAKE MISTAKES
If you resist giving up all your rights
with a plea bargain, you find yourself in a hostile courtroom
where the judge restricts the 'Telling of the Truth", the juries
are seldom instructed properly, and the verdict is possibly 25%
too often guilty.
The words the judge and your lawyer exchange
as they battle for your life are repetitious in case after case,
recited rapid-fire, seldom varying, all you have time to understand
is "You are hereby sentenced..."
PRISONS MAKE MISTAKES
So when errant guards go around pepperspraying
for pleasure, over-utilizing isolation and the 'goon squads',
writing bogus DRs and throwing away grievances, often adding untold
days, months and years to a man's sentence, they need to remember
that one out of 25 of the people they hurt are more innocent than
they are!
PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES
We are busy people. We don't have time to
research every policy, every law, every mistake that destroys
good people.
We are good people, but sometimes we support
policies because we've been fooled by the 'Smoke and Mirrors'...
the propaganda, the manipulation of faulty numbers and bogus research.
Sometimes we make mistakes.
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So, think about it. And when you begin to
feel the fear that I feel, write a letter to your representatives,
with a cc to the editor of your local paper...and don't forget
to save a copy for your grandkids -
Let them see how you stood up for truth and
common sense, so they'll be able to do the same for their offspring!
RETURN JUSTICE TO THE ENTIRE SYSTEM! - END
THE DRUG WAR -
Kay Lee, MTWT
Pacific Institute of Criminal Justice
1868 San Juan Avenue Berkeley, CA 94707
510-528-4603
kaylee@idiom.com
Making The Walls Transparent
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/starke
