posted
Today, many men use their voice to claim to know what is best for all other people and the base of their conclusion is war or prison.
"I judge my brother, and I give him war or prison."
Oh, Brother, from how high a mountain does your your river of empathy, wisdom and understanding run?
America has millions and millions and millions of human beings locked jail cells. Our Nation Holds more people in Prison and Jail than Communist China which has 4 times our population, how can this be true?
When is Prison a solution?
Prison is a solution for people who continue to harm others and cannot live in a free society.
Murders belong in prison because they broke the sacred rule of civilization, "Thou Shall Not Kill." It's a rule never to be broke, and if it is broken, you must suffer your chosen fate.
Rapists and Child Molesters belong in prison because they too are the worst of the human race, they steal treasures of the heart and torture others without end.
This is an almost clear cut, easily definable group of Earth's Law breakers.
From this point it gets less clear cut.
People would agree in majority that thieves, those who steal from other people, deserve to be punished, while also being shown the correct way of how to survive and live amongst others.
...but it is really, really, really, hard to have a sensible discussion of Thievery because it has become and American way of life, where stealing's brother "ripping you off" has moved into EVERY HOUSE in the U.S.A.
We're getting ripped off by our credit rates, we're getting ripped off by our energy rates, we're getting ripped off by our health care rates, we're getting ripped off by our taxes. we're getting ripped off by our phone rates.
Hell. We've even been ripped off one thousand times over buy a small group of Corporate Business Men and their Corporations for TRILLIONS of Dollars and the worst punishments they have been served have been FINES.
Meyril Lynch ponzi schemes a billion dollars from investors in hedge funds? A hundred million dollar fine, and they can go right back to donating to our politicians, and advertising on the television about how trust worthy they are.
This is the state of the world now.
...and still millions of men and women spend trillions of dollars selling the current system that people like me, men who have smoked marijuana, and will probably smoke it again, deserve prison, and have no value in society.
Men stand at the bully pulpit and declare that BILLIONS of people on Earth are a better man than I just because I smoke God's Good Herb.
I don't deserve jail for smoking grass, anymore than I deserve jail for drinking wine.
You war and jail junkies can live and believe how you wish, but you are wrong.
And perhaps to take it a bit further: decarcerate. (Sorry to post a registration-requiring link.) Sadly this doesn't seem politically feasible.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
The criminal justice system throws the bad guys in jail. It doesn't create fewer criminals. The US criminal prevention industry is left up to parents, who have mixed results, not having gone through formal training themselves. The problem is that when parents produce felons, we don't send the felons home, we send them to a big government jail.
The government forgot about the business of moral education in public schools. The problem is that we need classes which engage in and promote humanity, general benevolence, public and private charity, frugality, honesty, punctuality in dealings, and it needs to do so in a rigorous manner. (this list, more or less, is in the original Massechusetts constitution).
In theory, we have this in "Civics" class, but that's taught by the football coach and talks about how a bill becomes a law, not why one ought not to steal or do heroine. In public schools, we don't teach morality and we don't teach dexterity within the law, hence the kids aren't comfortable with issues of civic morality and we solve problems with violence. Violence, not virtue. Hell, OSC has a War Watch column on Ornery because that's what's important. The history channel isn't the History channel, it's the violence channel. I don't know what the History Channel would do without WWII. One of those few modern wars that had to be fought. Forget history between wars, that's not the history we are concerned with, or can understand.
It's the way we approach teaching. Congress is so bad about, and Bush is so inarticulate concerning, the role of morality and yes religion in American principles that we have left this facet of education to popular music and television. The result is an oversized prison population, and good people committing crimes because they don't understand how what they are doing is dangerous to society.
A moral education will yield a population that is more acute, deft, inquisitive, prompt in attack, ready in defense, and full of resources. It will also improve the quality of laws and shrink the size of our prison population, and improve just about everyone's quality of life.
posted
I agree with the sentiment, Irami, but I'm not convinced as to the efficacy. Criminal behavior is such a complex issue, that I'm worried it's become an insinuating part of urban American culture.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I'm talking about Gary, Indiana or Kankakee, Illinois.
Anywhere you don't have jobs, or hope, or purpose within the system. We don't teach dignity. We teach character. We don't teach virtue. The US is more serious about prisons than it is about morality. We a class on serious talk about Ken Lay or John Dilinger or Aristotle or Jesus or why Mao got China off of dope, as much as we need one on chemistry.
posted
I'm afraid that once moral decay gets established, we're pretty much on an irreversible course to destroying ourselves. I don't know of any civilization that has been able to turn back from the edge of the pit. The only hope for people who consider themselves moral is to flee to the promised land. Start buying land in New Zealand.
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quote:All it takes is a handful of good speeches and some policy with purpose to turn the boat around.
This sounds naive. Now this doesn't mean I think all hope is gone, but that the Problem of Criminal Tendencies needs to be addressed at a much larger level. I haven't done research into this, but education is just one facet in this quest. Boys and girls clubs probably do a lot of good, for example. There should be a different "Corrections" method for youth incidents than what's available currently.
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Getting to the moon seems like a small achievement compared to making this kind of change to the criminal justice system. Especially in this political climate. Starting the Peace Corps is closer, but still I don't see this happening any time soon. Though I'd love to be proved wrong on this point.
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posted
My cop friend tells me that in nearly all violent crimes, alcohol or drugs is a key contributing factor. Most of the calls he responds to are alcohol or drug-related.
I accompanied the young men of my church congregation on a visit to the Utah State Penitentiary. We were escorted into a room where four prisoners, doing community service time, were waiting to answer our questions: two black guys, a Hispanic, and a Caucasian. We were surprised to discover that 75% of the prison population is black or Hispanic. Nearly all were repeat offenders and most were in for drug-related crimes.
I asked one of the black prisoners why there were so many blacks in the Utah State prison system when there are so few blacks living in Utah to begin with. He said: "I don't know; you tell me." He went on to suggest that the criminal justice system in Utah is biased against blacks and that blacks tend to get prison sentences for the same crimes for which whites go free.
I think racial bias is only a partial explanation. I think we have failed to pass on the values represented in our laws to entire segments of our society.
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posted
or Watch Thor and not that ridiculous cartoon-er-movie they made.
Silver--While I agree that the marijuana arrests and jail is not productive for this country or for its people, I believe that some laws must be enacted to restrict the use of mind-altering, mood-altering, or behavioral modificating drugs. While I could care less if you took a hit at home, I wouldn't want you stoned and driving an ambulance.
Orami--While teaching morality to children is a nice idea, the question becomes "who teaches what morality." Do you teach tolerance? What if the children believe in a strict, non-tolerant religion. Tolerance to homosexuality is considered a liberal plot by some conservatives. Tolerance and acceptance of other cultures may weaken ones faith and beliefs in your own, is a fear stressed by some conservatives. Do you teach the 10 Commandments? That is considered an Evangeical plot by many liberals. Do you teach Conformity to the Law? That will create a generation of malleable zombies afraid to question thier government (ie the 1950's). Do you teach free expression and self worth? That creates a generation of liberals and rebels with or without a cause (ie the 1960's).
Who choses the morality to teach? Is it done on a local level? If so won't that creat factionalization in the US--where Liberals from the Smith County Schools and Conservatives from the Jones County Schools do not associate because they are morally oppisittes. Will it be national in scope?
The individual has the freedom to believe what they wish. If you institutionalize what wishes can be made, then we loose freedom in order to feel safe.
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posted
I think the underlying values that make up our society's laws could be taught in school without much objection.
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posted
I dunno. Are we talking about teaching values or instilling values? It's definitely a sticky subject.
I think you could go a long way towards teaching values (in a way that wouldn't be reprehensible to some group or other) by teaching kids about how things work in the real world. Like Irami said with Civics classes. How many kids, even at the high school level, know how to balance a checkbook? Understand credit card debt? Know why drugs or premarital sex can be harmful, as opposed to simply having been filled with propaganda? Know what liberal and conservative mean? Understand how lobbying works?
Though, in fairness, I think curricula are partially designed with this in mind already. After all, they have us read Civil Disobedience, 1984, and Brave New World. But it isn't enough. IMHO.
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quote:I asked one of the black prisoners why there were so many blacks in the Utah State prison system when there are so few blacks living in Utah to begin with. He said: "I don't know; you tell me." He went on to suggest that the criminal justice system in Utah is biased against blacks and that blacks tend to get prison sentences for the same crimes for which whites go free.
I think racial bias is only a partial explanation. ]I think we have failed to pass on the values represented in our laws to entire segments of our society.
(emphasis added)
Teach the values represented in our laws. Teach the ten commandments. Teach the sermon on the mount. Teach the Declaration of Independence. Teach Nichomachian Ethics. Teach Marbury vs. Madison. Teach John Muir. Teach the manifold reasons to avoid the dehumanizing effects of the drug trade. To the extent that English, Greek, and Christian morality has shaped the legal system, the government needs to teach English, Greek, and Christian morality. And to the extent that America transcends any one of those, this should be taught also. And there is no shame in doing so explicitly, as inextricably tied to our criminal justice system. They are also tied to our economic and political system. Most violent criminals I know break laws, but do not understand those American values underlying that law, or have developed bad habits in their first 25 years and don't know how and why to shake them.
I'm not too worried about creating law abiding zombies, I think that teaching values in school will create more thoughtful and deft citizens. You don't have to believe that "The Lord so loved this world that he gave it his only begotten son and whosoever believes in him will not die, but live an ever lasting life," in order to understand the role of redemption and forgiveness that that tradition's legacy has left on America. Whether a person respects and abides the law is that person's choice, but it's not going to be because that person doesn't understand it. But they will learn the difference between virtue and violence, even if they choose violence.
We are in arms when 12 year-olds can't do long division, but a scarier prospect is that same 12 year-old not knowing why he ought not go with his buddies and steal a car.
The Founders wrote this constitution for a WASP nation with an English and Greek pedigree. That doesn't mean that it can only work for a WASP nation with an English and Greek pedigree, but it does mean that there are all manners of WASP, English, and Greek assumptions written into the law.
It's not about having the 10 commandments hanging in the court room, or whether "under God" is in the Pledge. It's about whether an educated populace is necessary for the viability of democracy. It's about understanding the slings and arrows that go along with putting the cratia with the demos, and what's necessary for this to work well.
quote:I think we have failed to pass on the values represented in our laws to entire segments of our society.
I think this is a cultural advantage that whites don't quite get their head around as they pass laws which which lock up blacks and latinos, and then are chincy with public schools.
As a black American, I get a pretty good view of how Opie, through no fault of his own, makes it through 25 years without having a serious run-in with the law, and how Jamal isn't so lucky. I get to play De Tocqueville.
And as long as the government controls the jails and the schools, it's obliged to teach why we have come to lock up so people. Sure, this is sticky replete with fine lines, but so is democracy, and when you look at the alternatives, the size of and degradation in the prison system or the large and dangerous illegal economy on the outside, I think it's obvious that it's vast negligence not to try. This kind of the knowledge is the mother's milk of legal, political, and economic integrity.
____________________________
quote:Who choses the morality to teach? Is it done on a local level? If so won't that creat factionalization in the US--where Liberals from the Smith County Schools and Conservatives from the Jones County Schools do not associate because they are morally oppisittes. Will it be national in scope?
If you institutionalize what wishes can be made, then we loose freedom in order to feel safe.
We already do institutionalize these choices, it's the criminal justice system, I'm just trying to make a more knowledgeable electorate.
Just deal with the documents, including various bibles, letters, essays, laws, and court opinions. And some of important ones have the word "God" in them.
posted
I am not sure I agree completely with you. There is a line where morality becomes essentially religion. I think we all agree we do not want the Government crossing that line and teaching religion.
However I do agree that since the government runs both the schools and the prisons, they should instruct instruct a civics-morality course based on the laws.
The laws state things about drugs, property, taxes, and the rights of others. These are enshrined in statute so should be taught from the earliest age. (Its surprising how many of these laws are ignored by our curriculm--Sharing is fine, but don't presume that it is a right for that leads to stealing. Schools reserve the right to search lockers without warrants, limit what the school papers reports, and limits the students freedom of expression, but expect the students to know the bill of rights.) There is a lot to think about in what would a civics-morality course require.
As far as your WASP-Greek-Roman historical based morality course, I would argue that there are a lot of non-WASP-Greek etc philosophies/religion/beliefs that should be incorporated. Should we leave off the Pacifist teachings of Mahatma Ghandi? How about the kharmic beliefs (What goes around comes around) of Hinduism? How about the beliefs in honor and duty of the Samuria? How about the respect for nature found in the Iriquois? There are more from all over the world.
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posted
I've traveled all over the country, supporting factory installations, and I've met a lot of poor factory workers. It seems that a switch has been turned off in their brains, whereby they lose the vision of their potential and of their future. So many people I've met live one day at a time, eating, sleeping, looking at TV, drinking beer, and having sex. It appears that their only goal in life is to look good: a new car, shiny rims, a new do, new shoes, etc. If I had to live like that, I might consider breaking the law or doing drugs once in awhile. These folks have been living that way for generations, and they pass their lack of vision on.
How do you open up their minds and turn the switch on? How do you manipulate their environment to make the vision a reality? They're in such a fog that they're never going to do it for themselves.
I think you've first got to give people a vision of the great things that they can achieve. Then they might listen when you try to teach them the rules to follow or values to embrace in order to achieve their new goals.
Of course if the WASP vision is an unattainable dream for most poor factory workers and their children, then they're going to come up with their own rules and values.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:As far as your WASP-Greek-Roman historical based morality course, I would argue that there are a lot of non-WASP-Greek etc philosophies/religion/beliefs that should be incorporated. Should we leave off the Pacifist teachings of Mahatma Ghandi? How about the kharmic beliefs (What goes around comes around) of Hinduism? How about the beliefs in honor and duty of the Samuria? How about the respect for nature found in the Iriquois? There are more from all over the world.
Sure, put it in, but I think it's more important to study the moral traditions underlying the laws that are currently on the books.
___________________________
CT linked a this , on another thread. The reason I believe that our prison percentage is higher than than anyone else's in the world is because I think that the people in prison have the least fundamental understanding of the values behind the laws. A prison in Poland is probably filled with Poles who grew up with Polish values and broke Polish laws. There isn't the same congruity in American Prisons.
The people in prison are raised in a different world than the people making and enforcing the laws. They may be convicted by a jury of their peers, but their peers sure didn't make the laws. Our prison system incarcerates too many people out of simple and fundamental misunderstanding, and public schools should be in the business of bridging this gap.
It's not an issue of money. It's an issue of a breakdown in communication between the people making the laws and the people breaking the laws. And in any democracy, one cannot underestimate the power of communication.
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CT:
Am I correct when I say that the problem isn't so much that minorities are committing more crimes as much as they are committing the wrong kinds of crimes. As if two guys are looking for debris to burn to stay warm. One person burns a flag, the other burns a newspaper, and how one is more offensive than the other.
As an aside, I don't understand how DUIs aren't bigger deals. Those people are dangerous.
quote:breakdown in communication between the people making the laws and the people breaking the laws
Yes. The people making the laws said: "these are the rules that we need in order to prosper," and then they put up a wall and excluded a whole block of society from their prosperity plan. Several generations ago we created a whole segment of society that didn't care about the rules or about the plan when we excluded them from realizing the benefits of the plan. Even with new holes appearing in the wall, the formerly excluded segment continues to pass on their indifference toward the plan to successive generations. They could crawl through the holes in the wall on their hands and knees if they only knew that it was possible.
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posted
It'll change with more "interpreters," people who understand WASP, teaching Americans who don't. It'll also change with more minorities in congressional offices.
posted
Irami, I don't understand what you mean by "WASP interpreters."
Isn't the idea of learning a trade, teaching your children, spending less than you earn, acquiring the means of production, and allowing and helping everyone else to do the same, isn't that universally understood? Don't even people who are in survival mode understand?
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posted
Learning a trade? It's not a matter of learning a trade, it's a matter of which trade, especially if you've never tasted success yourself.
Teaching your children? That assumes that you have learned enough yourself.
Spending less than you earn? Loans, Mortgages, and Bush's deficit spending; spending less than you earn isn't necessarily the recipe for success, and pretending that it is only engenders resentment. When and how to use credit is much more important powerful than spending less than you earn.
Acquiring the means of production? The best drug dealers I know are meticulous about their "grow rooms," and the people they employ as messengers and suppliers.
Allowing and helping everyone else to do the same? Boy, I don't know if you have looked at American WASP corporate culture or foreign and domestic policy, but what I've seen tells me that successful WASPs are picky as hell about who we allow to compete. Allowing and helping everyone else to do the same is almost as Un-American in practice as it is American in ideal, we like our "competitors" poor and dependent. ______
The world of the American WASP is more complex and less self-evident than just learning a trade, teaching your children, spending less than you earn, acquiring the means of production, and allowing and helping everyone else to do the same.
...but the road to crime seems simple enough: Take away a person's capacity to learn a trade, teach his children, save money, or acquire the means of production, and you'll produce a law-breaker in this generation or the next.
quote:When and how to use credit is much more important powerful than spending less than you earn.
...important and powerful for the lender anyway.
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Most wealthy people borrowed money and continue to do so. Most poor people do not.
Borrowing at a 5% interest rate (say a home mortgage), then investing that in something that will give you a 10% return on your investment (stocks, education, etc) is the essence of much of American finance and business.
Money is not an end product.
Money is not a valuable item to be locked away.
Money is not a game token in which we determine winners and losers.
Money is a tool. Teaching others how to use it wisely, including when and how to borrow it, is a great equalizer.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Kwea, there's also the matter of bringing yourself to do it. Even those of us who understand looking at the long term can quail at the thought of waiting a decade or more before we can spend money on enjoyable activities.
I didn't have to buy this computer...but from a "human" point of view, I don't know what I'd do without it.
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quote:world of the American WASP is more complex --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...but the road to crime seems simple enough: Take away a person's capacity to learn a trade, teach his children, save money, or acquire the means of production, and you'll produce a law-breaker in this generation or the next.
So we agree. It's more complex than merely these traits, but without them you'll be hard-pressed to find success. Let's say you listed 5 out of 10 necessary conditions, and in America, 50 percent is an F. __________________________
I think that blacks and latinos are in jail at a higher percentage than whites because these minorites don't have a shared cultural past with the WASPs who make laws.
We could fix this by teaching the ethical foundation from where these laws spring, getting more minorities in the legislature, and, I know this may be the most radical, letting prisoners vote.
If it comes to be the case where the education of the people in the prisons mirrors that of the legislature, then I believe we have reached a better place.
____________________________ Kwea,
Knowing how to use it wisely is important, but if you are in America and you speak the King's English, then it's much easier to be an white person who is irresponsible with money and time than it is to be a not-white person who is irresponsible with money or time. I think that's why you have so many poor white people eeking out a living without ending up with jail.
It's not an issue of vice, it's an issue of having the right vice. Not drinking may even be a liability in some jobs because business people and lawyers drink. The law and the private sector are going to be easier on drunks than people with other, less accepted and less destructive vices.
The same with sports: playing golf is probably going to help you out more than dominos. These are all issues. As long as the legislature, employers, and consumers are WASPs, blacks and latinos, to thrive in an integrated world, have to be adept in understanding what and why white people, generally, do the things that white people do. These reasons aren't always clear or compelling, as with Bush's read on Protestantism, but we are all better off for knowing. ________
As an aside, this the soundest argument for segregation. In black towns, with black teachers, black businesses, black doctors, black lawyers, and black accountants, there was a set of shared reasons and expectations. Black "interpreters" abounded anytime someone came in conflict with the white law, and most of the law was enforced by black people. With integration, since the black doctors, lawyers, and professionals were allowed to move where the money and the higher quality of life was, screwing up the infrastructure of the black towns. Don't be fooled, I'm a fan of integration. But there were reasons, but fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's a mixed bag.
I'd be more worried about the educational background of people in office coming to match that of people in prison. Prisoners are naturally going to vote for "whomever will let me out soonest".
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quote:Prisoners are naturally going to vote for "whomever will let me out soonest".
I'm looking for that to balance out the "Three-strikes-I-didn't-want-to-see-them-in-the-first-place" crowd.
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quote:blacks and latinos are in jail at a higher percentage than whites because these minorites don't have a shared cultural past with the WASPs who make laws
Blacks who come to the States of their own volition, and blacks who have migrated to other WASP nations voluntarily seem to arrive with their cultural past intact and have enough in common with the dominant WASP culture to have a decent life. I know some Nigerian immigrants who are doing quite well.
Descendants of blacks who were brought to the States (or to the Caribbean, for that matter) as slaves were robbed of whatever culture they had and have created a new culture: I might call it a culture of survival under oppression.
Hispanics whose families have been here since before there were states and those who have come legally, don't seem to have as much trouble as those who arrive here illegally and end up skulking around, dodging the system. They sort of give up that part of their culture that says "we are law-abiding people."
Somehow we've got to stop those perpetually-oppressed and skulking cultural attributes from being passed on.
The solution to the skulking problem might be to open the border. Immagine what we'll have two or three generations down the road if people continue to think that they have to hide from the government.
I don't know what the solution is for blacks who feel oppressed or who really are oppressed. We probably need more time and a couple more generations to pass.
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posted
Are you satisfied with just marijuana? Does knowing that you're outside the law give you a rush and make you feel like breaking other laws? Do you make a little extra cash selling some of your stash? Do you sell to kids? Do you feel the need to drive while stoned?
Okay, so maybe you're the model citizen and have all your poop together. Maybe you don't deserve to go to jail. What happens when somebody really needs your help and you're too stoned or drunk at the moment? What good are you then? What benefit are you to the community? Should the community change their laws to benefit you?
Annie, I was being ironic, knowing that is exactly why they don't have a problem with overflowing prisons in China. My point is that it's not fair to compare U.S. incarceration statistics with those of the rest of the world. Prison over there could mean sitting on a pile of your own dung in a 4 by 2 cell.
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