Land of the Free?

The United States of America, home of the brave and land of the free!

Ahhh, I don't know about the brave part but it sure as hell ain't the "land of the free!"

At this writing there are about 2 1/4 million people in prisons and jails across the United states which means about one in every 150 people. This, my friends, is by far the highest rate of incarceration IN THE WORLD!

On top of that a record 7 million people -- one in every 35 U.S. adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, a Justice Department report released yesterday shows.

From 1995 to 2003, inmates incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth.

(Who says the war on drugs is working! Maybe these assholes should try lessening the sentences, drug treatment programs and de-criminalization of minor drug charges. Plus a "war on hard drugs" where is counts....... places like Afghanistan and Columbia!)

The statistics are from the annual report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

These figures prove beyond a doubt that law enforcement theory in the US places an un-characteristically high and un-usually rigorous degree of importance on punishment.

I am going to give two examples of the problems with the American penal system that I ran across just this morning.

A Missouri man faces hefty prison term for stealing 52-cent doughnut. It's a hefty price for a pastry, the man accused of stealing a 52-cent doughnut could face up to 30 years in jail.

Authorities said Scott Masters, 41, slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying, then allegedly pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store.

The push is being treated as a minor assault, which transforms a misdemeanour shoplifting charge to a strong-armed robbery with a potential prison term of five to 15 years. But, because Masters has a criminal history, prosecutors say they could seek 30 years.

"Strong-arm robbery? Over a doughnut? That's impossible," Masters told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from jail.

He admitted that he took the pastry but denying touching the employee. "There's no way I would've pushed a woman over a doughnut."

Farmington Police Chief Rick Baker said state law treats the shoplifting and assault as forcibly stealing property. The amount of force and value of the property doesn't matter in the States.

"It's not the doughnut," Baker said. "It's the assault."

Masters said he didn't even get to enjoy his ill-gotten gains: He threw the doughnut away as he fled.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have a look at people that really should be in jail.

Federal agents have arrested more than 1,300 suspected gang members in the past three months, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency official said.

During the three-month, nationwide crackdown, immigration and customs agents worked with law enforcement counterparts in 20 cities in what one official described as a "summer surge."

The sweep was part of the agency's Operation Community Shield anti-gang initiative, which started in 2005, and has resulted in arrests of more than 7,000 alleged members and their associates from more than 600 gangs, the agency said. Those taken into custody are either prosecuted in federal courts or deported.

One of the gangs targeted has been MS-13, which is believed to be the fastest growing group in the United States as well as one of the most violent, the agency said.

The FBI estimates MS-13 has about 10,000 members in the country, along with tens of thousands in Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, where the gang originated in the late 1980s.

What it all boils down to , bunky, is that when the U.S. has proportionately more people (and the wrong people) in jail than all the totalitarian states like China, Cuba, Middle East Countries, North Korea, Vietnam and former East-Block countries then we know there is something seriously wrong with the justice system.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com and the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Saturday Morning Confusion. # 133

Here it is Saturday Morning and I'm in my normal state of confusion. I sit here on this long weekend holiday wondering what the hell the world is coming to!

I have always hated the way kids now dress in "gangsta" clothes with their pants around their ass and underwear hiked up half a foot higher.

Why a bunch of middle class suburban white kids want to emulate ghetto black kids is beyond me but the city elders in Atlanta have apparently had enough and passed a city ordinance banning "gangsta" clothing because it makes it too easy to hid drugs and weapons in the clothing.

This harkens back to the 30's and 40's when zoot-suits were banned for the same reason. (I would ban them too, but on the grounds of good taste if nothing else.)

Now, along the same sort of line, but something that has greater implications for most of middle-class America.

I talked about how the police are an institution unto themselves and seem to be able to operate with impunity and total disregard for the very laws they are sworn to uphold. Well we have just as big a problem D.A.'s and Assistant D.A.'s in most areas.

Not only are these people prosecuting offenders with an eye to winning a conviction whether there is evidence of guilt or not, they have now sunk to a new low of exaggerating or even fabricating charges and evidence for the purpose of career advancement or political gain.

Two recent examples of this are first of all the case of Conrad Black and how how was supposedly looting the coffers of a Chicago newspaper out of millions of dollars when in fact he was for the most part following normally accepted business practises.

On top of that, most of what he was charged with happened in Canada, where there was no question of it's legality, but they decided to twist some American laws to gain an indictment and then a conviction.

(There were fourteen or so charges they threw against the wall to see what would stick. Three of them did.)

This was all done for purely political reasons (It's open season on businessmen after the Enron and WorldCom scandals so this time let's get a Canadian businessman) and because of this ol' Conrad might be spending quite a few years in the slammer.

What's even worse is that they confiscated thirty or forty million dollars of his own money to make it more difficult for him to pay his lawyers. These are dirty tricks to the max, especially since the eventual money concerned (and under appeal) amounted to some 2-3 million.

Then there is the case of Michael Vick and his trial by media for being involved in dogfighting. This is an excerpt from Barbara Amiel about that trial. (By the way, Barbara is the wife of Conrad Black!)

The fact of dogfighting is not really this issue here but rather how the US prosecutors handled it. They made political hay out of it to the point of being ridiculous.

Three other accused copped ples bargains because they were not celebrities and they all pointed the finger at Vick. (And gave him the finger!)

Prosecutors then hovered with new indictments if Vick himself didn't agree with a plea bargain.

Whether of not you have feelings about dog-fighting, and personally I think it vile, watching the pit bull tactics of American Justice makes dogfighting look sedate. Vick gave in.

"This has already cost him hundreds of thousand in lawyers' fees," said one legal commentator. "A trial would cost him millions!"

It takes a hero or a madman to fight the US Department of Justice, and Vick's lawyers were neither. I can't blame them.

A gambling conviction would have outlawed him from the NFL for life. Just as bad, the superseding indictment was expected to contain RICO charges. (Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act.)

That's a killer. RICO sentences are up to 20 years per charge and damages can be tripled.

Theoretically designed to prevent organized crime, RICO is now used for just about everything but.

"The real purpose of invoking the RICO statutes," writes William L Anderson, adjunct scholar of the Ludwis von Mises Institure, "is to employ a legal weapon so powerful that few people can avoid being crushed by it!"

As Anderson points out, a RICO charge can freeze an accused's assets pre-trial, leaving him no money for a proper defence.

Within a week, Vick pleaded guilty to one charge in exchange for fingering other people.

That this approach to justice is an outrage seems a matter of indifference to Americans!

So my friends, the long and short of it seems to be that you can get screwed over coming and going in the American justice system.

It's not only the cops you have to watch out for it's the prosecutors as well............. and then your own lawyer......... that he doesn't just take your money and plead you out.

Bet you won't see that on "Law and Order!"

Your "litigious" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at http://www.god-101.com/