Short thoughts on justice
Jul 21, 2009
Max Thorn, writing in Notes from the Land of Nod:
I realized first-hand the linear nature of our justice system. We have set up a system that can exclude the very people involved in the case. We have a system that did not allow me to meet my perpetrator in court and forgive him. (They refused to give me his contact information.) I could not even choose whether or not to press charges on a case that so directly involved me.
And we've all played into the system, largely excluding opportunities for us to love and to sacrifice and to be kind and to forgive. We're taught to pass off our problems to someone else, to the "professionals." We are brought up to avoid them, to ignore them. And once criminals are admitted for "correction," the system is content to simply punish them while the rest of us ignore them. We may not have created the system, but we are often complicit with it.
Our society ostracizes criminals, who are typically poor and/or of racial minorities. We count people as "too far gone," even going so far as to allow the State to take their lives. Released criminals have an incredibly hard time finding jobs. They are marginalized even more so than before by our (sometimes subconscious) prejudices against them.
