What do you do when punishing 'crime' becomes a moral crime itself?

Unprecedented, brutal and objectively insane.
It is a widely known and shameful statistic:  the United States incarcerates seven times more of its residents per capita than Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom - the countries that are most like us - or as I put it:  the "civilized" Anglo Saxon countries. We, of course are the "uncivilized" one.  Not because we drive a lot of cars or have a lot of guns or are too fat or any of that neo-puritan hooey but because we hold so many men and women in involuntary servitude - a servitude with enough brutality, sexual abuse and contempt to rival the worst slave dealer from the old south.  And in the majority of cases, the 'crimes' these people have been imprisoned for would not lead to incarceration in a 'civilized' country.



It's actually worse than that because while I don't have any statistics, it is evident that the US convicts a far higher proportion of its citizens of felonies than civilized countries do.  This matters even if they are not incarcerated because the convicted felon is under state supervision and surveillance upon pain of imprisonment in the brutal rape factories that we euphemistically call prisons.  Indeed in poor black communities more than half the men are 'supervised' by the state. And to be 'felonized' is to find your life prospects radically curtailed.  Most professions and many industries exclude convicted felons as a matter of course and in our data rich world every felony is a bright electronic mark of Cain that makes it hard to get a job, get a loan, rent an apartment - live.

There are lots of reasons why the US is so much more brutal to its own citizens than other similarly situated nations including our truly iniquitous and objectively insane legal system, our origins as an abstract empire of laws rather than as a 'people' with an organic culture and our legacy of puritan evangelicalism and the attendant moral panics and preference for coercion that come with it.  But I'm not here to solve the problem but to outline it.

It's legal but is it moral?
Clearly what our policemen, prosecutors, judges, and prison wardens are doing is legal - after all, they are punishing people who broke laws duly passed by legislatures and ruled constitutional (and not 'cruel or unusual') by the courts.  But is it moral?  By diligently enforcing a legal system that delivers millions into involuntary servitude - more than three times more than truly medieval Saudi Arabia - we are stripping millions of people of their liberty and via felonization tens of millions of their futures.  When the Soviet Union imprisoned or exiled millions of - duly convicted under the laws of the USSR passed by legislatures and validated by their courts - citizens in its Gulag no one doubted that is was an unjust, indeed evil system that should and would be shut down as soon as civilized people took power there.

So why aren't our policemen, prosecutors, judges and politicians held in the contempt shown for the Soviet Union's? Why don't we consider them nothing but cynical, brutal apparatchiks climbing the greasy pole of a vile system built on the bones of millions?  Why are there statues and paeans to our brave boys in blue who strip so many of their freedom and futures?  Why do so many of the objectively cruelest, most destructive prosecutors in the entire world go on to have successful political careers? How can we as a country hold that we are moral or even legitimate when we are so 'exceptionally' evil and destructive in this regard?  Isn't involuntary servitude and the systematic vandalization of tens of millions' futures a true crime against humanity?  Particularly when other similarly situated countries achieve similar goals without it?

And why does virtually no one in a position of moral authority - our pastors, academics, journalists, retired judges and so on - stand against such an immense and obvious injustice?  Why is our country so indifferent to the plight of so many millions who in any civilized country would have no mark of Cain on them?  What is wrong with us?  How can we be so destructive? And how can we persuade those with influence to stand with the weak, defenseless and utterly unfashionable to return justice to the land?  Because the powerful have shown a remarkable unwillingess to address this issue.

Barack Obama is perhaps the most salient example.  Barack Obama admits to regular, heavy use of Marijuana and occaisional use of cocain as a teen and young adult. He either did not get caught or operating under the more lenient laws of the late 70s and early 80s he didn't face serious consequences.  Yet in almost six years the President has done virtually nothing to lessen the burden of over-criminalization in the so called Drug War. In fact he broke his promise to not harass medical marijuana dispensaries - harassment of these legal businesses rose when Barack Obama took office. And virtually everyone whose anyone shares in this hypocrisy.  Most people in power today used illegal drugs one time or another in their youth and got away with it, in part because our parents were far more compassionate holders of power than our generation has turned out to be. Yet they support indeed probably helped pass today's truly cruel and pointless drug laws.

I submit that this moral crime in its scope, it's destruction of hopes and dreams and in the brutality of its concentration camp/cum prisons makes our criminal justice reign of terror the worst act of state depravity against our citizenry since slavery was abolished, far exceeding that inflicted by the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII.  By behaving in such a disproportionate and 'exceptional' manner the United States announces (proudly it seems) that it is beyond the pale of civilized behavior.  And it doesn't appear that anyone gives a damn.

God help us every one.