Courts & Prisons

Our Failed Criminal Justice System

Anyone who has lived both in the United States and in a Western European country cannot help but to notice that western Europe, whose culture resembles ours, has a far smaller crime rate than we. The evidence is the recidivism rate. A recidivist is someone who commits more than one crime. The European recidivism rate is 20%.  The American recidivism rate is 76%.

The principal reason for this discrepancy is that our prisons foster and encourage recidivism, while the European prisons succeed in bringing about rehabilitation. Our prisons, like all prisons everywhere, deprive the prisoner of his freedom. That is the entire punishment in European prisons. European prisons, and particularly Scandinavian prisons, treat prisoners in a humane fashion. The prisons in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, as in other countries,  are furnished like hotel rooms. Prisoners live in apartments with good looking furniture. They have access to television, books, and radios as well as newspapers. They can receive visitors who may stay overnight and they are given opportunities to learn useful trades.

Our prisons are a nightmare. They consist of staggered cells, few if any visitors, and harsh treatment by brutal guards. Scandinavian prisons encourage friendship between guards and prisoners. In sum, European prison employees remember that the prisoner remains a human being who has human needs and feelings. Our prison employees are sadists who enjoy treating prisoners in a cruel and dismissive manner and therefore do not allow them a chance to respect their fellow men, as they are not respected by the prison guards whose sole purpose is to make life as unbearable as possible. As a result, most European offenders go to prison only once and only one in five ever become offenders again. Our prisoners go to prison numerous times, as three out of four are recidivists. 

Our prisons are big business. Not only the prison administrators and other prison employees benefit from large numbers of prisoners, but those who supply our prisons with food, clothing, electricity, water, and much more, make a lot of money from supplying prisons. Therefore it is in the interest of prison employees to make sure most prisoners come back, as the income of the employees and outside suppliers is dependent on large number of recidivists.

This is not possible in Europe because there are few repeat offenders, so that the income of the prison employees cannot depend on recidivism. Europeans also have a smaller violence rate than we. In Europe, the murder rate is one per hundred thousand inhabitants. Our murder rate is 6.4 per hundred thousand. Because our Constitution includes the right to own a firearm, 35% of whites own a gun. Whites constitute 85% of the American population. No more than 2% of Americans are of East Asian extraction, and 13% are of African origin. Afro-Americans own 25% of legal guns but obtain a large number of guns by illegal means. This leads to a large number of murders and assaults with deadly weapons within the black population. The American black community suffers great disadvantages, not only because of poverty, but also because over 80% of black children grow up in one parent households without the presence of their fathers.  This leads to a vast rate of criminal behavior and a reasonable prediction that a large portion of newborn black children in America will be imprisoned as adults.

Our criminal justice system also punishes political opinions. This is prohibited by our constitution. Nevertheless, our two tier criminal justice system penalizes Republicans while allowing Democrats to commit all kinds of crimes without being prosecuted.

Unlike all European countries, we maintain the death penalty in 28 US states, the federal government, and the military.  The so called death penalty exists in this country although it is evident that the death penalty does not deter murder.

In sum, it is certain that our high crime rate is largely caused by our criminal justice system, which could be altered to lead to a much smaller crime rate if our politicians were willing to replace brutality with  a  humane  criminal justice system.

Shalom u'vracha.

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