The Cost of Disobedience - Billion Dollar Injustice
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ February 04, 2008
Over a half decade ago, before I began to write columns for the Internet, I regularly wrote letters to the editor of our local newspaper contending that freedom could not be maintained in a disobedient society. Disobedience to law is directly proportional to despotic government. Both then and even more now we are governed by disobedient elected officials who ignore the Constitution and formulate policy from their own arrogant opinions. Our courts are afflicted with the same problem and as might be expected the frequency of crime has burgeoned. The example is set with impunity at the top and at the bottom our jails are overflowing with a greater percentage of prison inmates than in any other nation in the Western World.
Though policemen are paid from public funds and should confine their activities to serving the public, they are heavily armed, militarized and demanding acquiescence. They have become a prolific source of tyranny. Rather than seeking ways to protect the people they make inordinate efforts to protect themselves. Both the guilty and the innocent are handcuffed and anyone who questions their authority is arrested, tasered, or beaten. Policemen have become a menace not only to criminals but also to peaceful, law abiding citizens who attempt to assert their legal rights. Watch this video.
Should policemen have the authority to stop anyone at any time for any reason and demand compliance? Humanism has resulted in a proliferation of esoteric laws that are not generally understood. These laws can be taken out of the closet, dusted off, and used to harass the public. Should being stopped by a police officer for a minor violation when the subject may not even know a violation was committed require a submission that does not allow questioning the validity of the accusation? Is it proper for a police officer to allow a minor offense to escalate into a felony arrest through his own arrogant impatience? Policemen have a duty to protect the peace by judiciously enforcing the law. Needless submission is a dereliction of duty.
Handcuffing men, women and children in front of their peers when they have not been convicted of a crime and are of no danger to the officers is a cowardly, arrogant display of authority that demeans and unduly sullies the individual involved. Who is being protected here, the policemen or the public?
Policemen and police departments have the support of our courts and their internal investigations almost always affirm their conduct no matter how outrageous. Policemen wield tremendous power and while it is true that they need public backing they also need proper oversight.
The militarization of law enforcement is not the only problem. Seeking confessions by hook or by crook, policemen are intricately involved in wringing out any remnant of justice left in the legal system.
Individuals suspected of crimes are often arrested and held for long periods of time in small soundproof rooms that create an impression of isolation and claustrophobia making the arrival of the interrogator a welcome event. In an excellent article on dishonest policemen David Kopel writes… “There is no law against outright lies or other deceptions on the part of the police during an interrogation…the prisoner may be told that a witness has identified him, or that one of his friends has confessed and implicated him, or that certain physical evidence proves his guilt… He may be given a lie detector test, and then told that he failed it…Almost certainly, the prisoner will be told that the prosecutor and the judge will be more lenient if he confesses. This is a complete lie.”
“In the long run, routine deception by the police tears at our social fabric, and undermines the law enforcement system. The more the police lie, the more skeptical juries are going to be, even when police are telling the truth.”
Kopel writes that every year there are six thousand false convictions in the United States, many of these are a result of coerced confessions. Read the entire article here.
Court TV made a move entitled “The Interrogation of Michael Crowe” about a California family whose daughter was brutally murdered in her bed. The movie documented police procedures that involved separating the mother and father and two remaining children for preliminary interviews and ultimately zeroing in on the son, Michael Crowe. Subjecting a fifteen year old boy to twelve hours of interrogation by two or three police officers with the only objective being to get a confession is a brutal and unreliable undertaking. Review the movie here.
For those suspected of crimes the devious procedures of our police departments are followed by an unpredictable court system.
There is still an illusion that the court seeks justice. This is a misconception. We live under a court system that works on the premise that all crimes are committed against the State and that the best path to truth is through an adversarial system presented before a neutral judge or jury. Under this system the litigants are concerned with winning the case rather than seeking justice. This pugnacity is conducted under a legal code that changes at the whim of the sovereign state. Read about the system here.
Unfortunately the love affair with the anarchy of humanism and the use of capricious law began years ago. Early in the Nineteenth Century Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:
“In America the authority exercised by the legislatures is supreme; nothing prevents them from accomplishing their wishes with celerity and with irresistible power, and they are supplied with new representatives every year. That is to say, the circumstances which contribute most powerfully to democratic instability, and which admit of the free application of caprice to the most important objects, are here in full operation. Hence America is, at the present day, the country beyond all others where laws last the shortest time. Almost all the American constitutions have been amended within thirty years; there is therefore not one American state which has not modified the principles of its legislation in that time. As for the laws themselves, a single glance at the archives of the different states of the Union suffices to convince one that in America the activity of the legislator never slackens. Not that the American democracy is naturally less stable than any other, but it is allowed to follow, in the formation of the laws, the natural instability of its desires.”
“The omnipotence of the majority and the rapid as well as absolute manner in which its decisions are executed in the United States not only render the law unstable, but exercise the same influence upon the execution of the law and the conduct of the administration. As the majority is the only power that it is important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest ardor…” Read the article here.
Brute force used by law enforcement would indicate that our jails are filled with vicious and violent prisoners. However, this is not the case. At least half of incarcerated inmates are non-violent prisoners. Many of these hapless individuals caught up in an inexorable system that routinely ignores justice are thrown into a brutal, tortuous environment that is both terrifying and demeaning.
Prisons are seething, over-crowded, cauldrons, filled with racial hatred and gang violence. Murder and rape are common. Half of the prisoners in our jails are Black and rival gang members are often at each other’s throats.
In 2006, there were some 7 million citizens involved with our corrections system. Over 4 million were on probation, nearly 800 thousand on parole, 766 thousand in local jails, and nearly 1.5 million in states and federal prisons. One in every 31 adult Americans was involved in the correction system.
Even though we are building new prisons at an unprecedented rate, most of our prisons have at least 30 percent more inmates than they were designed to hold.
The price is mind boggling. At an average cost per state prisoner of $68.00 a day, 250,000 inmates cost the states $17 million per day or $6,205,000,000 per year. That is just for drug offenses and only for state prisons. If the $68 a day figure was used on the 2.5 million total prisoners in all of our jails the cost would burgeon to $62,000,000,000 and that does not include lawyer fees, court costs and huge outlays for new prisons.
To make matters even worse we have not only opened our borders to over 30 million immigrants who do not always abide by our laws but also created a whole new category of abuse violations. Felony abuse crimes have become a major additional burden on our courts and jails. There is child porn, child abuse, sexual abuse, animal abuse, etc. These additional offenses have been added to the War on Drugs which is responsible for half of our prison population. We are clogging our courts, filling our jails and in spite of gargantuan efforts failing to stem the tide.
The United States and much of the free world has major problems with crime and punishment. Justice is evasive, punishment is expensive, arbitrary and often tortuous, crime may go down from year to year but in the long run it is a perpetual drag on the peace and prosperity of society.
God did not create human beings with the capacity to govern themselves and when we refuse to live by His immutable Laws the result is never satisfactory.
When human institutions ignore God’s dominion they not only fall into chaos but quickly become tyrannical. In a Godly society policemen would be required to adhere to the same legal standards as those they serve. Truth and justice would be the objective and the means would be proscribed by God’s legal standards. Without the unchanging Laws of the Bible there is no enduring definition of justice and the legal system quickly becomes tainted. In a Godly order judges would seek justice under God’s Laws and God’s Laws would be known by the entire populace.
When God’s legal standards are enforced the jails and courts are not overburdened. God understands the need to cleanse the social order of elements that defile His Kingship. It is His Wisdom to provide a legal system that cleanses society of chronic rebellion and disobedience by using the death penalty. Justice is the prime objective and God’s eugenics provides death as the ultimate punishment. Murderers, rapists, child molesters, and chronic criminals are eliminated from society and do not spend their lives in torturous jail cells at taxpayer’s expense.
When all crimes are against the State as they are in the United States and in all or most of the free world God’s consistent legal anchor is removed and deterioration is bound to occur. King David maintained that his sin was against God and God only. Under God's Laws all crimes are committed against God and God maintains sovereignty through His Laws. The State is under God’s jurisdiction and accountable to Him. Crimes that do not require capital punishment are adjudicated by redress. Punishable crimes involve illegal actions. Taking drugs would not be a crime unless the partaker committed an illegal act. Thieves work and repay what they have stolen three or four fold. For those who refuse to work and repay, the death penalty would soon follow. In two or three generations judges would have light caseloads and jails would be empty.
God’s pristine legal system requires only a small police force and a diminishing number of judges. It not only saves billions of dollars but dispenses justice on a more consistent basis.
Rebellion against God and His legal system comes at a tremendous cost. Humanism is beginning to topple under its own weight.