Social Versus Criminal Justice
By Doug Traubel and Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.
Introduction
From
time immemorial societies have sought ways to regulate and control
human behavior in a fair and just manner. It would appear the issues
start out fairly simple, say a law stating: You shall not kill...except...and the “except” is why there is no consistent universal code of justice.
Given
the inevitable exceptions to any code of conduct, two major methods of
enforcing the mores and morals of a society have evolved that are
contrasted here: social justice and criminal justice.
Social justice
Social justice may
be expressed as the ability people have to realize their potential in
the society where they live and, of necessity, it is subjective and
qualitative. In exclusive societies, such as tribes and religious
groups, social justice will often suffice. However, it is often based on
emotions and feelings. Hearsay and rumor are accepted as evidence, fear
and superstition are essential elements, and generally there are few or
no fixed standards.
Most commonly one finds social justice in the form of shunning to
enforce an ideology or superstition, or excommunication used to enforce
religious beliefs. It is also widespread during societal collapse and
in extreme forms results in mob violence, vigilante action, lynching,
or, notably during the French Revolution the use of such devices as the guillotine.
Criminal justice
In
more complex and larger societies with diverse cultures, religions, and
behaviors social justice is inadequate and dangerous. More
quantitative and inflexible codes evolve, usually in the form of laws on
which criminal justice is based. Effective enforcement of laws is based
on well-defined, fixed, objective standards with impersonal
incarceration, execution, or compensatory financial penalties.
While
there are many variants in other cultures, to deter false allegations
and provide for a fair hearing of complaints, a number of standard
procedures have evolved under English law. These include due process,
a right to counsel, trial by a jury of one’s peers, an assumption that
the accused is innocent until proven guilty, a burden on the State to
prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused acted knowingly, recklessly, or was criminally negligent (mens rea), and that the crime was deliberately committed (actus reus), i.e.,
it was not self defense, an accident, done involuntarily such as a
reflex or convulsion, or while the accused was unconscious or asleep.
Ideally,
under the rule of law the code is simple, readily understood, and
unchanging. Unfortunately, self-serving politicians and lawyers are
never content to let well enough alone. So in complex societies the
corpus of laws grows beyond comprehension and changes with the winds of
politics.
Part 1 — Power and control
The
basic objective and use of both social and criminal justice has always
been control. Unfortunately, they also lend themselves to the assumption
of power by the unscrupulous.
Social justice as used today is a Marxist construct. There is neither “justice” nor “injustice” in their lexicon, only emotions and feelings of what is “right” and what is “wrong” in
the situational ethics of the moment. Tied to the false narrative of
neo-Marxist ideology the aim is to redistribute wealth and power by
creating the victim mindset of entitlement among one segment of the
population and the yielding force of guilt and fear in the
others. Guilt makes people passive and even complicit to being dispossessed,
a primary goal of Marxist revolutionaries. And it matters not to
today’s Marxists whether the class enemies of the moment are kulaks,
white farmers in Africa, black preachers, Muslims, affluent whites, the
intelligentsia, or any other group against whom fear and resentment can
be instilled in order to justify the need for social justice to rectify
the perceived imbalance.
But
what of those who dissent? Dissenters must be intimidated, silenced,
discredited. We are living in the era of the New
Inquisition. Dissenters (heretics) run from the Grand Inquisitors who
sling such labels as “racist,” “bigot,” or “batterer.”
The
neo-Marxist patent on the use of these labels is brilliant. For
instance the terms racist and racism are used as a sword and a shield.
Criticize President Obama: You are a racist. Advocate deportation of illegal aliens: You are a racist. Use the accurate and legal descriptor “illegal alien” instead of the Left’s substitute, “undocumented immigrant”: You are a racist. Support voter ID laws: You are a racist. Support English as the official language: You are a racist. Oppose Affirmative Action: You are a racist. Support equal rights for men: You are a “wife beater” and woman hater. Oppose homosexual marriage: You are a “bigot.” And the list goes on.
Political
correctness and social justice replace independent thought
today. Followers scratch their heads at black members of the
much-maligned Tea Party and conservative Liberty movement. What can
these presumptively downtrodden black people possibly have in kind with
the majority-white “Tea Baggers?” They cannot, or will not
comprehend the kindred spirit found in reason, rational thought, and
traditional values that are so inviting to black conservatives and
transcend the Left’s obsession with racial division. The architects of
the false social justice narrative cannot tolerate black conservatives
because their message could cause an uprising of truth on what Star Parker calls Uncle Sam’s Plantation. This is why the Left dodges debate. They keep to their talking points and ad hominem attacks
— using disparaging labels to describe black conservatives like Allen
West, Walter Williams, Alan Keyes, Ward Connerly, and many others.
Criminal
prosecution is being overrun by politically-driven social justice, the
media’s relentless propaganda, and the Left’s control of the language.
These are powerful and effective forces of social engineering. In
addition, there is revisionist history taught in public schools. For example, it appears “history” books
are being scrubbed of any mention of the internment of Italians and
Germans in the United States during WWII. Without fail, however, they
contain the Japanese experience. Answer for yourself why only one third
of the internment story is taught. It is also of note to remember that,
while rarely mentioned, black-on-black slavery is still common in
Africa 150+ years after being outlawed in Western cultures that are
largely white.
The
compound effect of all of this places a defendant’s life in the hands
of a compromised criminal justice system and an indoctrinated public
that processes events through the prism of social justice.
Social justice in the courts
Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution specifies that: “The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury…” State constitutions have similar language.
In
the United States the legislative branch passes the laws that define
what is criminal, the executive branch enforces and prosecutes those
laws, and the judicial branch decides whether the laws are
constitutional and valid, and sets the punishment for convicted
offenders.
In effect the courts are the social conscience of the government.
But social conscience often strays over into social justice. Judges are human and too many of them suffer from “black robe disease” and
become convinced of their own infallibility. As a result the
punishments they mete out often bear little relationship to the crime.
In
general this has led to an extreme number of imprisonments for extended
periods. This problem is directly associated with the disastrous War on
Drugs. Between 2001 and 2010 8.2 million people, primarily black and
typically for simple possession of marijuana, were arrested on drug
offenses according to the ACLU.
With the onset of the War on Drugs in 1972 prison populations increased exponentially. By
year-end 2011 some 2.7 million adults, almost 1% of the entire
population of the United States, were incarcerated in federal, state,
and county prisons and jails. Overall, about 7 million people were under
judicial sentences in jail, prison, or on probation or parole in 2011,
nearly 3% of the adult population, a rate far outstripping even the most
tyrannical regimes in the rest of the world.
Historically,
it was clearly recognized that banning the manufacture, storage,
transportation and sale of alcohol and alcoholic beverages required a
constitutional amendment. Even after passage of the 18th Amendment in 1920 exceptions were made for medicinal and religious uses. And alcohol consumption or private possession was never illegal under federal law.
As
with all prohibitions enacted under the ruse of social justice, alcohol
prohibition overwhelmed the police, courts, and prisons with new cases;
organized crime increased in power, and corruption extended among both
law enforcement and other public officials.
However, given the failure of the 18th Amendment, and its rapid and unique repeal by passage of the 21st Amendment just
13 years later, there was no attempt made to obtain constitutional
authority for the even-more draconian legislation underlying the War on
Drugs. No doubt the chance of passage for a Constitutional Amendment
for any new prohibition would have been near zero, unquestionably a
consideration for those to whom social justice is more important than
any legal nuance, and who believe that their power and control is more
important than freedom.
Given
that the Constitution is a limiting document, not an enabling one,
there is no underlying authority for federal legislation such as the War
on Drugs. This is, instead, a matter for the respective states to
address.
Jurists
in federal cases have thus been remiss, if not criminal in sentencing
millions to penal servitude for petty crimes such as marijuana
possession, one of the most innocuous drugs known to man. As a social
conscience intended to stand between and deny the excesses of the
legislature and executive it is painfully obvious that that the courts
have been both racist and criminally negligent in their failure to put
the rights of man under the Constitution in front of prohibitions
promoted by social justice. Even more devastating to freedom is the fact
that the great majority of these sentences were handed down without
benefit of a trial by jury for the defendant.
Faux convictions
With
greater regularity social justice is replacing criminal justice.
Ideological persecution is all too often replacing criminal prosecution
under a rule of law, particularly on college campuses. Character
assassination is now an active prosecutorial method rather than the
difficult requirement of assembling and presenting unbiased facts and
evidence to convince a jury of the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable
doubt.
In part this is the result of the immense corpus of criminal laws now in existence. Silverglate and Desrhowitz (2011) point
out that the average professional almost inevitably commits three
federal felonies a day due to the explosion of federal laws. The
situation is even more ludicrous when citizens face state, county, and
municipal laws, rules, and regulations. It is literally impossible not
to unknowingly violate many of them daily. Yet prosecutors and courts
still hold to the adage that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
It
is also literally impossible for law enforcement to uniformly and
impartially enforce all these laws and regulations. Communities respond
as best they are able and can afford by adding more and more police,
jails, prosecutors, and judges with the result that the courts are
swamped with often frivolous, unsubstantiated, and, commonly, cases
involving false allegations by vengeful citizens seeking social justice
in intimate relations.
For
example, in 2010 Colorado courts had 36,993 felony and 69,695
misdemeanor cases with only 1,019 (28%) felony and 821 (12%) misdemeanor
jury trials. The state population was 5,029,196, just a small fraction
of the 308,747,716 U.S. population estimated by the 2010 census.
Assuming rough equality among the states suggests over 2 million
felonies and 4 million misdemeanors in the state courts. Federal courts
saw ~170,000 cases of all types in 2010.
It
is obvious that without a massive infusion of new facilities,
prosecutors, and judges that most, if not all, federal and state courts
are now conducting virtually all the criminal jury trials possible given
the right to a speedy trial, usually within six months of being
arraigned or charged, guaranteed by federal (Sixth Amendment) and state
constitutions. That mandate is already being violated in many localities.
As a result, in many cases, particularly misdemeanor domestic violence,
a defendant who pleads Not Guilty and demands a jury trial is quite
likely to have their case dismissed as there are simply far more cases
than possible jury trials.
In
an attempt to handle the now millions of criminal cases in the courts
prosecutors have resulted to offering plea bargains if the offender
pleads guilty to and is convicted of reduced charges with a deferred
sentence that the prosecutor will falsely claim (lie) will be “sealed” and disappear from the offender’s record if the sentence is successfully completed and restitution, if appropriate, made.
However, it is basic to public safety that criminal records be publicly available.
It
is dangerous in the extreme to have someone plead guilty to a felony or
high-level misdemeanor and then hide, or attempt to hide that
conviction from the public! Yet that is exactly what these faux
convictions attempt to do. Fortunately, with modern databases it has
become nearly impossible to hide criminal records.
Conversely,
it would be virtually impossible in many cases for prosecutors to get
plea bargain convictions without lying about the defendant’s criminal
history being “sealed” after their sentence has been served. But
should public safety, the basic objective of a justice system, be
sacrificed solely so prosecutors can lie that they are tough on crime?
These
lies are known to have destroyed many lives of those who thought there
was an easy and cheap way out of a criminal charge. Almost daily we hear
from men and women who accepted a deferred sentence and then years
later were turned down for a security clearance, a job, a professional
license, financial bond, housing, etc. because they had accepted a plea
bargain faux conviction with a deferred sentence.
One notable example is the story of Idaho State Representative Mark Patterson who, after being falsely accused of rape, accepted a deferred-sentence conviction by pleading guilty to “assault with intent to commit rape” in
1974 in Florida. He later moved to Idaho and established a family and
reputation sufficient to get him elected to the state legislature.
However, in 2013 political enemies digging into his background found the
supposedly “sealed” record of his conviction and drove him from office.
Such
faux convictions may serve the immediate interest of social justice and
allow courts and prosecutors to deflect the overwhelming burden of
existing laws with limited resources. But they are a clear and present
danger to public safety.
It
seems obvious that the records of convicted felons must not be hidden
in any fashion from public view if the mission of public safety charged
to the justice system is to be served. And it is not sufficient to have
such faux convictions officially preserved only in such databases as the
FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which is not publicly
accessible.
While
one might debate the merits of a judge’s sentence, criminals are either
guilty or not guilty; there is no in between if justice and public
safety are to be obtained.
Social justice in the media
Throughout
the western world the State is criminalizing dissent and free speech is
increasingly endangered. While U.S. courts are indeed compromised by
social justice, for the most part it is the media-fueled court of public
opinion that gets its pound of flesh by shunning heretics, i.e., anyone
who dares oppose their dogma.
Media propaganda, using the methods developed by Edward Bernays,
convinces much of the public to accept a substitute for reality.
Feeding the public heavy doses of the social justice narrative
translates to public pressure put on legislators, jurors, judges,
prosecutors, and police administrators. Censorship, under-reporting actual crime, and substitution and intense focus on sensationalized, lesser stories and non-stories, results in a near “media blackout” of
the prolific black-on-black, black-on-white, and female-on-male crime
in America today. The social justice narrative simply does not hold up
to the facts of who is doing what to whom.
Consider
the following sobering example of selective outrage on part of the
media and criminal justice system. Department of Justice (DOJ) data on
interracial rape shows that in just one year (2005), black males raped
37,460 white women. That same year white men raped zero black women. Virtually the same statistics were reported in 2003 and 2004.
The
issue is not whether these government statistics are accurate. The
issue is the absence of media coverage and absence of DOJ concern.
Taking these federal statistics at face value (granted, a dangerous
proposition), if the race of offender and victim were reversed it would
have been the lead story in every media outlet in the nation. DOJ task
forces would be formed and federal prosecutors would be looking over the
shoulders of county jurisdictions, even prosecuting federally.
Not
only is there silence on these rape statistics but the same holds for
other interracial crime patterns that, if brought to light, would debunk
the narrative. In the name of “social justice” do these white
victims have it coming? Where are the otherwise limitless resources of
the DOJ? Where is the media coverage? Where is the National Organization
of Women (NOW)? Where are those paragons of virtue: Holder, Jackson,
Sharpton, Rangel and most of all on the topic of rape — where are Carol
Moseley Braun, Maxine Waters, and Oprah?
In
addition to the suppression of truth and selective outrage we have a
meddler-in-chief who injects himself in local issues he has no
constitutional business or authority to intervene on. Recall the Cambridge University incident where President Obama said the police acted “stupidly” and
more recently saying if he had a son he would look like Trayvon
Martin. The stature of the Office of President and the Attorney General
are fully engaged in promoting the false values of social justice and
punishing their political rivals rather than defending truth and the
rule of law.
Recall
the Internal Revenue Service targeting the Tea Party and, more
recently, the DOJ going after Dinesh D’Souza — the director of the
documentary 2016: Obama’s America for allegedly making an excessive campaign contribution. Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder was blind to the knockout game (AKA “polar bear hunting”) until
the offender/victim roles were reversed in one incident where a white
man attacked a black male. The scales then fell off of AG Holder’s eyes
and the offender was swiftly charged federally with (drum roll please) —
a “hate crime.” We are watching political theater, not criminal justice.
From
the Oval Office to elementary schools the Left conditions us to replace
reason with emotion and fact with feelings. They stoke the flames of
class envy, racial strife, and a war between men and women by using
lies, revisionist history, high-tech faux news propaganda, selective
outrage, suppression of truth, and inflammatory rhetoric. They divide.
In
spite of our warts, this is the greatest nation in the history of the
world. Nowhere is there the social mobility for every kind of person as
there has been in the United States. Regardless, neo-Marxists and their
attendant “useful idiots” in the media and population at large at
every level push class hatred, casting everyone into the roles of
victims and suspect to fuel revolution. They have moved far beyond
demanding equal rights. Now they demand equal results: a forced
redistribution in the name of social justice. Such below-the-radar
Marxists work to disarm the opposition by diluting public discourse
through intimidation and fear. They characterize defenders of tradition
and truth as racist, bigot, sexist, rapist, batterer, or a whole raft of
other pejorative terms they have defined as politically incorrect and
on the wrong side of their definition of social justice under the
fast-evolving new regime.
Part 2 – Crime and Punishment (to be continued)
About the authors
Doug Traubel
Doug
is a twenty-seven year veteran peace officer. The first third of his
career was spent as a police officer in Chula Vista, California located
just seven miles north of the U.S. — Mexico border. His assignments
included patrol officer, field training officer, SWAT team, and Street Team (a proactive patrol unit that targeted series-related crimes, gangs and other special enforcement projects).
Doug
graduated from The San Diego County Sheriff’s Academy. On the first day
of the academy he attended a lecture from Sheriff John Duffy on the
history and unique authority of the Constitutional Office of Sheriff. It
was then that he developed a reverence for the Office and an
understanding of the necessary and substantive differences between
Sheriffs and Chiefs of police.
Doug
graduated from San Diego State University with a Bachelor of Arts
degree in political science (emphasis on constitutional law) and a minor
in the Spanish language.
In
1993 Doug was awarded the Medal of Valor for his actions related to
engaging three armed subjects in an alley while on foot patrol with his
partner in a high-crime, housing complex.
Disgusted
with the infiltration of Marxist philosophy in the California criminal
justice system and its near paralyzing impact on effective police work
Doug moved to Idaho in 1994. The seed planted by Sheriff John Duffy
determined his course; Doug became a Deputy Sheriff. His assignments
included patrol, juvenile crimes detective (High School Resource
Officer), and gang detective. In 1998 he was awarded the Field Services
Director’s Award for his work with troubled youth. Doug still serves as a
criminal investigator and plans to run for Sheriff of Elmore County
Idaho in 2016.
Charles E. Corry
Charles
Corry holds a doctorate in tectonophysics from Texas A&M and is a
Fellow of the Geological Society of America. He is an
internationally-known earth scientist whose biography has
appeared in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in
Science and Engineering, among others, for fifteen consecutive years.
After service with 1st Marines
he became involved with the early space program in 1960, doing
preflight testing and failure analysis on Atlas and Centaur missiles,
including all the Project Mercury birds. In 1965 he switched to
oceanography and did research at both Scripps Institution of
Oceanography in San Diego and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on
Cape Cod. He has also taught geophysics at university and worked as a
research manager for a Fortune 500 company.
Presently Dr. Corry is president and founding director of the Equal Justice Foundation.
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