We cannot
expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach
respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those
laws.
In the 1990 term of the Supreme Court, the Honorable
William Renquist, chief justice, handed the
following:
1] Search your home upon the consent of someone who has no
authority [standing] to give same.
Illinois v. Rodriguez, 58 LW 482
06-01-1990
2] Stop your car based on an “anonymous tip,” which the
Supreme Court [as cited in their opinion] described as “completely
lacking in the necessary indicia of
reliability.”
Alabama v. White, 110 S.Ct.
2412
06-11-90
3] Subject a motorist to mandatory sobriety tests without
any indication they have been drinking or their driving is
impaired.
Michigan Dept. of State police v.
Sitz,
U.S. 110 L.Ed 2d
412
06-14-90
It is obvious we have surrendered our basic rights as
citizens of liberty in the pursuit of eliminating crime
(particularly in the manner of drugs). Police and the government
have stripped citizen’s rights and still the crime rate
soars. This practice
has obviously failed to do anything but destroy the freedoms we
enjoy under our fought and died for
constitution.
1
The last seven Presidential Administrations have declared
and fought a war on drugs.
The 1984 Crime Control Act raised everything from minimum
mandatory sentences to prosecutors salaries, yet in the 19 years
hence, both crime and drug dealing have multiplied. The tactics used to fight
this “war on drugs” have again, failed as miserably as the tactics
used in that other well-intentioned war in Vietnam. The only accomplishment
has been an ever increasing number of “prisoners of war.” (These are both in prisons
and in their homes stripped of their
liberty.)
To return briefly to my opening paragraph, the respect for
law and order has not increased by those in danger of falling into
crime but rather become a mockery. A new tact must be found
in our system of crime and corrections or soon we shall have a
large class of people with no respect for law and order, an
increasing turn to a drug lifestyle, and an ever increasing number
of these “prisoners of war” for usually minor, drug related, and
non-violent crimes.
We are not fiscally prepared to accommodate these numbers
and we have now reached a point of using funds that could be used
in pre-emptive programs to bring respect of the law and education
in life that would reduce future crime (especially drugs), as well
as our already basic education programs and health care to fund
prisons that are no more than bulging warehouses where men are
serving longer and longer sentences (while no deterrent can be
seen in this from the current crime rate statistics) at an ever
increasing cost.
To complicate matters further we must look into what is
being lost for this no-gain, failed policy. Discounting the loss of
what could have been our “best and brightest” in many instances to
drugs and disrespect and misunderstanding of both the law and
society, we are sacrificing much
more:
2
For over two centuries (prior to the slip down the slippery
slide we have engaged) we were a great nation separated from most
every other country on earth by our freedoms, liberties and
protections our forefathers gained and guaranteed to “us and our
posterity” by the very foundation, the backbone of that freedom,
that liberty we deem (and indeed, most of the world) so precious,
our constitution; a document, more than that, a way of
life our predecessors from 1775 until today have valued with their
very lives, a way of life so many have, to quote Lincoln, “Given
that last full measure of devotion.”
Now, in an effort to rid our citizens of crime we are
surrendering those very freedoms that have made us unique, that
have made us a great and envied nation. But who will protect us
from our protectors?
When we cease surrendering liberty for a failed order of
crime and corrections?
These most precious rights are like sin. One is no more precious
than another. Over
fifty years ago, with an eye to the future, Justice Jackson, in
his dissent of the Supreme Courts decision in Brinegar v.
U.S.
stated:
“Fourth amendment are not mere second-class rights but
belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivation of
rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the
spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and
seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the
arsenal of every arbitrary government…But the right to be secure
against searches and seizures is one of the most difficult to
protect. Since the
officers themselves are the chief invaders, there is no
enforcement outside the court.”
Such encroachment on our liberties also garners disrespect
for otherwise good ideals and law enforcement. Such encroachment on these
liberties, these freedoms, no matter how well your intentions, is
still a surrender of all that we are. And, as stated herein,
that surrender has gained nothing in
return.
3
Seventy-five years ago Justice Brandies
wrote:
“It is immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law
enforcement.
Experience should teach us to be much on our guard to
protect liberty when the government’s purposes are
beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty
by evil minded rulers.*
The greatest dangers to our liberty lurk in insidious
encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without
understanding.”**
* Re: Our rallying
following 9-11 against Sadam Hussien.
** The tract
we see by government against it’s citizens
today,
(Patriot Act
etc.)
To be sure no one questions the need for law and authority:
Even Jefferson, the most eloquent of spokesmen for liberty
said,
“Justice is
the insurance we have on our lives and our freedoms and our
property. Obedience
to the law is the premium we pay for that
insurance.”
The upholding and adhering to law is the basis of civilized
society, and certainly no one can disclaim that there is an
increase in crime, a great amount coming since the widespread use
of drugs since the mid-60’s.
Certainly no one can fault our citizenry’s call for some
way to stop this progression of crime and danger to ourselves and
our property.
But it must be equally, and painfully clear that this major
rise in crime and the crime rate coincides with the rise in
lengths of sentences and erosion of our liberties as we fight this
ill planned, ill perceived war on crime. The ever expanding drug
use in this country comes in that same era that seven presidents
have declared war on drugs.
Crime and the use of drugs increase while our Congress and
State Legislators march lock-step in attempting, not to see the
real cause and effect, not to address the real problems, not to
find real solutions, not to admitting when programs fail, but
rather, to position themselves to a frightened public to not be
“soft-on-crime,” indeed, to be “tougher-on-crime” than the next
person.
4
The way of the past nearly 40 years has failed in every way
imaginable. We must
see the obvious. As
with an over extended household budget (where we generally
continue to overspend to keep up pretenses), or an over-extended
state or national budget (where we generally have tried and failed
to spend our way to solvency and tax ourselves into prosperity),
social problems such as herein discussed do not have simple, easy
answers (such as “lock-em-up and throw away the key”). Problems are static and
are never solved.
Civilization is a sequence of new tasks, of new problems
crying out to be faced with difficult and new
solutions.
There is an hysteria running rampant in our nation’s
capitol and our statehouses.
There has been extreme reduction by statutes and court
rulings of citizen’s rights in an effort to combat the dreaded
plagues of drugs and crime.
To rant about drugs and being “tough on crime” is certainly
simpler, and much more popular, than the difficult tasks of
balancing budgets (although the two without a doubt have become
inter-related). But
escalating the punishments for drug offenders and related
non-violent, non-“true criminal type” offenders, bankrupting our
state and national coffers by simply warehousing these people will
hardly cure our social ills.
It is creating more poverty and more loss of hope. And poverty and loss of
hope is a greater root cause of crime than drugs could ever
be. Indeed, poverty
and loss of hope is a major root cause of drug use itself. So, you see the programs
we have followed cannot be seen in true light as a solution, but a
further increase of the problems we claim to have declared war
on.
A popular book twenty years ago, “The Fatal Shore,”
depicted a period in English history when over 200 property crimes
carried the death penalty, yet they could not kill people fast
enough. Prison
overcrowding had become such a problem that “private” prisons were
created to deal with the overflow (sound familiar?). Ultimately they took
160,000 of the inmates to “prison ships” and banished them to an
island in the South Pacific.
We do not have an “Australia,” and unless we intend to
simply fence in Oklahoma, we are not going to be
able to build prisons fast enough (even if we could afford such a
solution without increasing the
problem).
5
I do suppose such a solution of prison building has been
tried in our not out of memory history. It was called Auschwitz,
Buchenwald, Dachau and others. This seems a good spot,
with the previous analogy, to again think of the consequences of
liberty lost in our failed war. If a Fourth Amendment had
existed in Amsterdam under Nazi control we
would not have “The Diary
of Anne Frank,” we would have Anne
Frank!
The Third Reich did not impose it’s will upon an unwilling,
unreceptive public.
Hitler rose to power on a ground swell of public opinion,
fueled by law-and-order rhetoric and scare tactics, not unlike
those that have been unleashed on a frightened public by our
politicians and legislatures of late. Ironically, many of those
involved in the ground swell of calling for a “war-on-crime” and
“law-and-order” were casualties themselves of that war: were
victims to Auschwitz Buchenwald etc. . .because they gave up their
rights, their liberties, in exchange for law and order. They chose the rhetoric,
the easy simple solutions.
“He who would give up a
little liberty,
For a little safety,
Deserves neither.”
Benjamin
Franklyn
Santayana
wrote so prophetically, “those who fail to learn the lessons of
history are doomed to repeat it.”
In the elections of 1860 Abraham Lincoln said this nation
could not long exist half slave and half free. In the election of 1960
John F. Kennedy said the world could not long exist half slave and
half free. Since that
time we have created a nation half in happiness, half in misery:
hope but fear for the one, disappearing hope and disrespect for
the law for the other.
Justice Brandeis, in his dissent in Olmstead v. United
States circa 1927, well foretold
of the problems that have manifested today, since the war on crime
was declared:
6
“Our
government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it
teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes
a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man
to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the
administration of the criminal law the end justify the means – to
declare that the government may commit crimes to secure
convictions … – would bring retribution. Against that pernicious
doctrine this Court should resolutely set its
face.”
We face a mushrooming rise in our crime rate that has led
to a mushrooming rise in incarceration that has led to an
over-abundant amount of police and police agencies and both State
and Federal funds to finance prisons that has led to a decrease in
pre-emptive social programs that would lead (potentially) to a
decrease in the crime rate, and while the use of drugs and the
crime rate soars (due to continued adherence to failed policies)
we have a citizenry calling for the government (both State and
Federal) to get “tough-on-crime,” to protect both themselves and
their property from perpetrators of crime. For over 30 years we have,
as a government, answered with the same old easy answer, and
proven failure of longer sentencing, lessening of citizens rights,
and failure to put funding where it could work to reverse this
trend; that is, in programs of hope within and outside of the
penitentiaries. The
lack of these programs, and the lack of incentives, and the loss
of hope because of mandatory sentencing guidelines (especially the
so-called habitual-offender/career criminal acts such as
Oklahoma’s) within the various
states and Department of Corrections have caused a rise in
recidivism. Indeed it
could be said that if true solutions and programs were sought we
would have little need for habitual criminal acts for recidivism
would be cut drastically.
Lack of hope, lack of programs of a true nature and the
seeing of government (police) agencies breaking the law
(constitutional civil rights and liberties) have caused lack of
respect for the law and added to drug use; those dealing. We have created a nation
half happy, half without hope.
7
We have, in our search for
an answer to crime and drug abuse, become like a dog chasing its
own tail; the more we try what we’re doing the more illusive our
goal becomes. Or we
could say it is like an eddy in a stream; we are caught up in an
unwinable idea we refuse to let go of and will soon be, as a
society as a whole, pulled down by our refusal to let go of proven
failed policies.
President Kennedy said, before our fall, “Ask not what your
country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country.” A
generation heard this call and responded. Hope was still alive, and
where there is hope there is no need for dope. Our current policy of
crime and ‘corrections’ has stolen hope (by stealing funds for
programs and education) and our current law enforcement tactics
have caused disrespect for the law.
We have, to this point, addressed the problems, the
failures, and what is being done that is wrong. Now we switch to
solutions; solutions we must find before we deluge ourselves in
the eddy of our failure.
To begin I would first turn to an old adage: “An ounce of prevention
beats a pound of cure.” And a Biblical verse: “Seek the truth and
the truth shall set you free.”
To address the first it must be seen that our finances
(both State and Federal) to address social ills, including crime
and drug abuse, are finite.
That is, there’s only so much pie. Where we send those funds
is the question – on prevention, on preemptive social programs to
educate and give hope – or on prisons to hide the problem (at the
continued increasing costs), prisons that have no more than
warehouses which have proven, even with longer sentences, to be no
deterrent to crime to those outside of prison and, judging from
the recidivism rate, no deterrent or help to those inside our
prisons. It is easy
to see the cause of the latter as there are far too few incentives
and programs to educate and have one want to be a part of the
solution, not part of the problem. This, coupled with,
recalling the quote of Justice Brandeis “crime is contagious” the
fact while in one of our prisons only crime is learned, shows why
we are losing at least this battle in “The War.” An ounce of prevention at
a cheaper cost – or a pound of cure that is curing
nothing?
8
Of the second, truth seems to not be given our public, our
citizens. I earlier
mentioned the failed plan of war in Vietnam. Again I liken our current
way of addressing our social ills of crime and drugs with the way
our citizens were informed of that war (Vietnam). How we were told we were
in control, we were indeed winning that war, that the enemy was
virtually under control – only another 200,000 troops and a few
more billions of dollars would be required (this after the same
rhetoric and troop calls and billions spent while our citizens
went hungry and hope at home was being lost.) Then came Tet. All our failed strategies
were exposed as lies, or at best half-truths. Our citizens demanded
victory and with these half-truths acquiesced to the call for more
troops, more money etc.
When it became clear the battle plan had failed painful
truths were revealed.
Promises of victory were not true and that war could not be
won with the accepted plan no matter how many sacrificial troops
and how much money could be thrown at the
problem.
Currently our citizens have been led to believe, as in that
other war, that the “war on crime,” the “war on drugs” is being
won and can be won with the same policy, the same strategy – just
a few more tens of millions of your dollars for more prisons to
accommodate the rising conviction rate and longer sentences. A few more warehouses with
no indubitable programs for education, drug-rehabilitation or life
skill programs. Just
get them locked up.
At the dawn of the 1960’s hope sprang eternal. Camelot, The New Frontier,
and the Great Society offered hope. Then came the increased
spending on Vietnam. Then we could not fund
both guns and butter so we funded guns, forgot the butter (which
was the hope) and lost both.
Today we can not fund both prisons and reform. We can not fund prisons
and hope (which would in itself be a deterrent to crime). Shall we continue to fund
a failed system of crime control at the expense of social programs
and re-habilitation (the hope) and lose both the war on crime and hope? Shall we continue to allow
the slow undoing of such liberties as provided by our Constitution
until any victory would be a loss of all we have held dear and the
majority of the world envies?
9
There are solutions. There are so many
statistics to draw from to show us the way. Indeed, this is not a
newly discovered problem but only one that not comes to the
attention of the public because, like Tet, our financial state has
forced us to examine our wrong plan, our failure and either map a
new battle plan in this so called “war on crime” or certainly lose
both it and hope.
As long ago as 1973 Fred R. Harris and others warned of
this coming failure.
Over thirty years ago Senator Harris wrote in his book in
1973 “We have a government willing to spend an infinite amount to
incarcerate offenders but only a pittance on rehabilitation and
social reform.” The
outcome of that continued path for the past 30 years of the war on
crime is now evidenced by our financial woes caused in part by the
always increasing of funding for our expanding prisons.
- John
Vernon DuBiel
10
