SoliDeoGloria
Active Member
Due to a recent conversation I had in another thread, I have felt the need to vent some things from the personal experience I had with the Justice System in the U.S. (Iowa).
For anyone who doesn't know, I committed a crime in Dec. of 99. I plead guilty to a charge and was sentenced to ten years in prison, of which I was incarcerated until Aug. 03, served a year on parole and discharged my sentence in Aug. of 04.
Before I get started, I would just like to clarify a couple of things. First off, I blame nobody but myself for what I did. I also have no problem with the fact that I was incarcerated being as how I definitely deserved it. Criticisms I will state are criticisms of the system itself, not of my being incarcerated. I realize that my experience is going to be the same as everybodies experience with the Justice System. Some people's experiences were worse and some were better. The reason I am doing this is to educate some people who may not truly know what happens within the Justice System. As much as I would like to think that things would change for the better, I highly doubt from what I have heard from those who have spent much more time with this subject than I have, that it will. Now to the "reality check".
The Court System:
Many felons refer to Public Defenders as "Public Pretenders". These are government payed employees that represent people who are charged with a crime. The Public Pretender I had, had just recently taught Spanish at the local high school. Despite the fact that I knew that I had been originally been charged with a crime that carried a 25 year sentence, the guy kept insisting that the charge I had only carried a 5 year sentence until the District Attorney offered a ten year plea agreement. My wife had given me my Bible while I was in the county jail and there was disagreement as to whether or not I could take it with me to prison, which I wanted to do. The jailers had said no while other inmates kept insisting that I could. I called up my Public Pretender and asked him to get to the bottom of it by calling the prison I was headed to and ask them. I called him back and he told me that I couldn't. When I ended up at the prison, one of the first things they told me that I could have on me was my Bible. I had already asked a friend of mine to pick it up for me before I went to the prison, so it was too late. It became abundantly clear to me at that moment, that Public Pretenders are truly government employees. I would've shook the District Attorney's hand before I shook the my Public Pretender's hand. At least I knew what his true intentions were and he did his job well in my case anyways. The funny thing is, When I got out of prison in 03, the District Attorney and the Sheriff of the county I was convicted in were on the news for extorting money out of people for lesser charges or acquittals. They were forced to resign with criminal charges pending. I never heard what happened with the pending criminal charges, but I couldn't help but chuckle to myself over it. They probably never asked me for money because they knew they had no chance of getting any from me since I had none.
Mandatory sentencing laws do more harm than good. The first thing they do is take away any power from the judiciary part of the government when it comes to sentencing and give it strictly to the legislative part. The only productive thing the Public Pretender I had did was state at my sentencing hearing that due to my lack of criminal history, my cooperation, and other things, I didn't belong in prison. The Judge stated that he agreed but had to sentence me to ten years because that is what I plead guilty to. Besides that, Mandatory Sentencing Laws depersonalize crimes by putting crimes into categories that don't take anything else into consideration except that a crime was committed. This does harm to the criminals and victims as well. I have seen people who definitely deserved harsher sentences due to the severity of their crime and people who deserved lighter sentences due to other factors surrounding their cases. Take for instance, Iowa has no self defense clause in their law. I knew a man who wanted to set "booby traps" in a house he owned because people kept breaking in a stealing things from it. He told the police about this and they warned him that if he did, they would arrest him. If somebody died because of these because of the traps, he would've been charged with some sort of manslaughter charge and probably ended up in prison. The only logical solution I can come up with is to do away with mandatory sentencing laws and give the discretion back to Judges. The problem I come up with this solution is that Judges can be just as corrupt as anybody else due to their being human.
The Prison System:
As much as people would like to think that the prison systems have more to do with justice and rehabilitation, the reality of it is, they have more to do with money and revenge. Three aspects make this abundantly clear.
Prisons are a huge political scapegoat for government spending. The vast amounts of money spent on the prison system has more to do with employee salaries than anything else. It also doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to realize that there is also a bit of "fudging" of paperwork when it comes to government spending also with the history that government has for this practice. One of the most blatant examples that I witnessed of this was the last governor elections in Iowa while I was incarcerated. One major subject that came up was a sudden major disappearance of millions of dollars allotted for state spending. All sorts of accusations were thrown around at the current governor and the current governer was making all sorts of excuses. The major downfall for this was that it was supposidly so bad that all kinds of government employees had to be layed off, including prison guards. On top of that, there was talk that the nine major prisons in Iowa would have to give so many guards furlows that there would have to be lockdowns about twice a month. The food, which has caused me to not eat certain foods any more to due bad experiences with it, also suffered because of this. When the governer was reelected, miraculously, these monatary problems disapeared. The lockdowns never occured, guards were being hired, but the food didn't recover at least while I was there. I had a conversation with a guard about this one day and we both got a chuckle out of it.
(continued in the next post)
For anyone who doesn't know, I committed a crime in Dec. of 99. I plead guilty to a charge and was sentenced to ten years in prison, of which I was incarcerated until Aug. 03, served a year on parole and discharged my sentence in Aug. of 04.
Before I get started, I would just like to clarify a couple of things. First off, I blame nobody but myself for what I did. I also have no problem with the fact that I was incarcerated being as how I definitely deserved it. Criticisms I will state are criticisms of the system itself, not of my being incarcerated. I realize that my experience is going to be the same as everybodies experience with the Justice System. Some people's experiences were worse and some were better. The reason I am doing this is to educate some people who may not truly know what happens within the Justice System. As much as I would like to think that things would change for the better, I highly doubt from what I have heard from those who have spent much more time with this subject than I have, that it will. Now to the "reality check".
The Court System:
Many felons refer to Public Defenders as "Public Pretenders". These are government payed employees that represent people who are charged with a crime. The Public Pretender I had, had just recently taught Spanish at the local high school. Despite the fact that I knew that I had been originally been charged with a crime that carried a 25 year sentence, the guy kept insisting that the charge I had only carried a 5 year sentence until the District Attorney offered a ten year plea agreement. My wife had given me my Bible while I was in the county jail and there was disagreement as to whether or not I could take it with me to prison, which I wanted to do. The jailers had said no while other inmates kept insisting that I could. I called up my Public Pretender and asked him to get to the bottom of it by calling the prison I was headed to and ask them. I called him back and he told me that I couldn't. When I ended up at the prison, one of the first things they told me that I could have on me was my Bible. I had already asked a friend of mine to pick it up for me before I went to the prison, so it was too late. It became abundantly clear to me at that moment, that Public Pretenders are truly government employees. I would've shook the District Attorney's hand before I shook the my Public Pretender's hand. At least I knew what his true intentions were and he did his job well in my case anyways. The funny thing is, When I got out of prison in 03, the District Attorney and the Sheriff of the county I was convicted in were on the news for extorting money out of people for lesser charges or acquittals. They were forced to resign with criminal charges pending. I never heard what happened with the pending criminal charges, but I couldn't help but chuckle to myself over it. They probably never asked me for money because they knew they had no chance of getting any from me since I had none.
Mandatory sentencing laws do more harm than good. The first thing they do is take away any power from the judiciary part of the government when it comes to sentencing and give it strictly to the legislative part. The only productive thing the Public Pretender I had did was state at my sentencing hearing that due to my lack of criminal history, my cooperation, and other things, I didn't belong in prison. The Judge stated that he agreed but had to sentence me to ten years because that is what I plead guilty to. Besides that, Mandatory Sentencing Laws depersonalize crimes by putting crimes into categories that don't take anything else into consideration except that a crime was committed. This does harm to the criminals and victims as well. I have seen people who definitely deserved harsher sentences due to the severity of their crime and people who deserved lighter sentences due to other factors surrounding their cases. Take for instance, Iowa has no self defense clause in their law. I knew a man who wanted to set "booby traps" in a house he owned because people kept breaking in a stealing things from it. He told the police about this and they warned him that if he did, they would arrest him. If somebody died because of these because of the traps, he would've been charged with some sort of manslaughter charge and probably ended up in prison. The only logical solution I can come up with is to do away with mandatory sentencing laws and give the discretion back to Judges. The problem I come up with this solution is that Judges can be just as corrupt as anybody else due to their being human.
The Prison System:
As much as people would like to think that the prison systems have more to do with justice and rehabilitation, the reality of it is, they have more to do with money and revenge. Three aspects make this abundantly clear.
Prisons are a huge political scapegoat for government spending. The vast amounts of money spent on the prison system has more to do with employee salaries than anything else. It also doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to realize that there is also a bit of "fudging" of paperwork when it comes to government spending also with the history that government has for this practice. One of the most blatant examples that I witnessed of this was the last governor elections in Iowa while I was incarcerated. One major subject that came up was a sudden major disappearance of millions of dollars allotted for state spending. All sorts of accusations were thrown around at the current governor and the current governer was making all sorts of excuses. The major downfall for this was that it was supposidly so bad that all kinds of government employees had to be layed off, including prison guards. On top of that, there was talk that the nine major prisons in Iowa would have to give so many guards furlows that there would have to be lockdowns about twice a month. The food, which has caused me to not eat certain foods any more to due bad experiences with it, also suffered because of this. When the governer was reelected, miraculously, these monatary problems disapeared. The lockdowns never occured, guards were being hired, but the food didn't recover at least while I was there. I had a conversation with a guard about this one day and we both got a chuckle out of it.
(continued in the next post)