Preconditions for a Paradigm Shift in the Justice System
In order to make possible a lasting paradigm shift in the justice system, there must be simultaneous and commensurate changes in other interlocking systems within our culture. Initially, many aspects of our culture must be redefined and reevaluated. The media, for example, must be redefined as a system. Systems such as education; financial; economy along with consumerism and labor; religion; justice and mental health; legal pharmaceutical industry and the illegal drug industry; electoral, political, and legislative; the relations between life styles and their regulation by the government; language or speech conventions are all a few of the major examples of systems that exhibit an interlocking nature. Each taken by themselves must be redefined and revaluated. Most essentially, they must be addressed as interlocking systems that taken together present barriers to a paradigm shift in the justice system
.Consider the following illustration of how interlocking systems work. The two major religions in American history are Judaism and Christianity, the so-called underpinnings of our constitution and democratic way of life. Judaism emphasizes law and lex talionis or an eye for an eye. It also holds the doctrine that they are the chosen people, or the elect of God. Judaism and Christianity look to a holy book as the authority on the acceptable way of life and good and evil. Both look to authenticated leaders such as rabbis, priests, and ministers to instruct them in correct beliefs and behavior that are grounded in their holy books. Christianity emphasizes the cult of the individual and personal salvation and the necessity of believing that Christ is the savior and the pathway to heaven for each individual. Christians, like Jews, also believe that true believers are the elect of God. Both religions have houses of God where believers meet to worship and receive instruction
. With the exception of a very few denominations, both religions have a hierarchical polity. Rabbis and protestant ministers tend to have incomes roughly comparable to that of the average of their membership. Office holders tend to be exemplars of conventional behavior and financial success. Both religions are well funded by donations from the wealthiest in their membership. While supposedly non-profit organizations, they differ little from Chambers of Commerce or from the current trend in privatization of our social service and correctional institutions. In fact, they are enormously successful in opposing opposition to the economic, political, and social status quo.People who do not belong to one of the denominations of these religions are considered to be outsiders by those who do belong. The consensus of religious people is that people who violate their values, rules, and conventions should be judged and punished. The idea of outsiders is complemented with a tendency to be socially exclusive. Both religions try to influence government to enforce their values and carry out judicial procedures and punishment. Both tend to consider those who prosper as good and those who do not as in some sense evil and not deserving of help. The belief in the goodness of the prosperous and the cult of the individual are integral to our free enterprise economic system. Conflicts between insiders and outsiders, stratification on the basis of wealth, lack of conformity with Judaic-Christian values and behavior, the drama of policing the populace and the court proceedings and eventual punishments of so-called offenders, dramas based on the successful and failures in competition are a major source of entertainment on TV networks and in movies. Of course, it is the financial system, basically the corporate world that funds these features of the visual entertainment world. These media dramatizations of plots about conflicting belief systems, socio-economic and social stratification conflicts, and interpersonal hostilities such as is found in romance dramas all shape the mindset of the culture as a whole. It is worthy of note that the media occasionally puts on a drama about a single individual heroically overcoming the disadvantages of place of birth and impoverishment to illustrate that solitary individuals can win if only they have sufficiently strong and good intentions.
One can see the effects of these tendencies when we examine the culture and sociology of our educational systems. Pre-college level sectarian, public, and private schools are like a more strictly controlled microcosm of national culture. They are rigidly stratified, performance is evaluated and ranked in relation to classmates and the successful are covertly judged as good (good behavior and studious) and the failures a judged as either bad (have bad or deficient motivations and lacking in genetically determined sufficient intelligence). Lessons are presented in lock-step and it is frowned upon to question course content or teachers’ authority. Those who do not keep up to the lock-step schedule are like the weak stragglers in the animal kingdom who can be preyed upon in struggle of the ‘survival of the fittest’ as we so often hear as the corporate world’s mantra. A good school, therefore, should be modeled after a corporation’s factory assembly line.
Similar to religious institutions, School Boards are almost always populated by community and business leaders who are exemplars of conventionality and occupational success and are only elected if they have access to an abundance of campaign funds. Even School Board members who are considered to be liberal are in fact, albeit unconsciously, guardians of the aforementioned cultural characteristics
.While nominal counselors are present in many private, sectarian, and public schools, students who are behaviorally disruptive are first perfunctorily passed through disciplinary committees and then on to be expelled. Since their parents usually are absent or lacking in capacity in some way, these youths typically roam the streets feeling rejected, hopelessly deficient in mental capacity, and harboring hostility to society. They tend to commit minor misdemeanors and wind up in court likely to be put on the ever ineffectual probation or adjudicated and sent to a highly regimented, punitive, juvenile correctional institution where their ‘disadvantaged’ personalities are then regarded as genetically, psychologically
, or socially defective and irredeemable. The cult of the individual strikes again. Ironically, this example of the ‘survival of the fittest’ hailed by the corporate world never seems to be detected as inconsistent with the teachings prevalent in the holy books.Another irony is that anyone considered to be a candidate for entry to the justice system is thereupon considered to be ineligible for treatment by the mental health professionals and institutions. Of course, there are farcical pretentions of providing for the mental health care for offenders but anyone who has worked in the penal systems or otherwise with the offender population knows that is a joke severely lacking in humor. Inmates, however, are often prescribed medications designed to turn them into zombies. There is a wide gulf between the mental health treatment provided by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to the affluent emotionally distressed and those of the underclass who are poor and considered genetically defective or irredeemable antisocial.
Summing up, this examination of a slice of our culture’s systems illustrated how the belief and religious systems, the media systems, the financial systems, the educational systems, the social systems, the political-governmental institutional hierarchical systems, the demographic systems, and the justice systems are inextricably interlocked and mutually reinforcing. Consequently, as preconditions for producing a paradigm shift in the justice system, a way must the found to overcome the barriers presented by all of those in these interlocking systems. Make no mistake they will be vigorous in defending their traditions even if to do so is disastrous from a cost benefits point of view
. They roll relentlessly along toward fulfilling Spengler’s prediction of the decline of the West.