2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: 227 "HOW WE TREAT OUR PRISONERS"

Between 10 p.m. and midnight Pacific time last July 4, I was interviewed by George Noory on his “Coast to Coast” national radio program about the criminal justice system.  During the interview, we discussed the failed policy of Drug Prohibition; the inappropriateness of people having to have money to make bail pending trial if other reasonable alternatives are available; Community Courts for the homeless, veterans, drug addicted and more.  Thereafter, I received through my website of www.JudgeJimGray.com letters from four inmates incarcerated in various places around the country.  Three of those letters argued that they had been falsely convicted, and one of those I forwarded to the FBI for possible investigation because the letter purportedly enclosed a sworn declaration from the principal witness against him that recanted that testimony.  But I also responded to three of the four asking if they would agree to help me write a magazine article about what life in prison is like.  Why?  Because I think we all should know.  And if their treatment is inhumane, or below certain standards of decency, health, nutrition and safety, we should, as citizens of our great country, work to improve those conditions. 

Of course, prisons should not be “country clubs,” but even if that were to be the case for low-risk prisoners, they would all still fully realize that they have been deprived of their liberty.  Of course, now many people are focusing hard upon the recent jail death of Jeffrey Epstein, and if there was foul play, we certainly want it exposed and those involved held responsible.  But to me, it doesn’t matter if we have “Bill Cosby” in our custody or “Jack the Ripper,” reasonable efforts should be made to keep all people in our custody safe and at a reasonable standard of health.  In fact, I still haven’t gotten over the brutal killing of James “Whitey” Bulger, who was an 89-year-old gangster from Boston who was killed within hours of being released into the general prison population in a West Virginia federal prison well known for being one of the most violent prisons in the country.  Bulger was bludgeoned to death with a sock that contained a metal padlock – or, as is said in prison, “He died of natural causes.”  Fyodor Dostoyevsky once famously said that "you can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners.”  So how will we be judged?  Join me in helping that judgment to come out as being humane.  (And I will send you a copy of our article once it has been published.)

Great name for a yacht: “Seas the Day!”  

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #222 "RESTORATIVE JUSTICE"

                Yes, lots of bad things are happening in the world, and we seem to be hit in the face constantly with that reality in our media and elsewhere.  But there are also lots of good things that are happening, and this edition will discuss one of those, which is the movement called Restorative Justice.  The fundamental basis for this approach is to bring the victim(s) of an offense and the perpetrator together, face to face, in a meeting monitored by a therapist.  The emphasis is basically to show the offender what effect the incident had upon the victim(s), on the one hand, and to explore the concept of forgiveness by the victims, on the other.  The intent is both to humanize the act in the eyes of the offender and to begin an important healing process for the victim(s).  And we are seeing success a great amount of the time in both of those areas.

                The idea of the criminal justice system is not to punish the offender, but is instead to reduce crime.  A big example of this is in the area of domestic violence.  If the batterer (mostly but not always a man) is forced to focus upon the position of the victim, as well as the physical and emotional trauma he has inflicted, statistics show that he is not nearly as likely to re-offend.  In addition, the healing and self-esteem process often get a jumpstart with the victims, which enables them more fully to get on with their lives.  But, all importantly, the victim is consulted by the court at time of the sentencing of the offender and, if leniency is being considered, this almost always requires the consent of the victim(s).  Happily, the approach has also been found to work well with burglaries and even assaults and batteries.  (But it doesn’t seem to work with tax offenses. . . .)  The lesson?  Like in many other aspects of life, humanizing the interactions among different parties can go a long way toward reducing friction and harm, and increasing empathy.  So progress is being made in the criminal justice system, and I thought you should know. 

Quote for the week:  “Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  Viktor E. Frankl

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise!  The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss these and other timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  

You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  

You can also hear past shows as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

No, it’s just the beginning - by Judge Jim Gray

IT’S A GRAY AREA: No, it’s just the beginning - by Judge Jim Gray 11/23/08

Maybe some of you older types like me will remember watching the television police show “Dragnet,” starring Jack Webb. Then you might also recall that, after the crime was solved, they would tell us at the very end of the show that the perpetrator was convicted and sentenced to a large number of years in state prison.

But, as my father used to say, that was not the end. In actuality, when you consider the big picture, it was really only the beginning. But in so many ways in our society, we do not look at or even consider the whole picture.

For example, in the matter of the perpetrators of those offenses, what is the rest of the story? What will happen to them while they are in prison, and what will they be like once they are eventually released? And incarceration is expensive.

Will the taxpayers get their money’s worth by keeping them locked up? What will happen to the perpetrators’ families and other dependents both during the time of incarceration, and afterward? Will the crime victims be better off? As we have seen in earlier columns, all of these are appropriate questions that are seldom even asked, much less answered.

That is not at all to say that people should not be put into prison, and sometimes for long periods of time. Far from it. We certainly need jails and prisons both as a deterrent and as a place for appropriate people to be removed from society for long periods of time. But we must also recognize that about 95% of the people who are sent to prison are eventually released. So we should also do our best to provide opportunities for those people to learn some skills that will reduce the chances that they will return to the antisocial conduct that put them behind bars in the first place.

In other words, in many ways we have to change our way of thinking, and we also have to change our approach.

So as a part of this shift of analysis, we must more fully consider who the people are that we are dealing with. For example, the largest mental-health facility in most counties is the local jail. Imagine the psychological damage that is daily being inflicted upon these mentally fragile people by incarcerating them for minor offenses. Fortunately, and as we will discuss in this column next week, our courts in Orange County are doing something really promising in this area.

But unfortunately, there is little political impetus in most places for the needs of the people who are incarcerated to be addressed so that they can begin to overcome or even address their problems. Wouldn’t it be better for everybody if those imprisoned could be assisted, as appropriate, with drug treatment, anger management, parenting skills, job skills, accurate medical information, and a focus upon intelligent decision-making? We should take an overall approach to this issue. Why? Because the actual goal of the criminal justice system is not to punish; it is instead to reduce crime and increase safety for everyone.

We should also take the long-run approach in many other matters as well. For example, in so many ways when we throw an item into the trash, we think that is the end of the story. But, once again, it really is only the beginning, because we must consider the entirety of the issue. Putting toxic or any other materials into landfills may be a temporary fix (out of sight, out of mind), but as we are now beginning to understand, it brings on many more long-range complications. So when we put something into a Dumpster, flush something down the toilet, or throw something out of our car window, that does not end the story. It really is only the beginning, because there are costs involved with the disposal of virtually everything. And as the old effective advertisement said: “Pay me now, or pay me later.”

And this has now grown to be a worldwide problem, because increasingly everything is connected. China and India are seeing this firsthand. And you may not be aware of this, but the air pollution that is generated in China is now being blown across the ocean here to California and beyond. In addition, places that used to accept our trash are no longer doing so. For example, for many years we shipped our nuclear waste to the deserts of Nevada and buried it there, but people in that state have now closed the door on that activity. And remember that barge of trash that kept being hauled from one country to another because no one would take it? Now more than ever all countries will be forced to confront their own long-run consumption, environmental, trash disposal and recycling issues.

Similarly, we need to adopt the same total approach with issues like education and healthcare. Receiving a diploma from an institution of higher learning is not the goal, it is actually just the beginning. The end goal is not the piece of paper, it is instead being able to learn and apply a skill, and also to comprehend and deal effectively with the complexities of our lives. In the same fashion, the goal of healthcare is not really to get over whatever ailment you happen to have at the moment. Instead the goal is to be healthy.

So in most areas, we as individuals must start taking a holistic or long range approach in our everyday lives, and even more so in government. This means that as voters we should generally be skeptical of candidates who speak mostly in sound bites. Why? Because life is much more complicated than that, and we should consider most simple approaches not as the end of the discussion, but as only the beginning.

James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.