Feature Articles

Common Sense Justice Lost

Major Crime Goes Unpunished

by Michael David McGuire

The kid who smoked a joint last week may face more time in jail than the corporate robber baron who made millions by screwing and scamming his shareholders. The junkie who stole my stereo will get a free ride in jail… at your and my expense… yet I still don't have a stereo. The Big Boys are making big bucks on criminal justice… but the real crimes go unpunished and the real problems remain unsolved.

The so-called war on drugs has really been a war on civil rights and a great way for some in society to make huge profits by building and staffing prisons. Locking up the junkie who stole my stereo doesn't really do me any good… make the son of gun buy me a new stereo. Let's save all of us some dough by keeping drugs in the health arena, where they have been for most of human history… and make restitution the cornerstone of property crimes. Then… let's spend our supposedly scarce resources on schools, hospitals and the prosecution and conviction of those greedy robber barons who are stealing millions of jobs and billions of dollars by destroying the nation's wealth.

Common sense leads this correspondent to believe that it just doesn't make financial or moral sense to lock up someone… at several thousand dollars a year… for doing something stupid (like smoking crack cocaine). Give them some money, get them in treatment… then tell them to get lost. The same principal holds true for crimes of property theft: You steal my car; you buy me a nicer one. That's better for me… and much easier and cheaper for society.

The real crime in our crime-ridden landscape is people going hungry because they have no job. A real crime is a pension fund wiped out to the advantage of a selfish and larcenous few. A real crime is putting that kid in jail for smoking pot… while doctors kill thousands with really harmful drugs. A real crime is a society that stays blind and refuses to talk about such things. Politicians lie, bankers steal and corporate bosses kill jobs. People can't get health care, little children go hungry and a whole generation is sub-educated. Stop and think about it: We spend billions and billions of dollars on problems that are otherwise easily solved… while the real crimes go unpunished and the real criminals go free.



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