Essay/Term paper: America

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Political Science

America, the "Revenge-Minded Nation," has created the conditions for a rising crime rate, and "invited her people in." Crime in America has become a multibillion dollar Corporation for the Judicial System. The Corporation itself breeds white collar Criminals.

The little man is nothing more than a tax slave who, at the cost of being revenge-minded, has bought into the problem, and not the solution. Good people in the middle are held in prisons of fear is the crime rate rises around them.

Soma say, "build more prisons", "give longer sentences", "make the prisoner do more of his/her sentence", "execute the nearly 3,000 men on death row", "treat the troubled youth as adults and sentence them as such", etc.





The truth is that you can build more prisons until half of America is locked up, and the other half their victims. Longer sentences are no cure-all. Time has no more power to change a man than space does. Five or fifteen years really matters not, because for whatever reasons a person commits a crime and is sent to prison, there is no rehabilitation. The hostility of a prison environment that serves as little more than a warehouse to store bodies in, works to harden the character of the person forced to survive in it, and when the time comes to release this person, he/she is released back into society without any rehabilitation or readjustment, made much the worse than when they were first in society. Of course the many released on parole commit further crimes. What is parole, something that has power over a person's hardened character?



"Correctional facility" is a lie. Where is the "correctional" influence in storing bodies for a period of time? Prisons are deprivation units. It's sad, but because of the hostilities within the prison environment, many prisoners are deprived of emotional stimulation, except for fear, anger and hate. In some cases a released person will even kill his victim to eliminate a threat to his survival in the world life's events have created for him; something it's doubtful he could have done before his conditioning experiences with hostile prison. There are circumstances when human life becomes secondary to survival, right or wrong. The teenagers sent to Vietnam and Desert Storm didn't hate the so-called "enemies", but killing them was done most often as an act of fear and survival.



Much could be said concerning cause and effect, but executing nearly 3,000 people on death row won't solve America's problem with rising crime rate. It would be no more than weeding a garden by cutting the tops while leaving the roots to grow. A murder is committed in America every 21 minutes, yet there are only approximately 3,000 people on death row from about a 16 year period. Who is to be a candidate for capital punishment is left up to the opinion of one man, the District Attorney, who picks and chooses as he wills, for political gain. The ratio is 100 to 1. He plea bargains for life or less with 100 people charged with murder, and then screams "an eye for an eye" to a jury of twelve common people, to get one man a death sentence. The governor will use the "eye for an eye" excuse to sign a death warrant for an execution while he signs paroles for plea bargained murderers throughout his term in office.



It costs almost twice as much to execute a man than it does to keep him in prison for life. In a "revenge-minded" country capital punishment is the ultimate in punishments, so it appears as the last hope to those who are held in these prisons of fear, due to the rising crime rate. Just as the middle man "tax slave" gets the hardened man back, once his sentence is up, you make lawyers, judges, and D.A.s rich by paying for a capital punishment that in reality is nothing more than an instrument used to advance a man's political career. "Eye for an eye" would mean 101 sentenced to die, not only the one the D.A. selects. Those in positions to solve the problem of crime only cut the surface weeds.



To stop crime would be to shut down very high paying jobs within the multi-billion dollar corporation called "The Judicial System." Even justice is for sale in America. I'm guilty of my crime, but no more guilty than the man who could afford justice. In my case justice means "just-us" pawns in the game of political chess, sacrificed to appease the cries of a "revenge-minded" society, who are rightfully scared. If more prisons, longer sentences and executions worked so well, people could sleep at night and live without fear, I'd say who cares what the cost may be, even an occasional innocent life by execution, but the truth is that this "revenge" system doesn't work in correcting the root of the problem. It does make some politicians rich, though. You can almost bet that where politics plays a role in anything it's corrupt or just won't work



"Read my lips" America. There is an answer to this problem, and once man's solutions have all failed, I suggest we return to the moral instructions of God for living. "Eye for an eye" was in the handwritten ordinances given to Moses, true, but this Moses, whom God gave the law to, was the same Moses that God had mercy upon when Moses killed the Egyptian in anger. Without judgment, how can mercy have any meaning? "Vengeance is mine" saith the Lord God. Revenge is not for man, so America needs a change in personality. I cannot change my criminal past, but God can and has change me, something man's solutions could not do. Even if you don't believe in God which, in my opinion, is foolish, believe in the good of biblical instructions for moral living; it works — I am proof of the best kind.