Corporate media achieved a new level of absurdity last week, when Jesse Ball, writing for the Los Angeles Times, suggested every American be required to spend a stint behind bars every ten years as a veritable guarantee to improve conditions of incarceration in the United States.
In the piece titled, “Everyone should go to jail, say, once every ten years,” Ball writes,
A notable demand that is made upon the citizens of the United States of America is that of jury duty. Although many despise, hate and avoid it, there is a general sense that the task is necessary. We believe a society is only just if everyone shares in the apportionment of guilt.
To this demand of jury duty, I would like to add another, and in the same spirit. I propose that all citizens of the United States of America should serve a brief sentence of incarceration in our maximum-security penitentiaries. This service, which would occur for each person once in a decade, would help ensure that the quality of life within our prisons is sufficient for the keeping of human beings.
Without foreknowledge on length of stay and other details, citizens would languish behind the same bars as convicted criminals under Ball’s proposal — albeit in a section separated from offenders, assumedly not to confuse jailers and inmates, or endanger anyone serving ‘incarceration duty.’
But Ball misses the point — feeding the elephant in the room of overcriminalization of daily life, excessive laws, and, worst by far of all, the normalization of incarceration as conditional to the American way of life — lecturing all of us to walk a mile in the shoes of the convicted rather than declaring the brazen failures of the Injustice System evidence enough, itself, for dismantling the whole dysfunctional mess.
After all, according to the Prison Policy Institute, the United States now cages some 2.3 million of its roughly 326.5 million total people — the largest per capita incarcerated persons of any nation on the entire planet.
An interplanetary traveler would logically conclude it a prison nation — or, at least, one astonishingly rife with thugs, murderers, thieves, and worse.
Even the more law-and-order, authoritarian among us could see the flaws evident in a system claiming freedom, while locking away proportionally more than even the dictatorial fascist regimes our troops putatively combat.
While undoubtedly posited from a place of compassion as a plea for ethics in imprisonment, Ball’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek proposal unfortunately evinces the frequency with which Band-aids are applied as a fix for gaping structural flaws which should otherwise condemn the system to demolishment.
But, worst of all, this proposition capriciously normalizes the American Incarceration State.
Consider how those 2.3 million souls wound up stuffed into the cramped confines of the nation’s myriad federal, state, and local facilities; or, worse — judging by a voluminous body of anecdotal accounts — one of the altogether notorious prisons-for-profit, managed by private corporations intent only on thrift in housing its human commodities to save the State some pennies.
Most of the convicted behind bars have committed nonviolent crime — but moralizing on personal vice and legislation enacted sanctimoniously against substances have exploded the nation’s prison population to alarming proportions.
A court or jury decision of guilt in no way can be characterized on par with ‘laws’ governing ethics and human rights — for, if a candid observation of inmate records were ventured, a sweeping sum could be said to have landed in prison by violating the State’s prohibition on the cannabis plant.
And not violently so.
Forgetting for a moment ‘the law is the law,’ to describe a society as just, which chooses to not only cement unjust ideas into law, but imprison violators of aberrant legislation — particularly in cases of medicinal use — must be the pinnacle of hypocritical pomposity, if not the telltale heart of a dying empire.
Sure, forcing (on penalty of prison?!) yet more behind bars to prove how base the conditions behind bars might actually assist the vocal calling to improve conditions behind bars, but if so many have been locked there for reasons only justifiable for the violation interned in the print of legal tomes, the plan is an exercise in pure futility.
Unless it simply normalizes prison life as a veritable inevitability — might as well prepare for the eventuality some offensive chunk of life will be wasted rotting between the torrid walls of a prison cell.
The irony, palpable.
No, we do not need to send the relatively innocent to prison to endure torturously foul food and varying degrees of inhospitability to prove locking people in cages does nothing to curb crime — indeed, the opposite is arguably true.
It’s the system, broken — not people’s compassion.
Juries convict based on flawed evidence, evidence omitted by technicality, and an embarrassing list of other inexcusable conditions accumulated on the books over centuries — and more laws and regulations find their way to the ledger every day.
They’re creating additional ways to make you a criminal — so, in that sense, Ball might be onto something.
‘Get ready for prison, dear young people, by the time you’re an adult, there won’t be a thing you can do without somehow breaking the law,’ the writer unintentionally asserts between the lines.
“I wonder,” Ball continues, “once all you citizens of the United States are passing in and out of prison on a regular basis, will the conditions there not seem singularly urgent? Just picture congressmen, priests, stock traders, truck drivers, people of every faith, color, description, all for once sharing in something.”
Sharing in the memory of peering out from inside prison walls isn’t conducive to solving the issue of mass incarceration.
Scrapping unjust, unethical, amoral, and otherwise ludicrous laws governing every conceivable aspect of daily life, however, is.
Claire Bernish began writing as an independent, investigative journalist in 2015, with works published and republished around the world. Not one to hold back, Claire’s particular areas of interest include U.S. foreign policy, analysis of international affairs, and everything pertaining to transparency and thwarting censorship. To keep up with the latest uncensored news, follow her on Facebook or Twitter: @Subversive_Pen. This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.
How about this Jesse Ball – CIA ucker – every citizen spend 5 yrs outside the US in order to see how the real world sees the ” spoiled brats of the New World Order”.
The MSM is bad, not doubt, but a metaphoric passing in an opinion piece in no way is an indictment that the MSM is advocating mandatory jail time for all citizens. Activist Post, in the age of blind Trump worship, has stuck to it’s guns and continues to provide quality, unvarnished info for those who seek it. This particular piece doesn’t fit that mold.
I love to see some hot shot media celebrities having their heads pop like a ripe watermelon…doesn’t that sound fun to watch?
MSM is hitting a new low. The owners of MSM are afraid they will be caught in the pedogate investigation. So they are not the new National Enquirer. My apologies to the National Enquirer.
America can’t change its’ for-profit incarceration machine! Are you nuts? How else will this fine country compete against the globalist marketplace of 3rd world indentured servants WITHOUT using our constitutionally mandated legal slave class of criminal laborers? Sweat shops are quaint compared to the institutionalized, and taxpayer funded corporate machines that profit from children being jailed and the effluvia of the drug war. Your vote won’t stop this machine from grinding away those who speak out for change. Your emails to your representative won’t stop it either, because they are probably receiving campaign donations by said prison profiteers. Your angry rants about this bullsh it on random internet websites that report on the truth won’t help either…..hey wait a minite!
I think liberals should all be put in psychiatric wards along with the Liberal reporters so that the reporters can tell us how they are all doing.
people think it couldn’t happen to them, until it does. Life is not a matter of choices, unless you think you can choose your way out of reality. It’s a matter of dealing with oppression and disadvantage, and even crime. And when the lying lawless thugs of law enforcement got you, it’s all on you.
Jessie Ball. Shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. You go first you insane liberal nutjob.
couldn’t say it better
This is always my reply as well: “LEAD BY EXAMPLE, chump!”
If most are there for victimless crimes, why call to spend time in max security prisons?
Remove the outdated laws and you will still wind up with a considerable prison population.
If we restore morality to our education system and educate to make people employable, we will go a long way to reducing the prison population
Start with banksters and politicians followed by whit collar criminals. They deserve to be imprisoned as they’ve caused the majority of suffering in this country and around the world.
When the rich of this country spend time, so will I BTW: who pays the bill if I get raped. Wait, can I go to a women’s prison
I say throw the entire nat’l left wing media in jail and then they can write about THEIR experience and tell us all about it.
politicians (the LAWmakers), legal (the lawyers and judges, and their staffs), and order (the sharp end of the stick – the police) first, and the MSM liars next.
if they (the perpetrators) are happy to do it, i am certain that others may be happy enough to follow suit – LEAD BY EXAMPLE
“Juries convict based on flawed evidence, evidence omitted by
technicality, and an embarrassing list of other inexcusable conditions
accumulated on the books over centuries…” – Something on the order of 90%+ of people “convicted” of crimes actually never see the inside of a courtroom, but make plea-bargain deals based on the incredibly draconian sentences faced on conviction if the plea deal is refused.
Does this Joker have any idea why people are sent to prison ? The quality of the lives of criminals in prison are of negligible concern.
Yep. i was thinkin’….why should i concern myself with the criminals’ quality of life..?
This joker has been around for a long time and he doesn’t get any smarter.
I would prefer that mr ball take a round to the head instead.
Why do they let morons write for newspapers? It really is time to get rid of all the liberal idiots.
Hey, does this mean I can rob a bank first, at no additional penalty?
THIS GUY IS CERTIFIED INSANE. WHY ARE YOU ENTERTAINING HIM…?