I haven't written one of these in awhile. I guess I've been to busy to let the world get to me.
I’m not one to grab onto an internet Meme and use it in everyday life; I don’t even know what Meme stands for. I can’t find a better way to describe my reaction to our (global, really) justice system than ‘facepalm’. Facepalm, as some of you may know, is the swift slap to one’s own face when reading or seeing something so incredibly backwards stupid, that it would be easier to divide by zero than to try to understand the logic of said stupid act. I find it disturbing that the justice system is so dependent on law upon law, that 100% of the audience can see the logic in one verdict, but the law points to another.
I’m not one to grab onto an internet Meme and use it in everyday life; I don’t even know what Meme stands for. I can’t find a better way to describe my reaction to our (global, really) justice system than ‘facepalm’. Facepalm, as some of you may know, is the swift slap to one’s own face when reading or seeing something so incredibly backwards stupid, that it would be easier to divide by zero than to try to understand the logic of said stupid act. I find it disturbing that the justice system is so dependent on law upon law, that 100% of the audience can see the logic in one verdict, but the law points to another.
I contribute most of the inaction and inefficiencies of our society to the fact that we have thousands of laws to obey when making the simplest decisions. I’m not sure there is even an accurate way to count how many laws there are. I looked up on the internets to find out how many laws there were in the US. I didn’t search too far, but I would not be surprised if there was no exact answer. I did see a couple of interesting lines on random web pages. One mentioned there are 20,000 gun control laws. That seems a bit excessive, right? I can think of maybe two or three laws you would need: don’t shoot people with guns unless they are going to shoot you; don’t carry a gun unless you have a permit that says you are smart enough to carry a gun; and don’t buy guns from some dude out of the back of his van. I guess wording is everything though, and you could get around that last law by saying it wasn’t a ‘dude’ but a ‘chick’ they bought the gun from, out of the back of ‘her’ van. Then there’s mention of 452 new definition of crimes added since the start of 2000. This makes me believe that we completely suck at solving problems, and the only way we can fix them is to make them illegal.
If you think that lawyers and politicians are completely sane, logical, intelligent individuals of society, then I direct your attention to the number of absolutely ludicrous laws still in effect, mostly due to the fact that it would cost too much money and time to strike them from the books. Here’s a fun website to go to if you need to kill some time, and a few brain cells:
This site outlines, by state, some of the dumb laws our government has passed with the help of politicians and lawyers. I looked up some of the laws of the state I currently am forced to inhabit: Ohio. There are some laws that held a purpose some time ago, but is still in effect, such as ‘Participating or conducting a duel is prohibited’ or ‘If one loses their pet tiger, they must notify the authorities within one hour’. I’m not sure about when that last law might have been useful, though. Some laws are good to know when you feel like breaking the law but don’t want to get arrested for it, such as ‘No one may be arrested on Sunday or on the Fourth of July’. And some laws just don’t make any sense, and are clearly there for our amusement, like ‘It is illegal to fish for whales on Sunday’. I’m not a Geographist, but I’m pretty sure Ohio isn’t connected to any oceans.
Now, these are harmless enough, and I’m kind of glad they are still around. I know I don’t want to see anyone ‘walk a cow down Lake Road’ in Bay Village, or see someone ‘drive around the town square more than 100 times in a single session’ in Oxford. Often a sentence is issued because the law is in plain sight, but the penalty is ridiculous in comparison, and the person who broke that law just isn’t wealthy enough to hire a lawyer who knows how to get around them. For instance, a homeless man in Florida steals a box of cereal and evaporated milk. His sentence is 15 years in prison. Now, granted this man had 50 prior convictions and rejected a plea deal that would have reduced the sentence to 3 years, the sentencing is still pretty harsh. Every time I read a story that someone was jailed for misdemeanor crimes, I think about overcrowded prisons and the fact that it’s the taxpayers that pay to house these criminals. If we look at this from the point of view of a balanced society where there’s a cause and effect that’s equal for all offenders, then I fail to see the reasoning for people who steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in various ponzi-like schemes and get sentencing for less than 10 years. In the case of the homeless guy stealing cereal, a $3.50 crime turned into a $50,000 per year expense for tax payers… That’s $750,000 out of the taxpayers pocket to punish a hungry man that will just get out and steal again.
Another big pet peeve of mine is copyright infringement. There are two sides of this law, and the “practice” of infringing on a patent. Case A: A small company creates software to play videos on a computer. They patent their technology but do not immediately have the capital to distribute it and make money from it. A big computer company finds out about it, knows they have a patent, but steals their idea anyway. This big company makes millions of dollars from the software, leaving the little business that created the software in the dust. The small company sues the big company for infringement, and wins, but their winnings are just a fraction of the profit the big company made, and the small company has to use their winnings to pay off legal fees, and when it’s all said and done, they don’t have much to show for it. Here’s the big kicker – the big company can continue to use the software – continue to infringe on the patent, legally. They can continue to make money off of their theft, and the small company can’t sue them again.
Case B: A company either develops a patent, or buys patents from small business that does not have the capital to properly distribute the technology. This technology may be very profitable, but more importantly, applicable and contributive to technological advances, which would create jobs. The company that buys these patents does so with the full intent of not developing the technology. They wait until someone decides to infringe on the patent, then they sue them. Meanwhile, the company that decides to infringe on the patent and start actually using the technology, does so knowing they will get sued, and they will factor this into the price of the developed product. In both cases, the consumer gets screwed.
The crime to punishment ratio is extremely off balance. If you murder someone, and we are 100% positive you murdered someone, then you should not be allowed to live anymore – at least not in our society. If you steal money, you have to give it back, or work it off. There’s no reason why we should continue to support criminals in our society. To be somewhat honest, I think we should have a system of penitentiaries like in “Escape from New York”. We set up maybe three different levels of small isolated societies based on level of conviction, dump the offenders in there to serve their sentence and then leave them alone. They have to grow their own food and survive with each other. I’m sure this is a bad idea though, as it could swiftly turn into Lord of the Flies. So maybe it’s not perfect, but whatever we have now isn’t working.
TL;DR: I’m against the rationalization that we “obey the book” – it hasn’t really worked out for religion, and it surely hasn’t worked for our justice system. The lack of LOGICAL decisions in this country to all issues is mind boggling at best. The justice system isn’t any better. There are smart sociologists that can outline where we are making mistakes and how to fix them, but nobody listens to them. It was hard for me, but I think I can come to understand how we made these mistakes in the first place. The fact that we haven’t bothered to fix them, knowing full well they are wrong and detrimental to our society, gives me a bad case of the facepalm.
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