By Keith McDowell
Some of us gently lift the accelerator pedal upon spotting a
state highway patrol car hoping against hope that getting clocked at 76 mph
with a radar gun in the new Texas 75-mph speed zones won’t get us pulled over.
Others are oblivious and zip past with the pedal to the medal blazing along at
over 80 mph. For them, speeding is perceived as a trivial offense against the
rules of society – justified as their right against intrusion by government or,
more often, as simply an in-your-face and arrogant behavior on their part.
Yet such episodes with law enforcement reflect both advances
and innovations in technology including the radar gun and the dashboard radar
detector as well as changes in culture and attitudes. Some would argue – and
rightly so in my opinion – that little has changed on the cultural side of law
enforcement and the criminal justice system. One of my most revered ancestors,
Nathan Morgan, proves the case.
A soldier in the Revolutionary War and one of the founders
of Morgan Township in Rowan County, North Carolina, Nathan was a plaintiff in a
case brought before the Pleas and Quarter Sessions Court of Rowan County on 11
October 1804. According to a court document:
A special court called for the
trial of negro Peter on the charges of burglary & attempting to commit a
rape on the wife of Nathan Morgan …
Whereupon the court proceeded to
examine testimony touching the Premises & the aforesaid Jury found the
above named Peter Guilty of the aforesaid charges of burglary & attempting
to commit a rape. To wit “the fact that the said Peter did in the night open
the door of Nathan Morgan’s dwelling house by removing the latch of said door,
with the intent to commit felony” – leaving the Court to adjudge, what was the
law in such cases. Whereupon the court proceeded to pass sentence on the
aforesaid negro Peter. That Peter be taken from hence to the place from whence
he came & from thence to the place of execution, there to be hanged by the
neck until he be dead. And that the Sheriff of Rowan be directed to carry this
sentence into effect on 27th day of October A.D. 1804 between the
hours of twelve & four.
Was Peter truly guilty of a crime as alleged or was this
just part of the cultural imperative of the “Old South” where slaves were
automatically found guilty? And has anything changed given that our modern
prisons are filled with minorities and the poor according to the demographics?
We’ve even made a sport out of ranking the worst prison
innovations including casting
an online ballot for one of the following: the abolishment of weekend
lunches in Texas, gouging families by charging a $25 visitation fee in Arizona,
and using robo-guards to protect prisoner well-being in South Korea. In Texas,
the prison “bid’ness”
and Texas Tough is the
order of the day. And the Texas prison system costs lots of money, over $3
billion in 2012 or $21,390 annual cost per inmate.
In California, the effect of the correctional budget
relative to the state budget for the University of California and California
State University systems provides a stark contrast in priorities. In 1980
according to one
source, the university systems budget was 10.4% of the total state budget
and corrections was 2.9%. By 2011, it was 6.6% for university systems and 11.2%
for corrections. Do we really need to put all those marijuana users and dealers
in prison? Is it not time for America to try something different and legalize
drugs, thereby moving funds to our educational and infrastructure sectors?
And what about technological innovations in our law
enforcement and overall criminal justice system, notwithstanding radar guns and
dashboard detectors? Surprisingly, a search on the Internet leaves one with the
impression that the “detection and capture” front end to law enforcement is
doing well along with our prison systems, but the courts and related judicial
systems are merely creeping along.
At the front end, we have drones flying overhead and surveillance cameras in
public areas raising the specter of a police
state for many; data mining of our phone calls, emails, tweets, and texts
by both businesses for commercial reasons and government under the auspices of
the Patriot Act; and “hot-spotting”
of criminal activity, to name a few.
It’s all part of a “smarter
planet” according to IBM – tongue in cheek, of course.
At the back end in our prisons, we have an amazing array of new
innovations. The Weapons and Non-Permitted
Devices Detector (WANDD) is a “scanner that makes it easier to detect hidden
makeshift weapons that violent inmates often fashion.” Note the culturally
pejorative use of the adjective “violent” in the quote. For those who worry
about “what a crazy criminal might do with” a needle, we have PharmaJet, a
needle-free injection system for “medicating and immunizing sick inmates.” Wow!
Those folks who created PharmJet must have really enjoyed the movie Demolition Man.
Cellphones cut both ways in a prison, but Wolfhound when
“hidden beneath floors and inside walls” can detect calls and texts making it
easy to confiscate such contraband. And then there are biometrics to control
all kinds of access using eyes, fingerprints, fingernails and just about every
other part of the human body. RFID tags including ones injected into a
prisoner’s body permit instant access to the location of the tagged prisoner.
And let’s not forget the Taser X12 which is “less lethal than a shotgun” and
great for bringing crazy criminals and violent inmates under control without
killing them.
You gotta luv it! Who would have guessed that such cultural
and technological hype would surround the marketing of new innovations for
prisons. By comparison, innovations in our courts and judicial system pale by
comparison, but exist they do.
Other than the use of computers and information technology,
court TV, ankle monitors and the like, the Center for
Court Innovation is one example of an organization attempting to innovate
and thereby improve the system. The business world is also on the scene, but their
menu lacks panache and appears as a list of standard data and process
management wonkdom.
For the legal scholars among us, one can debate the constitutionality
of all these cultural and technological changes and innovations in our law
enforcement and overall criminal justice system and whether they truly
represent an advance in civilization, but one thing is certain: they will
continue and people will make money and create jobs from them. We cannot forget
this sector as we pursue the goal of innovation.
But for me, I come back to “negro Peter” and wonder what he
might have thought about all this had he been given the opportunity. In the
end, it’s all about people and their lives, not gadgets and parlor tricks.
No comments:
Post a Comment