On 01-07-98 Dennis Menard wrote to Day Brown... 
 DM> Is the only acceptable definition of justice the WASP-ish 
 DM> understanding of 
 DM> justice?  Are cultural conflicts to be resolved by imposing "foreign" 
 DM> values 
 DM> upon traditional values?  Does the problem really reduce to machismo, 
 DM> or are there any other factors involved here, like cultural 
 DM> disenfrachisement, or 
 DM> disempowerment; cultural isolation; cultural inequities, and so on? 
The cultural values in question have an ancient lineage. I 
may no have made myself clear Dennis. On reflection, I see 
that the fact is that the modern corporate culture is from 
the Ayran yeoman culture of Northern Europe.  Those who're 
outside of that culture, Lapps, Gypsies, Blacks, etc. will 
not compete well in it. 
 
Now to say that the corporate culture should adapt to the 
values of the minorities may be noble, but corporations in 
global competetion must measure any change they make with 
the effect it has on the bottom line, and not much is very 
possible without affecting profits and viability. 
 
Whether that is an 'acceptable definition of justice' does 
not look to be the question. Economic reality has to be a 
serious problem for any organization. 
 
Now if a minority member want to be competitive for jobs, 
it behooves him to conform to the culture, despite being 
seen as an 'uncle tom' or rejecting his own heritage. 
 
 DM> have the studies been done to rule out these arguments? 
I dunno; I dunno how you would design one. Perhaps is is the 
*absence* of a WASP value system beyond anything seen as the 
party/company line that is so useful, and so difficult for a 
minority, who actually *has* a value system. 
 
Doesn't the WASP get his 'values' from Disney Corporation? 
 
Are the facts we've 
 DM> so often been provided  indisputable? 
some are, some are not. who gets to pick? 
 
 DM> 
 DM> What, then, would be your ideal method of achieving justice in society 
 DM> where the state's involvement is minimalized or eliminated? 
I do not propose to minimalize state involvement Dennis; I do 
see some serious adjustments of increasing it in some ways, and 
decreasing it in others. 
 
I would abolish the careers of all defense and prosecuting 
attorneys.  Justice is not a game to build careers on. I'd 
expand the ability of grand juries to determine if crimes 
have been committed, and the ability of juries to question 
directly to ascertain the facts, which is all they are for. 
 
I would treat all criminals as we do the mentally deranged, 
as incompetent to run their own lives.  I would use testing 
to identify the risk of life and limb a defendant will pose 
while in custody, and measure the reasoning faculties.  If 
the individual shows a proclivity to deadly assault, there 
is no choice but to euthanize him to protect those others 
in custody and the staff that has to care for them. 
 
So, a condemned man is not executed because of one trumped 
up case against him, but a continuous record of assault we 
find from puberty onwards. 
 
Much of the murder we see is the direct result of passions, 
a love triangle, or whatever.  Such a person poses no threat 
to other non-violent prisoners, and they can generally be 
put in group homes where they can lead productive lives, so 
long as they are monitored well enough to prevent the kind 
of passion that got them in trouble the first time. 
 
 
 DM>  DB> I am not arguing that execution reduced the murder rate among the 
 DM>  DB> general public in any detectable fashion. I say that it reduced 
 DM>  DB> the rate of *murder among the prison population*, which has had a 
 DM>  DB> salutatory effect on the death rate for guards. 
 DM> 
 DM> Understood.  In your view, do you feel there are any alternative 
 DM> methods of 
 DM> achieving the same result short of execution? 
sure: we already import tremendous amounts of opiates into 
prisons; the guards and the warden like things quiet.  The 
use of drug therapy looks equally useful, but fraught with 
a number of other ethical questions about the sanctity of 
a life lived that way.  IMHO: the amount of opiate neeeded 
by the murderer to blot out the memmory of what he's done 
is so great, we might just as well kill him permanently. 
 
I deplore the abuse by guards, and no doubt, that too is a 
factor in prison deaths.  I would augment guards with some 
volunteers from the ACLU or any other organization that is 
interested in prison reform, to be in the prison, with the 
cam corder, to record on tape any abuse.  I would ask that 
the churches and the AARP find volunteers to help. I would 
ask that video cameras be installed everywhere in prisons 
to record all that goes on there. 
 
I would consider re-instituting the draft for a civil corps 
to serve juries, witness in the prisons, jails, courthouses, 
and act as 'professional witnesses' to pollution abuse, or 
any other injustice in public life. 
 
 
 
 DM> In effect, then, what you are saying is that, one of the benefits of 
 DM> being 
 DM> more affluent is that the richer criminal will suffer a lesser penalty 
 DM> for a 
 DM> given crime for which the poorer criminal will suffer a greater 
 DM> penalty?  Do 
 DM> I understand you correctly? 
the wealth of the *criminal* is not the point; the question 
is the ability of the community to withstand the predation. 
 DM> What if the money dedicated to the maintainance 
 DM> of incarceration were redirected towards prevention (ie, reducing 
 DM> economic inequities and disparate opportunities between cultures... 
Be nice, but I have not seen any program that was effective 
and affordable. I have worked with the Job Corps, and the 
Head Start program, and even the latter is too little too 
late. If you are willing to replace the kid's momma with 
one who is not prone to drug addiction, is capable of the 
kind of attention to expand the development rate and work 
hard to teach the kid as much as possible as soon as that 
can be done, you might get someplace. 
 
Attempts to train the mother in the short time after the 
kid is born is simply too much to expect too soon, *AND* 
it is too late for the kid! 
 
 
I do not expect justice from a penal system; it exists to 
punish some and some others learn the lesson, and thereby 
are afraid of jail, and remain lawabiding. If some are in 
prison unjustly, so be it. All the more reason to be very 
careful in who you hang out with, what drugs you do, and 
what risks you run. 
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