Government is becoming master

To the Editor:

America, once the shining example of freedom, liberty, and justice to the rest of the world is now the prison capital of the world. No country except the tiny African State Of Seychelles (with a population of 90,000) incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than America. The prison population has quadrupled since 1980, due in most part to America's longest war--the 40 year, failed, phony, "War on Drugs." As it is being waged today it is actually a war on poor drug users. Whatever the solution to the drug problem is --is any, it is evident that the mass incarceration of drug users by the police and courts today isn't working. Drugs are more available and more people are using them than ever. As with alcohol, drug use is a moral issue--a vice, and government cannot arrest its way to a drug free society today any more than the Prohibition Act of 1919 stopped alcohol consumption.

There are over two million people behind bars in America. One fourth are mostly poor defendants charged with drug-related, victimless crimes who probably wouldn't be there if they could have afforded to hire a lawyer. But then there are two systems of justice, one for the wealthy and another for the poor. The rich can usually buy their way out of most predicaments, but the poor get nailed. In other words, you only get justice if you can afford it. It's not that all poor defendants are innocent, or victims of persecution by the police and court system, but that our broken Criminal Justice System functions in such a way that the poor are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to be sentenced to longer prison terms than those in the upper and middle class.

America is more a class society today than ever. The elite, ruling class have political clout and can shape society to their liking, and the way they seem to like it is the rich can do whatever they want, but the poor and middle class must be watched constantly and arrested instantly if they step out of line. There is a common misconception about the police today. Because they rarely if ever get anything but good publicity in the news media most people trust them and believe they "protect and serve" everyone equally, but in my opinion they protect and serve the ruling class more equally, and the ruling class mostly needs protection from the underclass. The police subconsciously know this. They know that being a police officer gives them power over others, and being human, they know to not use this power in the same manner with the rich and affluent as they do with the poor and middle class. The rich have lawyers, they have resources, they know politicians, they have friends on the police force. So the police mostly investigate and arrest those in the lowest social and economic classes with the least political clout and the least likely to draw attention, such as hiring a lawyer to represent them in court.

The billions of dollars that has been pumped into local, state and federal law enforcement agencies by the federal government over the past 40 years to combat drug use has accomplished nothing except to pass more laws that take away more and more of our rights and freedoms and to send more people to overcrowded prisons for longer terms. This insanity continues on and on year after year because police agencies throughout the country have themselves become addicted--to the money they receive from the federal government. But the saddest part is that it is being condoned and encouraged by politicians, the courts, and an entrenched bureaucracy that remains the same no matter who the President or Governor is, bringing us closer and closer to a police state where we have no rights at all. When the first rule of politicians, the police, prosecutors, judges, and those unseen in government is to "keep ourselves in power at all cost," then government is no longer the servant--but the master.

Bill Cox

Fairdealing, Mo.