¶ … Free
How the Criminal Justice System is Dysfunctional according to Paul Butler's Let's Get Free
The American criminal justice system has had a long history of prejudice. From the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision that institutionalized the false concept of "separate but equal" to the Jim Crow laws that followed to the methods of "control" enacted by police in urban communities, criminal justice in the U.S. has seen lots of crime but little justice. Part of the reason for the inherent dysfunction in the way minorities have always been treated in America is that the country was founded on prejudiced WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) principles: the principle of "manifest destiny" was based on the supposedly "divine right" that WASPs had to "control" the New World and eradicate the "lesser" races (such as the Native Americans and the African-Americans). These prejudiced principles were absorbed into the criminal justice system through lawmakers (as seen in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision) and courts, as Paul Butler shows.
The dysfunctional justice system and the problem of mass incarceration in the U.S. are touched upon by Paul Butler in his book Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice. Butler begins with the perspective of a prosecuting attorney's view of the streets. Cops and prostitutes know one another, cops for the most part turning a blind eye on the "the world's oldest profession" (Butler, p. 3). Yet, when citizens of the DC area see "cops and the girls yukking it up…a showy crackdown happens for a few days" in order to save face for the police department. The arrested prostitute is brought before a judge because "lawmakers don't want people to have jury trials for certain offenses" (p. 1). Everyone in the courtroom sees the prostitute as a "whore" (p. 4) who has the "temerity" to challenge the system by going to trial. Butler is conveying a sense of the meanness that he himself will receive when he goes to trial later on. The sympathetic reader, however, will already get the point and be asking: what is the courtroom for if not exactly this? Does not everyone have the right to a trial? Here is one example of how the justice system is dysfunctional: as Butler puts it, even in the courtroom, certain defendants have "no defense" (p. 3).
After Butler himself is prosecuted for an offense which he did not commit he realizes the inherent "meanness" that is in the system (p. 28). The criminal justice system with its mass incarcerations (a quarter of the world's inmates are held in U.S. facilities) is engaged in "controlling" urban populations -- not in protecting them. Such a problem has been going on for years. This paper will examine propositions that Butler makes throughout the book and show how they relate to the criminal justice system. It will conclude with a personal reflection on what I learned from reading Butler's book.
Arguments
Butler makes the proposition that police officers often abuse their power: "They can falsely say that they have evidence when they don't, or that witnesses identified you, or that your friends have implicated you" (p. 28). This is certainly true in his own case: the officer that testifies at his trial lies through his teeth; when cross-examined by Butler's attorney, the officer looks ridiculous. But that's not all: "The police can arrest you for a minor traffic offence like not wearing a seat belt or driving with expired tags" (p. 28). Arrest for such a minor infraction? There is no sense of balance or proportion in the criminal justice system. The heavy hand of the Law is always right and the best thing for any citizen to do is to avoid it. However, this cannot be done by all citizens: In the lyrics of the song "Hip Hop Police," Chamillionaire says, "If you aren't guilty of anything, then why did you run? Cause you the police and plus I saw you cocking your gun, and the chamber wasn't empty, it was obviously one." People, especially minorities, avoid police because police are essentially like highway robbers: "I saw you cocking your gun." Rather than use their position to serve and protect, police use their position to take advantage of and control people in urban and even suburban communities. They use fear tactics (they will "take you away") to intimidate and keep people from challenging them and standing up for themselves. It is a system that clearly favors the powerful. As Butler...
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