Please take with you and consider as you read on that my feeling is that prisons do not need reforming they need closing down. This is not the way and it never has been. Between the conception of justice and its expression, there is a shadow, between punishment for doing it and not doing it again there is a shadow into which these pages hope to bring light; in order to see and feel light we must acknowledge darkness and feel it’s absence
My Book’s Title - JUSTICE? - YOU DECIDE
This book’s title offers an important and urgent question for your consideration. I believe we have a crisis that is worsening by the day and even by the hour and why?
We have a class biased and blinkered controlling system shaping the social order that is too arrogant, self centred and downright wicked to see or care about the harm it is actually doing and the many innocent, mainly working class people who are being wronged. Here I am including vulnerable children who have been called criminal and are being abused, harmed and put at risk of their lives at times even forfeiting their lives as a result of their ‘care’ by the state.
Firstly, please read this excerpt from an important recently published book carefully. It may shock, it may confuse and it may occasion feelings of alarm also perhaps of curiosity yet, I believe that what is said here is nothing less than clear and verifiable truth that should give a thinking person serious cause for concern. As you read on it will become apparent why I say this. After all, what is it that has drawn you to my book with the title it has? Do you feel safe with our legal system and are you satisfied that our present legal system is totally fair and impartial? How do you know this? How do I know it is nothing of the kind? Or, in common with many people do you have very real concerns and fears?
“Innocent, law-abiding members of the public can be locked up for many years at the drop of a hat. Committing an offence is not a necessary prerequisite. Miscarriages of justice occur for many reasons: because the police or prosecution have not disclosed evidence, evidence is fabricated; witness statements may be false or involve mistaken eyewitness identification: confessions are unreliable due to police pressure or psychological instability. A judge, chosen by the establishment rather than being democratically elected, may misdirect a jury or even sleep through court proceedings.”
Do judges ever sleep through court proceedings as the author suggests? Yes, they certainly do once as a social science student I had to attend court as an observer. I have actually seen this myself in the Crown Court here in Hove that constitutes the permanent eyesore at the top of my road. It was quite a disconcerting and grotesque spectacle.
Naylor is quite right to convey a certain anxiety regarding legal authority being selected by the establishment of the day rather than elected in any fair and democratic manner by all the people. Those in positions of judicial authority know nothing of the day-to-day struggle of working class people to survive and they care even less as will. I believe become increasingly apparent as you journey through my book also; as you think seriously for yourself.
Consider also an excellent article written by Mr John Taft presently imprisoned in HMP Risley maintaining his innocence for a crime details of which are on www.innocence.org.uk where I found this example of his writing.
John begins by telling us “The police never lie, you can’t get convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence alone and expert witnesses never slight their evidence in favour of the prosecution. Of course the courts don’t get it wrong and even if in the unlikely event they did, the appeals system is all geared up to speedily free the truly innocent.”
John goes on to present these points of view as misconceptions and myths and rightly mentions that “..assumptions and speculations based on these myths are used to impact on the length of time an individual can remain in custody. What is still commonly referred to as ‘denial’ can specifically reflect on ‘risk factors’ and for the truly wrongfully imprisoned justice is fundamentally undermined. Yet, one must maintain one’s innocence if truly innocent as many pressures in the dehumanising process of the ‘justice’ system militate against this possibility. “
Notice again the challenge posed by our title ‘Justice? – You Decide’
The capitalist establishment, the state call it what you will functions with the concern of the rich, powerful and profoundly self centred in mind. It maintains them regardless of the prostitution of any semblance of a concern for the safety and well being of all its citizens without any exception. It is totally destructive of meaningful community. It has no honest concept of this and a new concept is needed?
It may be difficult to define or describe what one means by the state but, as one becomes aware of the inherent cruelty with which it functions it may be more a matter of feeling what we mean by the state as well as perhaps attempting one’s own definition. I often feel people seldom give sufficient credence to their feelings and this is an unfortunate state of affairs contributing I feel to stagnation of human thought and progress.
The German anarchist Gustav Landauer made a profound contribution to the analysis of the state and society in one sentence which is quoted by Colin Ward on page 19 of his book ‘Anarchy in Action.’ Landuauer says
“The state is not something that can be destroyed by a revolution but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour, we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.”