cannabisnews.com: Life, Liberty and Excessive Force





Life, Liberty and Excessive Force
Posted by FoM on February 28, 2000 at 19:45:49 PT
By Orlando Patterson
Source: New York Times
The police killing of Amadou Diallo and the exoneration of the four officers who shot him have naturally set off heated debates on police procedures and race relations in our cities. But this tragedy has implications of a broader and more profound nature: when viewed in light of ongoing trends in our criminal justice system, it exposes deep-seated contradictions in our conception and practice of personal liberty. 
Three of the most fundamental principles of Western liberal democracies are at issue. One is the right to do what one pleases as long as it entails no harm to others. Another is equal justice for all. Last is the principle that no person or other agent, including the state, has the right to tell a citizen what is in his or her best interest -- a current of antipaternalism that has always run far stronger in the American idea of democracy than in other liberal Western countries. These principles normally work well together, if none is taken to extremes, as the Western European democracies clearly demonstrate. But developments in America have placed them on a collision course, especially in the sphere of criminal justice. Of course, our liberties have to be protected from criminals among us. But there are two complementary ways of going about this: we can take preventive measures, like the rehabilitation of those who commit crimes, to reduce the incidence of crime before it happens, and we can punish those who do commit crimes, giving the police and courts strong powers of enforcement and incarceration. America had a history of using preventive programs prior to the 1970's -- not only those that stressed the rehabilitation of convicts, but also others aimed at children and young people, like the home visiting program Healthy Start, which was intended to reduce child abuse (perhaps the greatest social cause of criminality), close supervision of juvenile offenders and guidance programs for youths at risk of falling to crime. But over the last three decades, rather than seeking a balance, the American approach has become almost entirely punitive: we have the second-highest rate of incarceration in the world (after Russia), and are the only prominent Western democracy with the death penalty. Nonetheless, we still have one of the highest rates of criminal activity and violence in the world, even after taking into account the dramatic recent declines in overall crime rates. Nearly all criminologists consider our punitive approach a disaster. There is no evidence that it has had any long-term impact on reducing crime, and it is certain that excessive incarceration makes career criminals of many of the nonviolent offenders whom we throw together with hardened, violent ones. Why have we taken this contradictory punitive course? Why do nearly all of our leaders, including the ostensibly moderate Democratic front runner in the presidential race, Al Gore, trumpet their "toughness" on crime and defense of the death penalty? The easy argument is that Americans are simply prone to violence as a people. However, there might be a better, and far less ignoble, reason: our extreme commitment to antipaternalism, to the principle that the state should avoid telling citizens how to lead their lives. In the words of the Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, "It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." Crime prevention measures that are proved to work well -- from programs aimed at youths at risk to therapy and rehabilitation for offenders both in prison and after release -- are all in some way paternalistic. It is not just conservatives and tax cutters who resent such programs. They often cause animosity in the very people they are supposed to help. Very often these are poor people and members of racial minorities whose sense of freedom and dignity leads them to reject such programs. (In a similar way, studies of the remaking of welfare in recent years found a widespread and deeply felt dislike of the social services system and its agents on the part of welfare recipients themselves.) Our rejection of a preventive approach, however, creates a paradox in that we are forced to surrender more and more of our liberty to the increasingly powerful police operations, like the street crimes unit in New York, and the draconian laws we pass in order to guarantee safety. Unlimited power always corrupts, and when a police officer can defend himself against the killing of an unarmed civilian with the nearly unassailable argument that he feared for his own life, we are edging closer to unlimited power. In pursuing the principle of noninterference, we are eroding the principle of doing anything we please without being blasted away by jittery agents of the state. New York is not alone. The police corruption scandal in Los Angeles, the erroneous death penalty verdicts in Illinois, the F.B.I. scandal in Boston and the execution spree in Texas are all of a piece with this national contradiction. As for the principle of equality under the law, nobody can deny that the probability of having our liberty violated by the police is directly related to wealth and status. Not only are wealthy Americans treated with greater respect by the police, but they are also less likely to be arrested and indicted than poor Americans for similar acts, are less likely to be found guilty if they are indicted, are less likely to be incarcerated if they are convicted and are likely to serve less time if incarcerated. What for a suburban white youth is a misdemeanor powder cocaine offense punishable by probation becomes for a Hispanic or African-American crack user a 15-year prison sentence. Domestically, the penalty we now pay for our unequal and punitive system of justice is the self-contradiction of our most basic liberties. As Thoreau put it: "Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it." One result of the unequal impact of our law-and-order stance is a deep distrust for authorities on the part of poorer citizens of all ethnic groups -- from white chauvinists who decry the Waco disaster to African-Americans outraged over the Diallo shooting and the beatings of Rodney King and Abner Louima. And there may be an international price to pay as well. Coincidentally, just hours before the Diallo verdict, the State Department released its annual report on human rights violations, in which we condemned such countries as China and Pakistan for violating basic freedoms. For all of our failures and contradictions, we can still justly claim to be the land most passionately committed to the cause of liberty. But the Diallo trial and similar instances of growing police powers, along with our irrational penal system and the unequal application of our increasingly harsh laws, compromise our international status and undermine the credibility of the nation best qualified to lead the world into a century of global freedom.Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of "Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries," the second volume of a trilogy on race relations. Published: February 28, 2000Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company 
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Post Comment


Name: Optional Password: 
E-Mail: 
Subject: 
Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message]
Link URL: 
Link Title: