US justice system racist and rotten to the core

So it appears now that Halliburton’s role in the BP oil disaster does not appear to be the most principled one. According to the Wall Street Journal, federal investigators are concerned that Halliburton found “repeated problems” with the cement it was using to seal the BP oil well but used it anyway “perhaps without alerting BP” the Journal adds.

According to investigators, the cement failed the first three tests it was subjected to and only passed the fourth when engineers changed the testing procedure. One analyst believes this information “could” just could mind you, hurt Halliburton’s reputation, “The integrity of their product is being questioned and the integrity of their advice is being questioned.”, he says.

Halliburton doesn’t have too much credibility with the thinking public being connected to Dick Cheney and involved in all sorts of shady deals in Iraq. It is a master feeder at the public trough.
                                                        Below: Eliason, sentenced to life without parole Monday

Just being reminded about Halliburton makes me think of Cheney, then Bush and Rumsfeld and the other thug, Wolfowitz and it makes my blood boil, particularly when I read the article on the opposite page about the sentencing of life without parole for juvenile offenders. The US prides itself as a society that is tough on crime, but these three mass murderers walk free while there are an estimated 2,589 juvenile offenders serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. When people ask me if I am for capital punishment, I always respond that it depends who does the judging and who does the killing; as things are, I’m opposed to it.


If my memory serves me right. One of the Ten  Commandments says, “Thou shall not kill”, fortunately, there is a waiver here if the ruling class of a nation decides that its Ok to kill to protect their interests and they make it as easy as possible for young workers to do so, offering them free transportation to the arena of battle and a better chance at an education if they get out alive. They also offer prison if they can’t handle the trauma on their return to a “normal” existence. Needless to say, not to many sons and daughters of the ruling class sign up.

Left: Terence Graham
In May of this year a US Supreme Court ruling determined that juveniles are not really adults and are therefore “less culpable” for their crimes because they’re less able to control their behavior. Therefore, they have a better chance of being rehabilitated and deserve a "a meaningful opportunity to obtain release.", the court says. The ruling was based on the case of a Florida youth, Terence Graham, who was “implicated” in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Interestingly enough, Clarence Thomas of Anita Hill fame dissented saying, "I am unwilling to assume that we, as members of this court, are any more capable of making such moral judgments than our fellow citizens." Well, we should get rid of that court I think.

This ruling is a positive thing but the US’s record for incarcerating and even executing kids is a disgrace. Joseph Ligon is 73 years old and has been in prison for almost sixty years for his role in a double homicide. On Monday, a judge in Michigan sentenced 15 year-old Dakotah Eliason to life without parole for killing his stepfather. Dakotah was fourteen at the time. Michigan is one of the states with the highest number of such cases, 346.

“Human Rights Watch found that nationwide, 59 percent of youth serving life without parole sentences received the sentence for their first criminal conviction, and 16 percent were 15 or younger at the time of their offense. An estimated 26 percent were convicted on the basis of accomplice liability or felony murder. These are crimes in which a teenager who commits a non-homicide felony such as a robbery is held responsible for a codefendant's act of murder during the course of the crime. State laws often do not require the person convicted on this charge to know that a murder was planned or even that the codefendant was armed.” *

It is no news to those that pay attention that the US justice system is racist to the core. Human Rights Watch also found that on average black youth are serving life without parole at a per capita rate that is 10 times that of white youth. The organization also says that in Pennsylvania, which has the largest number of juvenile offenders serving life without parole, black youth are 21 times as likely to be serving the sentence as white youth.

Pennsylvania death row has a total of 220 inmates, 130 or 59% of the total are black, yet blacks make up only about 13% of the population.

Scott Burns, the head of the National District Attorney’s Association is not sympathetic to the juveniles incarcerated for their natural lives. “There are Millions of young kids who do not commit outrageous crimes” he remarks, “To say we can excuse a small percentage that do just because their frontal lobe hasn’t developed is not persuasive.”

This is standard from the likes of Burns and unfortunately parroted by many workers. If it were simply a matter of individual choice, if society doesn’t matter, objective conditions play no role, then why are the prisons full of workers? Burns’ answer to that in his own mind is that we are more prone to criminal behavior. His justification for the racial disparity in the prisons and on death row would be that workers of color, particularly black workers are even more prone to criminal behavior. He has to take this racist position otherwise he has to question the system he upholds and he can’t do that.

We have more people in prison than any other country in the world. Prisons are profit making endeavors and safe places to put youth and workers who might disrupt the economic and political harmony of society. The prisons system is nothing but the warehousing of human beings and we can’t abolish it with out abolishing the system that nurtures it.

* http://abolish-jlwop.blogspot.com/2009/05/us-end-life-sentences-for-youth.html