In recent months, various aspects of our nation’s justice system have been re-evaluated by the American public. Such important matters as the increasing militarization of local police forces, law enforcement’s apparent readiness to use deadly force against young black males, and our unnecessarily overcrowded prison system recently have all come under the public microscope.
But perhaps the most important matter is the daily interaction between those officials who make up our justice system - police officers, judges, prison guards, etc. - and the public at large. After all, it’s these day-to-day interactions which serve as the basis for all those other matters receiving their due publicity - in part because those interactions may sometimes be nasty affairs.
Yet the issue of daily interaction often has been ignored. Perhaps that’s because we in the media don’t really grasp the importance of an issue until we experience the matter for ourselves. That’s why a few moments between myself - a professional journalist - and a single uniformed officer may well have provided me with a more complete understanding of this tense issue.
My experience occurred during a visit with a prisoner held in a federal penitentiary - the Allenwood Low Security Federal Correctional Institution at White Deer, PA, to be exact. Thanks to America’s slow conversion to a ‘prison nation’, a growing number of people now know someone held behind bars. If you don’t yet know someone with a criminal record, there’s a strong chance you will eventually.
I and others I know had visited this incarcerated person on previous occasions. We’d never previously had any problems or confrontations with the guards at the facility. We’d come to know and accept the essential routine of a prison visit.
Like most acts of malice, this matter began over a trifle.
In short order: During a visit in October, we had asked the guards then working the visitor center desk if we might move one of the small tables in the visitor facility about 6 feet closer to them. The short move would help the person we were visiting find his friends and loved ones more easily, we explained.
The guards on duty at that time said such a move was perfectly fine.
So when we entered the visitor center on January 2nd of this year, we logically assumed that we might move one of those remaining tables exactly as we had before. But the employment of logic may be a dangerous thing when one is dealing with those in authority.
As we began the short move, we were immediately stopped by one of the guards at the desk that day.
“No!” cried out that guard’s loud voice from behind the desk. “Put that table down now!”
About a minute later, I approached the visitor center desk in the hope of explaining to the guards that no ill will was meant by our attempted move. One of the two guards working the desk that particular day was perceptive and open to dialogue. But the guard who yelled? He apparently felt he had to make matters as he saw them crystal clear to me.
“Look, you need to understand something right now,” he suddenly blurted out to me just as I was about to step away from the desk. “This is MY house, I run things around here,” he added. “You don’t come into MY house and move what belongs to me - how would you like it if I went to your house and started moving the things that belong to YOU?”
Then came the dare.
“And if you don’t like that, you feel free to write the warden and tell him all about me,” he stated before going out of his way to show his name as boldly as he could - clearly daring me to write the warden and thus assert a basic sense of self-respect.
“You know,” I replied a few seconds after his bizarre outburst, as I verified to myself that the guard had actually uttered such a deluded statement, “I just came up here to ask a simple question, but you’ve gone so far out of your way to treat me with special kindness, I think it’s best that the warden hears just how decent you really are.”
I demanded to see his name again, and he again brazenly - even gleefully - showed me his name once more.
And so this reporter began to write the warden about the issue...
But in the midst of writing my complaint to the warden, I came to realize a few harsh truths about our justice system and its relationship with the wider American community.
I realized that my demeaning experience with the prison guard was a shock to me because of its rarity - after all, I am a white male, a professional and a journalist. We normally don’t receive that kind of treatment from a member of the U.S. justice system.
I also realized that if I was a black individual and rather unskilled, such a humiliating experience with a justice official wouldn’t have shocked me in the least. There’s even a good chance it would be my daily experience.
And then what would I do? What if I were a young black person and I received this kind of indignity from a particular officer or officers day after day? What if I felt that there was no one who really cared about my complaints, and no way to make myself heard or understood? Such a daily diet of humiliating impotence would, I now believe, be the deepest cut of all.
And I now may add with some degree of surety that if left alone, a few belligerent officials will eventually poison any justice system’s relationship with the wider community. A host of greater ills then are sure to follow.
Now those individuals who make up our justice system may rightly point out that they suffer through a host of nearly intolerable situations every day. But it’s also become clear to me that when a person who enforces our laws treats an area under his jurisdiction as his private dominion, the inevitable result is a parade of malice that only makes a bad problem worse.
We Americans deserve much better, citizen and officer alike. So how may we achieve a better mutual understanding? I humbly offer two simple solutions which, I think, would defuse much of the current rancor and tension.
1.) The more combative officials in our justice system need to understand that being employed by the American government, or by one of its facilities, does not mean that they may claim sole ownership of these entities.
At the risk of sounding like a cliche, every U.S. citizen and official may rightly claim an ownership stake in the U.S. government and its institutions - if nothing else, our tax receipts may serve as deeds of mutual ownership.
This is not a case of being cute with semantics. An official who has come to believe that he and he alone owns a publicly-funded, democratically-run institution - a neighborhood, a courtroom, a prison - is sure to treat others as if they are little more than trespassers on his private fief. He feels he may treat them as he pleases - a fact I may verify after having spent a few precious moments with such an official.
Tyrannical officials have no place in a justice system based on basic rights and human dignities.
2.) The American justice system is an institution we tolerate rather than adore. An institution which rests on toleration can only work if we do our best to tolerate one another.
I have no problem with a justice system official demanding that others respect him; after all, that is only right. But a confrontational official in the system must understand that respect is a reciprocal matter: He may only demand from others what he is ready to give to others in return.
In short, our more contentious officers would help matters considerably if they would show to others the same respect and simple human dignity they so forcefully demand for themselves.
Of course, these small solutions don’t touch on the wider matters of class, race and other factors which also underlie the tensions felt by many communities today. But they are certainly a start.