Page 56
December 2002
The AC Phoenix
)-
America’s Criminal
Injustice System
By: Hugh B. Price
Let’s be clear. I have no tolerance for crime. I want America’s
neighborhoods and the people who live in them to be safe. I want
predators, violent criminal gangs, one-man and one-woman crime
waves and drug dealers who prey on children off the streets.
But we must also be clear-headed, and smart, about how to fight
crime. For years our politicians have scrambled to upstage one
another in showing how tough they could talk about revenging
crime. The trouble is they’ve squandered billions of taxpayers’
money in this macho game. They’ve boasted about passing lengthy
prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, sentences that have pro
duced the two-decade long explosion of new prison construction in
state after state.
Now, that spending spree has proved a drag on the fiscal health
of numerous state budgets and on the economic development of the
larger society. We’ve locked people up in greater numbers than ever
before, while eliminating prison rehabilitation, education and
job-training programs.
No wonder the ability of ex-offenders to even be in a position to
pursue legitimate work when they are released can be summed up,
as Paul Street of the Chicago Urban League writes in the current
issue of Opportunity Journal, as bad and dismal.
“No wonder, then,” he goes on to say, “that U.S. recidivism rates
hover around 60 percent for ex-offenders.”
It makes no sense to pretend that the large majority of those sent
to prison will not be released from prison someday. Nor to pretend
that the various “three strikes and you’re out” laws are nothing but
an idiotic public policy that has needlessly locked up tens of
thousands of nonviolent offenders who’d be better off in communi
ty-based treatment programs and supporting their families as some
states are beginning to realize.
Equally important, the nation’s wrongheaded approach to criminal
justice has far too often compounded the tragedy of a crime being
committed with the tragedy of an innocent person being
nonetheless swept up in the criminal justice system. And, needless
to say, the further tragedy of the actual perpetrator of the crime not
being brought to justice at all.
Two recent incidents, one in Detroit, the other in New York City,
starkly illustrate some of the things wrong with America’s criminal
justice system.
In Detroit, after having spent 17 years in prison for the rape and
murder of a 16-year-old girl, 54-year-old Eddie Joe Lloyd was set
free on August 16; because DNA testing, had proved that he could
n’t have committed the crime.
In New York over a recent weekend, 23-year-old Bradley Gumbel,
a son of Bryant Gumbel the television personality, was set free after
spending 20 hours in custody under suspicion of snatching a
woman’s purse.
The wrong done to Lloyd is by far the more egregious. Lloyd, who
has long suffered from mental instability, was in a mental hospital
and on medication when he “confessed” to a crime that had
horrified Detroit. However, his attorneys have charged that police
detectives fed Lloyd details of the gruesome crime in order to entrap
him and have called for a U.S. Justice Department probe of the
case.
Gumbel was arrested because of mistaken identity. A mugger
tackled the victim late at night on New York’s Upper East Side,
snatched her purse and ran. Seeing him from the back, she
described to the police a tall, thin Black man with close-cropped hair
and a white T-shirt. A short time later, while canvassing the area in
a police squad car, she pointed to Gumbel, who was walking down
the street.
Fortunately, Gumbel had an alibi. He had just dropped off his date
for the evening, and she could vouch for his whereabouts.
Fortunately, Gumbel’s home was on the Upper East Side, too, and
he was heading directly there. Fortunately, Gumbel’s family attorney
is one of the city’s best. Fortunately, Gumbel has a good job, and
has never been even remotely in trouble with the law.
As for his matching that description of the mugger, Newsday
columnist Ellis Henican put it best, writing, “Sure he did-he and a
few hundred thousand other innocent individuals in the general
vicinity of New York.”
With his resources, Henican went on to note, Bradley Gumbel was
out of jail and trouble quickly. “But the question still needs to be
asked,” he reminded us: “How often do people, especially young
Black men, get swept up in one of these one-witness identifications,
then end up in prison for crimes they didn’t commit?
In fact, it’s just one of many questions that ought to trouble those
who want an effective-and fair-criminal justice system, one truly
based on justice for all.
Hugh B. Price is president of the National Urban League in New
Cfdid Care Center of Xdfen
InfantsInrough School-Age Children
6 weeks to 12 year olds
PRESCHOOL • CHILD CARE
523 Monroe Street • Eden, NC 27288
(336) 623-2984