"Equal" Justice System? Why Private Prisons Corrupt Our Legal System and Oppress Our People

I hope you have read these two cases and thought about our justice system. In case you are confused I'll break it down for you.

A white upperclassman caught behind a $3 billion dollar fraud was sentenced to 40 months in prison. A poor black man who stole $100 dollars and then turned himself in out of guilt was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.

Let's start with Roy Brown. When robbing a bank he was offered a stack of bills. He took ONE bill. He was not interested in having as much money as possible, he just wanted food and shelter. The next day he returned the money out of guilt and turned himself in to the authorities because his "mother didn't raise him that way". Does this man sound like a danger to society? Even if your answer is yes, is he more of a danger to society than a CEO who was ok with a $3 billion fraud all to get more money that he didn't need but wanted for power? Someone who would risk the consequences he now faces for money? Versus a man who had no intention of hurting anyone but desperately needed some money to stay alive.

How did this happen? I'm sure you are thinking this... he has a home now. The fact that he is happily in jail getting three meals a day is a whole different problem. What about the other men like Roy Brown who have families and prison isn't some safe haven for them? The private prisons in our country can bend a judge any way they want. Like the CEO they'll do anything to make more money. In Roy Brown's case, they found some law stating robbery is a 15 year sentence and presented it to the judge. Whatever happened, I can guarantee you that without private prisons and their will to make money this man would not be behind bars for 15 years. Private prisons are a business who use these poor men as their slaves. Yes private prisons save government spending, but at what cost? "Incarcerating people for profit is in a word wrong" and "As long as our government permits private prisons for profit to operate as legal businesses, the American Criminal Justice System will never have the capacity to develop a credibility that the people of this great nation can respect and feel morally comfortable with" (National Public Service Council to Abolish Private Prisons).

When I first saw these cases paralleled like this I thought, how is this possible? What are the causes? Perhaps that too many Americans have one triumphing goal of making as much money as possible because in this country money is power. It's embedded in our government and society. Its effects are scary and morally wrong. It takes good people and makes criminals out of them where the cycle repeats itself and naturally creates more criminals. We tell more and more people in the name of money we will put their rights aside. What that does is push them farther and farther until they have no other option but to sit and suffer or fight to survive often through criminal acts.

I love living in America. Being white and being in the middle class or higher and living in this country is great. We have so many rights other people around the world are deprived of. I have to think about how I would feel if I was part of a poor minority. Would I feel safe in this country? Equal? Would I be proud to be an American? Or would I feel like a peasant living among nobility where I am not entitled to the same rights and freedoms as the aristocrats and the royalty around me. Back to myself, I don't blame these people for acting in the ways they do. Men like Roy Brown are not evil. That's clear from the reasons behind why he turned himself in. His desperate attempt to acquire food and shelter for survival was an act of crime. The criminal act itself is not the cause of all these mens' troubles, but the symptom. What causes these acts of desperation? Well when these people feel like they have nothing to lose, some values go out the door. By segregating them, giving them less than adequate education, and depriving them of the means to compete in our society, America is cheating them. It's no wonder they are the way they are. By treating them differently, our justice system is just one more part of American society that tells them they are not like us. Can we blame them for not acting as noble as us?