Secrets of the Justice System BY ATTICUS DEWEY
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he justice system. It governs our lives and keeps us from becoming mindless beasts. However, the justice system also holds secrets that can change how people view the courtroom and prisons. The Power of Privatized Prisons The United States prison and justice system is a failure on many levels. Many purposes prisons are meant to serve, are simply not attained. The statement that the point of prison is to reduce crime is false. With over 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States — which is almost 10 times more than there were 50 years ago — the statement simply cannot be true. Despite this massive increase in prison population, a study conducted by the New York University School of Law found that the effect of prisons on crime rate has been essentially zero. This is because the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) makes profits off of the inmates that prisons hold. It all started in the ‘80s, when the “war on drugs” meant state and federal prisons were bursting at the seams. It was during this time that the CCA offered to begin paying for the construction and management of prisons, instead of the government. As Thomas Beasley — one of the co-founders of the CCA — once said, “You just sell [prisons] just like you were selling cars, real estate, or hamburgers.” The CCA can bring in up to 1.6 billion dollars a year, and data shows that private prisons cost taxpayers just as much as public prisons. Nearly one-fifth of today’s prisoners are held in a money-making facility. Another downside to private prisons is the amount of infractions that inmates receive. One study by the University of Wisconsin showed that private prisons deal out twice as many infractions as government prisons. These penalties can lengthen prisoners’ sentences, allowing the prisons to make even more money. Finally, private prisons sneak occupancy clauses into their contracts, which require states to keep their prisons full. In 2014, a prison in Arizona didn’t meet their 97 percent occupancy quota, forcing the state government to pay them a $3 million fine. Fines like these encourage cash-grabbing states to keep people in prison for as long as possible.
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The Communicator Magazine
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The Problems with Juries While having a jury is the cornerstone of our democracy system — citizens’ fates being decided not by a dictator or king, but by a jury of fellow citizens — the people serving in it are bound to make mistakes. It is a testament to democracy that our justice system gives such overwhelming powers to average citizens. However, that also means that our juries are subject to the same biases people have in everyday life. One study of behavioral sciences and the law stated that jurors are more likely to give lenient sentences to attractive defendants, and on average, juries find defendants less guilty if they are wearing glasses. These biases are so powerful that there is an entire industry of highly-paid trial consultants who help lawyers learn and exploit them. In some cases, consultants even scan potential jurors’ Facebook pages to help decide who to keep and who to send home. While these biases may sound trivial, the effect they have on cases can be devastating. “There are many biases that can determine the outcomes of trials,” said Adam Benforado, a professor at Drexel University of Kline School of Law. “For example, political biases can be far more influential on the outcome of a case than what the law actually says. So, in date rape cases, older, more conservative women are far more likely to acquit than those of younger, more liberal women. Regardless of how the law actually defines rape. “Sadly, our juries all see the world through the tinted lenses of their own biases, which is one of the reasons why black defendants fair so much worse in our system than white defendants. We have all been exposed to damaging stereotypes that link blackness with crime and violence. This can lead juries to assign black defendants to longer sentences than white defendants, because we implicitly see them as more of a threat. “Finally, lawyers pay trial consultants huge sums to ensure they have the most bias juries possible in their favor. This means that a case can be won by the selection of the jury before the trial even begins.” With jurors being paid as little as four dollars an hour in some states, they have little monetary reason to take trials seriously. The pay is so low that we treat jury duty as if it is some sort of punishment. Some
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cities have had such a poor turnout for jury duty that they have had to postpone murder trials. Think about that, people’s fates being decided by people who get paid poverty wages, and would rather be doing anything else. So is it any wonder that they fall back onto their irrational biases? The Horrors of Solitary Confinement Solitary confinement has many devastating effects on prisoners’ mental health. In solitary confinement, you’re left alone in a room for 23 hours a day, with nothing more than a king-size bed. It’s an archaic and cruel form of punishment that started in the 1800s. Solitary confinement was conceived by Quakers who thought prisoners would spend the time reflecting and using the Bible; but eventually, even they decided that it was too cruel to use. The Supreme Court at the time declared “Prisoners subject to solitary confinement became violently insane; others still, committed suicide.” Solitary confinement fell out of use in the United States for over a century, and has only come back into use in the past few decades, and it’s been ruining minds ever since. Humans are social animals, and when there is prolonged denial of social contact it can cause serious and permanent brain damage. People held in solitary confinement often hallucinate, fall into depression, and lose the ability to tell how much time has passed. Solitary confinement isn’t just used for the worst of the worst either; it is routinely used in our prison system. It is given to anyone that the guards don’t want to deal with: the mentally ill, those who are LGBTQ+, and even prisoners that refused to eat dinner have all been thrown into solitary confinement just because the guards found them “difficult.” Solitary confinement is administered to 80-100 thousand prisoners a year. In fact, there are some prisons that are completely made up of solitary confinement cells. These prisons, called “Supermax prisons,” are enormous complexes, full of people in tiny cells like animals, slowly being driven insane. They may be criminals, but it is immoral and cruel to subject them to this kind of torture. Research shows that solitary confinement causes a syndrome called deliri-