(04-15-2025 01:57 PM)b2b Wrote: I'm not throwing out anything regarding our justice system. I simply agreed w/ fsquid that many young black men are angry and have no self control due to lack of a father figure. That's a fact. The statistics on fatherlessness and crime rates bear it out. You've basically built a straw man to say I don't care about equal justice. I want equal justice. I also recognize that young black men are far more likely to commit crime. 2 things can be true. The latter doesn't mean I want them treated unfairly when they're in court.
I don't build strawmen, ever! What you want and are asking consideration for simply is not possible in a justice system built on equality. I freely acknowledge that children, any children, from broken homes are much more likely to develop antisocial personality traits. But the purpose of law is ascertaining guilt or innocence and issuing an appropriate punishment or acquittal and that based upon "THE FACTS OF THE CASE" and not the "CIRCUMSTANCES OF RACE AND UPBRINGING". We can't make every person's upbringing a matter of consideration in a case built upon violations of the law when the facts of the case make it clear that the accused is guilty and then offer them special considerations because of their upbringing. Life is not fair. Justice is about did you, do it? If so, you get sentenced.
Equal justice is not about "having equal abilities, equal education, or equal opportunities" and never has been. Justice is supposed to be blind to poverty and blind to privilege. There are problems on both ends of that spectrum today. Privilege is too acknowledged and can afford better lawyers and endless appeals and that needs to be dealt with as well. But in justice the equity is supposed to be in how the innocent and guilty are treated.
Where the prisons fail miserably is in teaching self-control, teaching life skills, and in decreasing the recidivism rates. The "Corrections" system isn't correcting anything and is only producing more hardened criminals with more antisocial rage. And that happens when prisoners don't have a right to equal protection under the law of their punishments. No protection is not equal protection. But that's another argument.
What you refuse to acknowledge is that a lousy upbringing is no excuse under the law though the left loves to make it so for the purpose of appealing to the black male vote. The reality is for all of the liberal arguments for "special considerations for the minorities" they actually aren't impacting their futures or doing a damn thing for them.
30 years ago I advocated for public schools with dormitories with young teachers present so that kids from broken homes could stay at school, under its protection, have access to tutors, 3 square meals a day, and a chance to break the cycle of poverty. There is nothing in our way of life which should prevent an enlightened society from acknowledging that if you are to break cycle of poverty and crime the time to do it is in their younger years and through giving them what they can't get at home. They can still head home on Friday and stay there through Sunday unless DFACS says otherwise, but if you want to break the cycle you have to replace the lack of the father with good coaches and tutors. And a system which instills and rewards discipline. If the kids can't behave well enough for that setup, then juvenile detention centers may have to be utilized. You have to protect the kids making good use of a dorm and tutors.
Education doesn't want to do that. States don't want the overhead. And that is shortsighted as the cost of the courts, of prisons, and the damage to the harmony of society is great enough that anything which can cut the cycle of failure, maladaptation, and the development of antisocial behavior benefits us all before the life of the child and its path forward is tracked for failure and crime.
The solutions you seek by acknowledging the kind of upbringing need to be applied before they are criminalized and incorrigible, not after they become criminals.
The Justice System needs to remain the same for everyone, and constantly observed to make sure it is, and on both ends poor and privileged.
But the time to break the cycle which plagues African American children is before they fail and before the street takes them and not at a damned sentencing.
The issues here are more than several and instead of creating a strawman I'm counting the complexities and saying at which stage of the cascade to crime it needs to be stopped, and after violent crime is not a time for leniency. The help needs to come while they are teacheable children.
