Penal Tourism
- January 28th, 2012
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In a couple of hours I will be dropping off my wife at the county jail for a 24-hour visit. Our travails with the state began a little over a year ago when a routine traffic stop devolved into an opportunity for a smug motorcycle cop to try out his new training in detecting chemical intoxication. When I say chemical, I mean legally prescribed pharmaceuticals. My wife, not being a very good driver to begin with, and suffering from nearly crippling anxiety disorder, had a panic attack on the roadside and failed the roadside sobriety test.
After wasting a couple of thousand dollars on a lawyer, we were forced by empty pockets to abandon our fight and submit to the mandatory sentencing that our legislative overlords prescribed. This includes not only the obligatory suspension of one’s license, but thousands of dollars of punitive fines and this ridiculous junket to the now world famous “Tent City”.
Unless you are fortunate enough to live in one of the few dense urban centers of this country that have adequate public transportation, raising a family and functioning in this society is nigh to impossible without the use of 4,000 lb. hunks of metal and plastic hurtling down our millions of square miles of asphalted landscape. What to do for those who find the task of driving to be a challenge? Boo hoo for us.
Yes justice is blind. And a middle-aged housewife, school teacher and mother of two small children is as equally culpable in the eyes of the law for taking her prescriptions and driving a couple of miles to the grocery store as the inebriate at the local tavern who has gulped down a few too many and is driving with one eye closed.
It’s a one-size-fits-all approach that becomes laughable. In addition to the jail time and income redistribution, there are the mandatory alcoholism classes and the absurd requirement that we pay another few hundred dollars for an interlock device on the car to detect what? Xanax?
Meanwhile my kid brother, who actually is an alcoholic, is dying from his disease on the streets of the city. And how does he manage to get his booze? Shoplifting. He literally steals multiple quarts of liquor a day. The same state that has made drinking outside of ones home virtually illegal (without a chauffeur) makes liquor available in the checkout aisle of every Piggly Wiggly type grocery outlet in town.
It’s what Polite People want: CONTROL, and an image of Goodness Everywhere, Ozzie-and-Harriet imagery. Watch Mad Men and it begins to make sense. Bernays would be pleased to see his dream so fully realized.
Piggies are worse offenders than politicians, in my view. They have the direct oppression gig. Politicians just oppress with their words, they don’t assess BAC and issue citations and haul people off to jail in their “cruisers.”
I’m ambivalent about cops. Some of them seem OK. My wife works with one in the schools who seems to be a human being. But generally, I agree that there is a certain pathology required, in my opinion, to be a cop and it is borderline.
There are a number of good things that come out of having Ron Paul around and one of those is his condemnation of our incarceration rate and its disproportionate impact on minorities. I realize that neither of the parties have any interest in taking this issue seriously or doing anything about it, but it’s clear that our increasingly militarized police forces have been quite successful at fencing in and ghettoizing significant segments of the population. As individuals participating in that I have to agree that the police are complicit. But who sets the policies? Legislators and bureaucrats.
You’re in Arpaio’s fiefdom?
Once I’m a lawyer, I’ll probably sell my soul to chase cash. But I’ll sure want to at least kick this sort of ass on the side, pro bono.
Yes. I feel so much safer here than in any of the other states I’ve lived in. BTW, I added your blog to the blogroll today. I was planning to post some comments here on mine about what I like about it.
thank you for sharing this john .. ,many talk on issues around this ,but few say how it comes home .. /i did not even bother getting my permission to drive.. way back when.. imagining all that might come up even then , i mostly walk here .. living in a very dense inner city area, and bicycle , and trolley and underground further afield , but don’t go up north ,away ..as much as i’d like .. because that involves car pooling , and i feel a little trapped up there,or away ..in needing others to get back .. ,