Fixing This Broken Thing...The American Criminal Justice System eBook

What war on drugs? Is our government complicit in the continued proliferation of the illegal drug trade in our nation? This supposed war on drugs has been ongoing for better than one hundred years with no apparent conclusion in sight. Perhaps we should entertain a new strategy to achieve ultimate victory in this never-ending conflict. Our criminal court system provides numerous avenues for offenders to eschew responsibility for their misdeeds. Overburdened criminal courts rely heavily upon "deal making" as the primary means to adjudicate their caseloads. And in the rare instance when a case goes to trial, the primary objective of the attorneys is to win the contest, attainment of justice be damned. The prison system has become the de facto long-term mental health facility in our country. Our recidivism rate is obscene, and we spend much more money incarcerating our youth than educating our youth. Speaking of education, the educational standards in our nation have devolved to a point where the educational achievement level of students in most of the other industrial nations far exceeds American students. And there is an irrefutable relationship between graduation rates, academic achievement, and index crime. Issues regarding the use of force by police officers still plague our country. In minority communities, the divide between law enforcement officers and the citizenry they serve is ever expanding. This book does more than illustrate the various inequities and deficiencies of our Criminal Justice System. It provides tangible solutions for such. This text shall ruffle the feathers of liberals and conservatives alike...oh darn! The sole objective of this book is to advocate for a Criminal Justice System that is effective, and that serves each of identically.