Justice for none...

I am sorry to the victims for re-telling their nightmarish 1996 story in the Sept. 11 Leader. I understand that recounting a crime often re-victimizes the victim. If given another chance, I would have told your story without your names to protect you from additional pain.

Here’s why I did it:

In order to make the editorial point that the legal system fails to provide justice to throngs of victims, I first needed to illustrate the brutality of why they are convicted.

When it is the goal of the Montana Department of Corrections to place 80 percent of all convicts in facilities whose success is dependent on a convict’s changed heart, the result is often one victim’s abuser placed on public streets to cause criminal harm to someone else.

Innocent people, whose lives are changed by Lake County’s  drug-crazed, mentally-ill or furious criminals, often never regain the sense of safety they felt before the crime.

Yet convicts in Montana ‘earn’ parole, probation, the right to vote and often showcase their attitude of invisibility because if they are caught, nothing really happens.

Criminals appear to be rewarded by a legal system that cannot keep up with offenders, doesn’t have enough facilities to hold them and, doesn’t have the sentencing tools to stop them from re-committing crimes.

Reason would suggest that if a criminal had any regret or remorse for the brutality of his deeds, he would stop.

Instead the criminal mind, in too many cases, learns how to evade the system; waste time and money; commit repeated crime without much more than the inconvenience of showing up at court so a judge can convict them, then suspend their jail time.

Every week the Leader publishes a list of people who are in jail or in court for parole violations and warrant arrests.

Every name with ‘warrant’ or ‘parole violation’ scarred someone before, went to court, was convicted, sentenced, and did not serve their full jail sentences.

Why bring up an old story from 1996? Because two of the three felons in the story on Sept. 11 served only a fraction of their sentence behind actual bars; were released into the community and committed more crimes or violated their parole. Those two criminals did not have a record before the first criminal, who was released in an early exit program at the beginning of his criminal life, and then later escaped from jail, influenced them, according to available court records at press time.

And yet, their victims relive their nightmare every time the subject comes up.

So who is to blame?

Don’t blame Lake County cops: They are forced to meet the burden of the legal system before they even consider an arrest, which leaves the perpetrator on the street, committing crime until authorities gather enough usable evidence to stop them. How many additional drug addicts can those criminals create while flaunting their illegal behavior?

Don’t blame the Lake County or Montana state jail system: Lake County law enforcement hauls suspected criminals to jail on a regular basis. But suspected criminals and cops both know that most offenders are going to get “conditional release” because there is no room to house them.

What suspect or convict would be scared of getting a ride to jail and sitting around a few hours while the paperwork is processed by someone else?

In Lake County, a high percentage of criminals don’t show up for court appointments. They often disappear.

Don’t blame Lake County attorneys: The requirements attorneys must face in order to suspend another American’s right to freedom is a massive maze of frustration, waiting, and bottle-necked cases.

Don’t blame the Lake County judge: Even if they sentenced every person to behind-bars jail time, there is no place to put them.

So who is to blame?

Maybe it’s you and me.

In my opinion, several eras of the “I’m okay, You’re okay” philosophy brainwashed and confused the American definition of right and wrong so severely that at least two generations, and possible more are without the character to determine their enemy.

Americans in Lake County and elsewhere, live with a washed-down mindset, a pre-approved vocabulary and the inability to draw the line between right and wrong.

So how do we change the problem?

Some say we need to invest more money into drug treatment facilities; that treating the criminal mind will rehabilitate it.

But the basic instinct of man is his own “will.” No treatment program will work if the patient does not want it to.

Some say our society needs to cut the diseased branch off the proverbial tree and re-teach its new branches how to live an acceptable life.

Some have told me we need more jails to lock everyone up for good; a tourniquet on the problem; stop the flow and prevent future criminals.

Maybe none of those things are true. Maybe all are.

An attorney friend said the ultimate answer to this problem and other legal issues lays in the hands of citizens, who get police protection they pay for with tax dollars.

He has a point. Can you imagine the astronomical amount of money criminals waste in the legal system?

On one hand, this merry-go-round keeps scads of good, productive employees in the community to process crime. On the other hand, the idea offering victims real healing is questionable....and justice for none in Lake County?