Bringing criminal justice to the forefront of the human rights debate
Oftentimes, it seems to me that criminal justice reform falls to the wayside in light of many more seemingly pressing issues, even within the broader human rights community. People tend to look down on criminal justice reform, wondering why resources need to be spent on assisting those who are accused of crimes, when they would be much better spent on the rest of the population that is clearly not guilty. Why should we help people who are criminals anyway?
Sure, I understand this logic and to an extent I would even agree with it. However, in the U.S., far too much money is spent on the criminal justice system. Harsh sentences and prison time are given to those who often have committed nonviolent offenses (e.g. drug dealing) and there are mandatory minimum sentences, which give judges little discretion to adjust or reduce the sentences given for particular crimes - leading to increased years in prison where it is unnecessary. By putting drug offenders in jail and increasing the time in jail for the accused more generally, the government is stretching its justice system to the limits. As more people go to prison for longer periods of time, maintaining this system becomes increasingly expensive and a drain on state resources. By reforming the criminal justice sector, we are helping free up more money and resources for the other sectors - less money spent on the justice system leads to more state resources for education and healthcare. This is just one reason we should care.
Though the justice system in the U.S. is incredibly flawed, I’m even more surprised about the minimal attention given to the failed justice sectors in many developing countries. In much of the developing world, injustices caused by the criminal justice sector are far greater than those in the U.S. Take Zimbabwe, a primary example of the horrid prison conditions for inmates in developing countries. Reports suggest that inmates in Zimbabwe’s prisons are literally starving to death, while sick and healthy prisoners are living together in overcrowded cells.
“There are people there who look worse than the photographs of prisoners in [Nazi concentration camps] Dachau and Auschwitz,” - Roy Bennett, Imprisoned MDC politician, speaking on release in March
If you remain unconvinced, you might argue: well, even if the prison conditions are bad, they are still criminals. Why should a developing country, with even more limited resources than the U.S., work on fixing the justice system when the regular population is itself poor? To this I say - in many countries, it’s not just the horrible conditions of the prisons themselves that is a problem, but the lack of an entire legal infrastructure. This means that in many countries, you could easily be accused of a crime you did not commit, and then thrown into jail without being guaranteed a lawyer or a fair trial; you could languish in jail for years in pre-trial detention and be tortured by the police to divulge information that you may not even have. In Rwanda, for instance, more than 80% of defendants remain unrepresented and without access to a lawyer. Thus, we see that in many developing countries, oftentimes those who are languishing in prison are not the truly guilty - they are many times poor and marginalized, unfairly accused and without access to legal advice, and so deserve as much attention as the average person who has not been accused.
Shocking as this is, what’s more shocking is that there are situations like this in many developing countries. And what’s even more shocking is that the media and even the international human rights community pay little attention to criminal justice reform in developing countries. To be honest, I’m extremely disappointed in the Change.org criminal justice blog because it focuses for the most part on the American justice system, and rarely alludes to the rest of the world, where conditions are often even worse! Change.org is a popular destination and the criminal justice blog is perfectly poised to inform its readers of the failures of criminal justice worldwide - but unfortunately doesn’t fulfill this by choosing to focus narrowly on the U.S. There is so much to be said that isn’t.
Ultimately, I hope people begin to understand the role of criminal justice reform within the broader human rights movement, and I hope that this begins happening soon. The justice sector is in great need of assistance, and though it may not be a “sexy” issue, it is no less important than detainment of journalists and political prisoners, conflict, or even poverty.
Picture credit: rayphua on flickr
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