There seems to be a misapprehension about laws, that somehow they tell citizens how to live. This is inaccurate, in that laws only tell us what is prohibited. In fact, a great many laws are reactions to terrible injuries and exploitation. Child labor, environmental pollution,workplace safety, manufacturing practices, and financial regulations are all examples of laws that were enacted in order to prevent harms that were being done to the people and lands of various countries. It was not that governments were interested in curtailing business, but that there was such outrage at the deaths related to these business practices that governments no longer had a choice but to pass laws to protect the health and safety of citizens. The truth of this legal history is not the issue at hand. This is all to establish the basis for the objective of this post: that a focus on the negative leads to negativity. Since all laws are prohibitive (that is, they prohibit an activity) - they are negatively focused. Additionally, they are punitive or retributive; the consequence of being found guilty of breaking a law is always punishment. This is because there is no prescription for rehabilitation in a law-remember, laws do not tell anyone what to do-it only says what harm may be leveled against the 'criminal'. This negativity, aside from being demeaning, also sets the entire mindset around law and legality in a negative framework. This means every time I think about the subject, I think about it as a negative.
This relates to the idea of "pessimism", whereby all one sees is the negative or harmful possible outcomes of choices. Instead of recognizing, accepting, and weighing possibilities in a neutral way, the entirety of the process becomes increasingly focused on negatives. Negative reinforcement can be especially impactful when combined with an absolutist and/or "inherently bad" belief system. Someone who believes in absolutes is one who does not believe in extenuating circumstances or 'shades of grey'; these are folks who can only conceive of two possibilities in any situation. One can recognize these individuals by the expressions "like it or lump it", "there's only one way to do something: the right way", and "my way or the highway". The second mindset holds the belief that all people, or certain groups of people (here we can recognize racism or other prejudices), have an initial or inborn 'badness' to overcome...if they believe it possible to change at all. These beliefs combined with the initial assertion of the negativity involved in the "criminal justice system" lead to a greater problem than any of them individually.
Which leads to the conclusion that we are really talking about psychology, not least of which because every person involved in the legal system is a human. Every human is subject to the same psychological issues: biases, stresses, prejudices, and fatigue. Supposing humans somehow become immune to these realities once they enter the legal system is absurd, yet folks seem to act as if that were the case. In the legal system, these psychological factors have tremendous impacts on individuals and society. There are many studies that demonstrate how "priming" participants can lead to fewer options and less desirable outcomes. This is part of the reason defendants are allowed to change out of jail/prison clothes to appear in court: the sight of a person dressed as a 'criminal' primes the viewer (judge or jury) to see guilt, rather than maintaining the presumption of innocence. However, not all factors can be alleviated, thus allowing the psychology of those deciding a legal case to be swayed. Looking at the incarceration of persons of color in the U.S. is a striking example of a series of such psychological impacts. I speak not only of the attorneys, police, judges, and juries-of course these include also the individual suspected or convicted of crime and the communities. Here I may be accused of drifting into a spiritual arena, by including the psychological toll of having a prison or jail in a county, or of the family's grief over the conviction (rightly or wrongly) of one of their own. However, I intend to point out only that there is a psychological impact; this is factual, observable, and-possibly-measurable.
It is this negative psychological toll that I had in mind starting this post. It seems sadly lacking in the discourse of reform around "criminal justice" in the popular narrative of dominant culture. It has seemed absurd to ignore all these obvious components when talking about how to understand such an historically rooted system, let alone how to improve it.
Posts
