"We can have abundant life even though many wishes remain unfulfilled." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German theologian writing from prison in 1944 where he was executed by the Nazis)

To my experience on the contrary, I find that the poor and the ignorant rarely exercise their legal and constitutional rights and that the great landmark cases in which Supreme Courts have enunciated and carefully specified the rights of an accused are meaningless to most defendants who appear in court. These people do not understand their rights and frequently wave them through ignorance.

The sentence imposed on convicted criminals and those who plead guilty means the difference between freedom and prison. In a number of cases, it means the difference between life and death. Obviously, the sentence is the most “important” part of the Criminal Justice System. But it receives the least amount of consideration under the law. The law governing the sentence to be imposed is still vague, the options limited, and the purposes of criminal penalties diffuse and contradictory.

Many big businessmen and public officials have not served a day in prison for defrauding the public of millions. Trial judges are uniquely situated to observe the injustices and errors of the criminal justice system. They have an immediacy of experience to which the criminologists, philosophers, and legal scholars are exposed. Most judges are so burdened with simply getting through the day and “disposing” of the allotted quota of cases that they are usually too weary to undertake the painful examination of the justice, morality, or common sense of the sentences which they impose. A judge must be concerned with the rights of an accused and promotion of the rule of law.

It is not easy to look any human being in the eye and say, “I am placing you behind bars for life or to die, sending you to a place where you will not be able to see your spouse and family except under degrading circumstances, a place which may not be physically safe, where you may be beaten or sexually abused, where most of your time will be spent in idleness or performing boring routine tasks and where you will have no privacy, little opportunity to study, no opportunity to do meaningful work or support your family or make amends for the wrongs you have committed.”

I ask myself the question: How does one justify such an action taken in the name of the law and government?

The importance of treating people as individuals was recognised in the Bible. According to the scriptures, Satan told David to count the people of Israel and David did so. God then said to David, “You have sinned”. Many commentators have offered excuses for this passage. The one that appeals to me explains that God was angry because David “treated” people as interchangeable units rather than unique human beings.

My conclusion is that every Government should look at their laws and constitution that were made by them. Then they leave most of this work to public servants, of which most of them have no respect for human rights and dignity. They treat poor and ignorant people like individuals who are not part of society. We cannot have one law for the rational and another for the irrational.

The road leading from vengeance to justice, in the treatment of offender, is long and hard and the journey is far from over.

This poem by W.E. Hemley was taught to a friend by Nelson Mandela in Robben Island Prison. May it inspire others as it inspired me.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods there may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud

Under the bludgeoning of chance

My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gait,

How I charged with punishments the scroll,

I am a master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.