Guest Author – Kat Gordon – The Land Of The Free?

The Land of the Free?

As the age old saying goes, if it’s not broke don’t fix it, and that’s exactly what Montana and the rest of the states across the country intends to do, is not fix a system that isn’t broken. After all, what’s broken about anything that generates a fortune from federal funding, at the same time offering slave labor and employing so many people?

From a state’s perception and those employed by this travesty, it’s practically faultless; however, from an inmate’s perception and the families and friends of an inmate, it’s a frightening onset of national tyranny to mass incarcerate with a mission to keep all prisons at capacity.

After all, what could motivate a Montana board of pardons and parole to re-incarcerate a parolee for stopping by McDonalds while on a scheduled outing, just because it was not on the schedule? Could it be the best interest of society to put this oh so dangerous man back in prison? Or could it be just part of the rehabilitative process that’s ultimately in his best interest? Not likely since this invokes nothing but anger and more contempt by all who are affected. We are left to believe that the motivation is none other than power and control: the very definition of tyranny…

But aren’t we supposed to be The Land of the Free? Haven’t soldiers throughout history given their lives for our freedom? If we are free because of their sacrifices, why do we have the highest incarceration rate in the world? Perhaps our greatest enemy is not terrorists after all. Perhaps the greatest enemy America has ever known has slowly risen up to govern us with unjust laws and a Nazi mentality.

Clearly, if our justice system’s true and ultimate mission were to rehabilitate offenders and reduce recidivism, it would look toward solutions that didn’t involve mass incarceration and excessive punishments as well as excessive power and control over our people. So we are not only faced with the battles of dismantling a broken and corrupt system but designing a new one that does what it created to do in the first place: protect society from truly dangerous people, reprimand those who have victimized others, rehabilitate those that can be and return them back to society where they can be productive, tax paying citizens. Nothing more and nothing less…

Let us now examine a country that does just that, Norway. With an incarceration rate of approximately 73 per 100,000 people as opposed to United States’ 730 per 100,000 people with well over 2 million citizens encaged, we can learn a great deal from Norway’s philosophy and policies. In fact, Norway has been recently noted as having the “world’s nicest prison” with a recidivism rates nearly 3 times lower than that of United States. Could this be proof that compassion and protection of basic human rights is more favorable to rehabilitation and is in the best interest of our country than the iron fist is?

The nicest prison in the world is actually run without fences, hand cuffs and weapons. It houses offenders of every kind and is based on the principle that inmates are human beings too and should be treated with respect and dignity, no matter what they have done. Good behavior is rewarded and opportunity for education is always available. After all, when their sentence expires, they will be released back to society and it is better to release a well-adjusted individual than a hardened criminal.

Shouldn’t we want that too? Or have we as a society become so hardened ourselves that we can’t think beyond our desire for vengeance? What does this say about who we have become and what we have allowed our justice system to become? We must stand together and work toward change before it destroys all that is held dear and all that America is supposed to stand for, freedom…

–Kat Gordon, Progressive Thinker and American Taxpayer