In the current East Baton Rouge elections we have at least two candidates for criminal court judge who are promoting their conservative, “tough-on-crime” beliefs.
I would think that the qualities needed to be a judge of anything would be that they are politically neutral, fair-minded, judicious and well educated about the social dynamics that comprise the communities they hope to serve.
But then, those qualities are nothing like what voters want, so these candidates act as they do.
What I find interesting is that, for at least five decades in America, so-called “leaders” have been “getting tough on crime” to the point that this “Land of the Free” now has the highest percentage of its populace behind bars of any country in the world.
Yet, we still have high crime rates in many places.
After all this time, has it not occurred to anyone that perhaps crime, in general, is a symptom of a problem or problems that we’re just not dealing with?
We’ve had violence in poor African American communities for some time, and most of us know it’s because we’ve failed to address the historical issues that create it.
But now we have people turning school and library board meetings into screaming chaos, vandalizing police and governmental buildings, even storming our congressional buildings, and apparently Americans still think the answer is to put even more people in jail.
I agree that there are many things that common American citizens should be angry about and even fear, but putting people in jail or, for goodness’ sake, passing laws against drag queen shows or teaching racial history in our schools is not the answer.
I suppose the first thing we need to do is to recognize the real problems facing us.
Are there any candidates calling for that?
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