24. September 2008 by Rev Young.

Let me continue with a few more pieces of research and information and end it with a personal testimony.  I want to take you directly to the school shooting incidents that forever changed the landscape of juvenile justice, the impact it had on us and the resulting carnage. 

In 1996 we have the first widely publicized school shooting when a young man in Springfield, Oregon shot his parents and then opened fire on class mates.  Not only did the network affiliates milk this for every rating point they could get, the cable channels picked up this news story and gave it as much as 6 hours of air time with replays of the incident and updates on the situation for several days after the event.  The result of this?  Polls indicated that parental concern over the safety of their children had risen dramatically. Then came the Columbine incident which received  much air time and the networks competing heavily for viewership so that regular programming was interrupted and special reports were inserted.  As a nation we were horrified to know that young people could be so violent.  Reporters got as close to victims and their families as they possibly could.  We viewed the trauma, fear and pain up close and we ingested it into our own lives.  We mourned with them.  Polls taken after this event, which were to determine the mind set of voters for up-coming elections, revealed that we were disturbed, disheartened and alarmed at the condition of our country and for our own safety.  This shaped the political platforms for the 2000 election year and for a few years after.  While we felt this way as a result of the bombardment of the single incidents of these troubled young people, the statistics did not support our fears.  In the 1990’s the incidence of violent street crime had dropped.  Robbery was down 17 percent, forcible rape was down 30 percent, murder was unchanged (for 20 years!).  Violent crime was actually below what it had been in the 1970’s! 

So while we were believing that were living in an increasingly violent world, because of the media experiences we were having through violent programming, the truth was…..we were safer than 20 years before.  While we believed that we could step out the door and come face to face with a  deranged person wielding a semi-automatic weapon, the truth was…..we never saw anything like that.  But we were fearful, anxious, and depressed. 

From The National Television Violence Profile Scientific Papers 1994-1995:  There is a general consensus in the scientific and public health fields that there are three primary harmful effects of viewing media violence:  1) learning aggressive attitudes and behaviors 2) Emotional desensitization toward real world violence 3) Increased fear of being victimized by violence, resulting in self-protective behaviors and mistrust of others.

Now for the personal testimony.  My son was a party to a high profile case.  The crime had been committed 3 months earlier with a few articles published in the paper concerning the mystery of these deaths.  March 8, 2001 my life was never the same.  My son was arrested that night and charged with 3 counts of first degree murder….at the age of seventeen……and the crimes supposedly happened at a time of day when I could testify giving my son an alibi.  I was terrified!  What was I going to do?  My son was arrested and charged with horrific crimes that he did not commit and I had to save him.  My body shook and trembled for hours after I returned home.  The next day was quiet.  No newspapers, only a couple of calls from reporters.  March 10th I awoke to reporters, with their filming crews, taking up residence in my back yard.  TV news trucks were surrounding my house, my phone was ringing and they were heading for my door.  I have a special needs daughter who was 16 at the time.  I had to protect her.  So I made a daring dash out the front door with her, her father and a few things thrown in a suitcase.  I hid them for a few weeks, while everything calmed down. 

In the mean time we had to appear at Jon’s arraignment hearing.  As we pulled into the parking lot at the court house we noticed the snipers on the roof with their guns trained on all who entered.  We were greeted by officers wearing flack jackets and carrying bullet proof shields and weapons to usher us inside the court house.  Television crews were on all sides with their cameras trained on the attendees as they entered the court house.  Words cannot express the terror that I felt and the terror of every member of my family that had come to show support for my son.  At the jail the officers were preparing my son for transport to the court house.  They bound his ankles with chains.  They put a bullet proof vest on him and bound his arms to his waist with chains.  The officers commented that they were going to make him look like Hannibal Lector (see “Who’s Afraid of The Kid” at Free-Jonny http://s246427087.onlinehome.us/2008/06/12/entry-2-june-12-2008/).

The next few weeks were a blur of images on television screens, newspaper articles and a relentless attack on my son…..before all evidence was in…..before he had a chance to present his case in court.  This media attack, which was done to promote ratings for television stations, tried my son before he ever went to court.  If the District Attorney found that there was not just cause to try my son for the crimes he was charged, he had no recourse, unless he was willing to publicly state that he was wrong.  Because of this, I believe that it would have been impossible for my son to ever walk away with any justice.  If you do not want to believe this then I ask you to research the case of Tim Masters.  He was charged for a crime that he did not commit.  Despite the fact that DNA evidence proved he was not the perpetrator, the DA’s office refused him a new trial.  Why?  Because someone would have to admit they were wrong, after a very public prosecution.  Only after public outcry was justice granted.

The power of media sways our opinion and causes us to believe or perceive things that are not true.  The cost?  Freedom, truth and justice.  You may want to pacify yourself with the belief that this was an isolated incident.  I assure you that you are wrong.  Story after story has been told to me by mothers who experienced the same thing I did. 

The effects on our laws concerning juvenile crime significantly changed following the tragedies at Springfield and Columbine.  Every juvenile that committed a crime was viewed as a monster.  We treated them as monsters with exaggerated charges, exaggerated sentences and adult prison facilities.  We forgot about rehabilitation, restoration, transformation. 

Now……turn off your TV, ask questions, walk out the door and view the world as it really is, make rational educated decisions.  Stop the buy-in to media sensationalism, violent programming and ask for truth.

The carnage?  Bulging prisons with unprecedented prison growth.  Corrections budgets that swallow up funding for education and social services.  A generation lost to a hopeless world behind bars.  The opportunity for a life.  The opportunity for grandchildren.  My son.

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10. September 2008 by Rev Young.

I turned my television off a long time ago.  Yes I watch PBS occasionally or I will watch “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” but I do not watch television.  Why?  Because I do not want to view all of the violence and drama. 

Everyday the television programing revolves around sex, violence and dysfunctional relationships.  Studies have shown that people who watch more than 3 hours of television per day are depressed, anxious and have elevated stress levels as indicated by physical changes in their bodies.  The other danger from this is that you come to believe that is the reality of the world you live in.

Behavioral scientists know that if you view something or are told something repeatedly, you begin to believe it…..whether or not it is true.  For example:  If a newscaster stands in front of you every night for a week, showing you the same images of a crime scene, uses words like “war zone” or “devastating”to describe the scene and along with the title “Violence in Our Streets”; you will believe that we have violent streets.  You will become anxious, fearful and hope that someone does something to make your streets safe again. 

This one incident, played over and over in front of you, causes you to believe that you live in a violent society.  Even though it was one incident, with one victim, suddenly your perception of your whole world changes because your mind has been overloaded with the images of the crime.  And we do this to ourselves night after night. 

If you don’t believe that this has any effect on you think about this, it is no different than the psychology that advertisers use to promote their products and ultimately get you to buy.  They put images of a beautiful car in front of you, you jump in and drive…right past the traffic jam, right past the office and out onto the open road with the stereo blasting and a look of confident control on your face.  After seeing this several times, you begin to fantasize about taking a day and hitting the road.  You become dissatisfied with your car, your job, your life.  This causes you to look for a way to buy a new car which, hopefully, will change your life.  Don’t laugh.  We all have our buttons.  The advertisers know this.  For some it is cars, others it is electronic equipment and others it is shoes or handbags.  We run out and buy these things, believing that we need them and it will make our lives better.  Then we can’t figure out why we are still depressed.

Turn off the TV!  TURN OFF THE TV!  Stop buying into the make believe world portrayed on the television and go outside, experience it for yourself.  Read a book, talk to your kids or your spouse, mow the yard, paint but turn off the TV.  If you do this for 2 weeks, I assure you, you will see a difference in yourself……and a difference the next time you turn on the television.  You won’t find the television programing as entertaining as you did previously. 

The worst part?  We give politicians and other authorities the right to change laws and make decisions based on the unreal world they feed us through media.  We don’t question it, we don’t research it, we don’t make them prove their point or justify their plans.  We say to them “Just Do It”. 

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9. September 2008 by Rev Young.

I have been tugging at the string of the prison population explosion for about 6 years, trying to unravel the cause of the mass incarceration happening in our nation.  With all of the articles, books, reports and information I have poured over, I really couldn’t tell you what started this mess, which poses a problem.  I am the type of person that likes to start at the beginning and progress through a series of reasonable events or circumstances and come to the conclusion.  This is always very helpful when problem solving.  You can find the underlying cause, change it and set a new course.

What I have found is there are several cogs in this wheel and the momentum has grown so much that it has blurred the causes together…..making them dependent upon each other.  Let me give you an example.  For the most part, we assume that a substantial rise in prison population is the direct result in a significant rise in crime.  According to the statistics on crime that I have found, this is not the case.  So what changed?  The laws in our country have changed to put heftier punishments on criminal acts.  We punish even the smallest infractions with prison sentences, we have lengthy mandatory sentences that keep people behind bars reducing the turnover rate of beds; we have eliminated drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs and declared war on these addictions; we have sentences for repeat offenders that require they receive 3 times the mandatory sentence for any crime or parole infraction; and so legislatively we have created a monster.  Why?  As previously stated it is not a rise in the crime rate.  We have declared war on our youth giving our youth prison sentences in adult facilities instead of rehabilitation or incarceration in juvenile facilities.  Why?  Once again our crime rate has not gone up. 

Yet if you address any segment or “cog” in this wheel, they will all point to the other as the reason for their actions.  New laws were made as a result of crime.  New prisons were built because of crime.  Additions to the police force were made because of crime.  But crime is not up!

I am afraid the answer starts with us, our perception, our gullible nature and the development of a huge new industry. So enter two more cogs in the wheel, media and the profit that can be made off of the prison industry.  Let’s start with the media. 

“While poll results indicate that feelings about crime and punishment are more complex than is commonly understood, such complexity is only rarely translated into media coverage.  Although crime frequently soars to the top of the nation’s list of major problems, those who follow public opinion have concluded that it is driven more by the media’s treatment of crime than by changes in crime rates” -National Criminal Justice Commission, 1995

We have become a nation that feeds on violence, crime and dysfunction.  It sells well, it grabs our attention and those who are looking to place marketing dollars look for those networks or programs that draw big audiences.  So we watch our L.A. Law or Police Story and the advertisers spend their dollars on that time slot.  They show us glimpses of sensational action, death, intrigue and we rearrange our schedule so that we can watch the program.  The same holds true for news.  News stations look for the sensational and controversial story, they run leaders for it on their “news updates” and hope that you will stay tuned to watch the report later.  If they find a story that captures the attention of a large viewing audience, the news team will find 10 different ways to tell you the story and maybe add some new pictures of the victims or other family members. 

I remember being horrified the first time I saw a news team push their way into the private pain of someone who just lost a family member.  I also remember feeling just as appalled as I watched when someone was arrested and thrown into a police car.  What gave these people the right to invade someone else’s personal life?  Although it was invasive and impersonal, we ate it up and news teams began to do it more and more.  From the response they got from the news programs, television producers began to wonder if we would be as entertained by all candid events where someone was put on the spot.  From this came the birth of reality television. 

Now remember that they are selling you a product.  They want you to watch a particular news channel and they are going to do whatever it takes to make their news story the most eye catching and alarming……even at the cost of the truth.  Then the network will play it over and over again to get every viewer minute they can milk out of the story.  All the while getting you to believe, that it is a violent, scary world out there……while you sit in your recliner……never looking out your front door to see the truth.

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5. September 2008 by Rev Young.

I am starting another series of posts that addresses prison growth, the profits in prisons, the laws that made this possible and the authority given to government officials to create these machines of destruction.  There have been many articles, periodicals and books written on this subject.  Unfortunately the only people who have read these books are those who are involved in trying to change the system or those college students that are studying law and social issues. 

That is how I learned about the two books that I will be referencing.  College students that were attending Colorado College were given “The Perpetual Prisoner Machine” by Joel Dyer and “Prison Nation”, which has many contributors that were edited by Tara Herivel and Paul Wright ; as reading and source material for their Sociology class.  When those books first came into my home, I walked around them as they lay on the coffee table.  Eventually I put them on the book shelf, vowing to sit and read them “some day”.  The pain and impact of inviolate acts in courtrooms and the stark reality of steel bars and razor wire were to fresh and painful.  I was not ready to face the truth that would be revealed on those pages.  I was not ready to deal with the reality of my sons life.

The truth?  Prison is the pit of evil.  The corruption and inhumane decisions that put people in prison are nothing compared to the reality of the daily violence endured behind those walls.  I could not and did not want to imagine the treatment, threats, conditions, food, medical care or sleeping quarters that were his life.   However,  I firmly believe that you have two choices.  You can either be part of the problem or part of the solution.  So I read the books. 

As I began reading the pages that dispelled the myths of crime and incarceration I became very cold.  I wrapped myself in a blanket to bring comfort to my body but I continued to shake.  The truths that were reported on those pages caused me to realize how deeply we had sunk into our humanist, materialistic, self-righteous mode of thinking.  I began to see how easily we were spoon fed information, entertained with filth and violence, and led astray by those who had found a way to profit from misfortune, poverty, addiction and warehousing our juvenile offenders in adult prison facilities.   I saw how perverse we were as we willingly sold our honor for power and position. 

By the time I had finished reading those two books and researching articles and organizations that intended to educate the public, I was sick to my stomach.  And inside my head the same questions kept resounding……..who are the real criminals?  Who is really violating the American people? 

Join me as I reveal the resources, statistics and truths about the growth of America’s prisons.  I warn you……it is not pretty……it will appall you……..it will leave you cold.

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