Janet Musick, I appreciate all your efforts in editing the manuscript for this book. I’ve enjoyed working with you immensely. Although we didn’t actually meet until late in life, it seems our sprits have long been friends. You are a very special person. I admire your ability to see what others seem to miss and pray you never lose that gift.
I also want to thank Yolanda Ciolli and those who took the time to read this work. I am thankful to all of you for your thoughtful and inspiring insights and perspectives. Inclusion is a central theme in The Injustice of Justice, and it would have been much more difficult to accomplish this writing without your willingness to be involved and your commitment to community. Your analyses and critiques contained the honesty needed to make this work better.
And to you, Christine, I give not only my thanks, but my heart. You’re my best friend, my love, and my wife, through this life and beyond.
In Memory of:
Donald Grady, Sr.
Mary Lou Grady
Patricia Joline Grady-Lee
Donald Lenard Grady III
Preface
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Injustice is an affliction of the reasonable. Most of us would admit our criminal justice system doesn’t work exactly the way we want it to or think it should. However, we’re willing to tolerate the system’s shortcomings because it’s comfortable and familiar.
Our current system is based on an old system whose modifications have been driven predominantly by fear. American prisons are full of non-violent people who pose no significant threat to the rest of us, but we lock them away as if they do. After all, it’s entirely “reasonable” to “get the bastards off the streets,” and it’s a whole lot easier than some of the alternatives. So do we continue to warehouse non-violent, less-serious offenders with the dangerous and insidious, or do we alter our position to ensure they learn how to act and interact more appropriately so they become useful, productive members of our communities? Our safety cannot be secured through repression and incarceration, but only through the efforts of ordinary citizens with hearts of heroes. It takes an aggregate of committed people with tremendous faith, love, and wisdom. It takes people willing to accept the errant and disenfranchised, and provide them with the guidance and opportunity to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others. It takes people who are willing to give… forgive… and be forgiven.
This story is told from the perspective of a middle-aged businessman named Alan Pearson. Alan is a somewhat idealistic baby boomer whose life is centered around his family, his business, and a tight circle of friends. He hasn’t for a moment considered how completely his existence is enmeshed with the lives of those he cares about, let alone how he matters to the rest of humanity. But that’s about to change.
Alan finds himself unexpectedly caught up in the criminal justice arena and begins a quest for knowledge that, for him, turns into a drama of unimaginable consequence. He attends a presentation to better acquaint himself with the police and law enforcement. That experience starts him on a life-altering journey that changes him forever. Alan comes face to face with the American criminal justice system and the realities of contemporary policing in America.
He finds a mentor who guides him through the criminal justice labyrinth. He’s exposed to some common—but not so widely known—police practices, criminal justice ideologies, the courts, corrections and an enlightening, albeit brief, glimpse of aftercare. Alan’s experiences give him a whole new perspective regarding justice in America.
Through Alan, I’ve attempted to provoke you into thinking about important quality-of-life issues that affect you, your family, and your community. I believe every paradigm of justice should be based on building and maintaining socially healthy environments. It’s from that premise and from my perspective as a police executive that this work addresses the importance of matching police initiatives and criminal justice practices with increased social responsibility. I also allude to the part each person plays in relationship to the whole. To that end, I introduce you to the “Integrated” approach to community policing.
I developed Integrated Policing as a situational or contingency model using a natural open-system design. Integrated Policing is more than a philosophy. It’s a prescription for dealing with a community’s issues of crime and social disorder. Many of the concerns you and your family have about crime, community involvement, and police accountability are addressed in these pages.
While this story was created using imaginary characters in a fictitious setting, much of it is based on real-life issues and circumstances. The characters are not intended to portray actual people or groups, nor are the anecdotal accounts intended to identify particular organizations. The stories actually happened. Some are embellished; some are not. I intend for this document to generate thought. I want you to consider new possibilities for the future of policing and the American criminal justice system. Additionally, I want you to be safe and I want you to discover new and better ways to keep you and your family safe while creating more tranquil and humane communities.
Chapter 1
The Awakening
“If we are for long accustomed to one way of thinking, our minds grow stiff in it and we find it hard to change to another.”
—John Locke
As a senior in high school, and for a short time after I enrolled in college, I experimented with drugs. “Experiment” was a term my parents used. They knew I was smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol, but they never made it a big deal or insisted that I not hang around with people who did that kind of thing. Oh, we’d have the occasional discussion about the evils of drugs and why drinking wasn’t good for me. But then I’d remind them of the times I’d seen them smoking a joint when I was little or point out that they both still drank, and the conversation would take on that “we understand” tenor. It all seemed a bit hypocritical to me. They’d say I was going through a phase and that experimentation was a natural part of growing up. I guess they thought “experimenting” sounded better than “using” or “abusing.” You know what I mean? It made them feel as if what I was doing was somehow acceptable and okay. After all, their little Alan was merely experimenting with drugs; he wasn’t really abusing them.
Have you noticed how we do that? We tend to look for ways to soften the words we use when we don’t want to accept responsibility for doing something we know is wrong. We do the same thing when it involves people we like. Take the term “date rape,” for instance. Now, isn’t that the most absurd euphemism you’ve ever heard? And what possible reason could anyone have for creating such an insidious oxymoron in the first place?
I suppose when you know the person—or an otherwise “good kid”—who sexually assaults someone in a frat house, it really isn’t rape. It’s something less. You know, something that’s kind of… sort of… okay. The very term suggests the victim shares culpability for the act. Now think about that for a moment. Two people have dinner together. Afterward, they go to an apartment to have a couple of drinks. They end up in an argument and one of them kills the other. What would you call that, “date homicide”? I don’t think so, because no one would ever think of putting any of the responsibility for being killed on the victim. So why do we accept it in a case of rape? Trust me, the date stopped when the rape began! Call it what it
