EDITOR’S NOTE: Listen to the complete story and learn a lot more about this topic on my Politics and Prejudices podcast, available now on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and available with video on YouTube and Lessenberryink.com.
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Freeing Women Who Don’t Belong In Jail
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I’m not starry-eyed about people who are in prison. Some of them, women as well as men, have done very bad things. Regardless of how you feel about punishment, some need to be incarcerated, either in prison or in a proper mental institution, for the protection of society.
But many of them don’t. After reading about some of the Michigan Women’s Clemency Project cases over the years, I am convinced that many of these women received nothing resembling fair treatment during their trials, and either should never have been locked up or got overly harsh sentences.
Some were very young women – girls, really – who were pushed – brainwashed, you might say – into committing crimes or being accessories to crimes by older and abusive partners and boyfriends. Some were just there when murders happened and somehow got convicted of them.
Some had very little idea how the legal process worked. Yes, many of them made bad choices, in relationships, in life. But who of us hasn’t?
Who knows where we would be had we been in the wrong place at the wrong time? But there has been very little justice for those who are in prison because of these legal miscarriages of justice.
Politicians have to appear tough on crime, or at least think they do. Governors can commute sentences or issue pardons, but doing so is extremely politically risky. Historically, the only time they can be induced to show some mercy to the state’s forgotten is in the last few weeks of their final terms.
And they don’t even commute many sentences then.
Not even those of women, like Anita Posey, who shot their abuser to prevent them from killing their babies and themselves.
Fortunately, there are few selfless and courageous people like Carol Jacobsen who are out there fighting for the mostly forgotten, trying to get them justice too. Sometimes they succeed, against the odds.
They need help and support, but they need something more. Our laws about what constitutes self-defense should be revised to provide more protection for battered women. Police forces and prosecutors should be better trained to recognize the signs and the nature of domestic violence.
Judges and parole boards need to be better equipped to understand the effects of domestic violence as well. We need a lot more understanding. Someone once said that we couldn’t decide whether our prisons should punish or rehabilitate, so we have come up with a system that does neither.
It’s time for us to grow up as a civilized society. We finally did get rid of the barbaric practice of sentencing minors to life in prison without any chance of parole. It’s time we stopped sentencing domestic victims to life as well.
This is Jack Lessenberry. Thanks for watching and listening today, and see you next time.
