6 Jun 2013

Theft, Cruelty to Animals

by admin | posted in: Luxury To Forget, No Record | 0

I have two.

Since I was in high school I’ve been stealing books from Barnes & Noble. If I’m having a shitty day, I just go to Barnes & Noble and take a book. It doesn’t have to be a book I’m all that interested in. It has something to do with corporate giants and how small I feel, I think.

The other one was when I was much younger. My mom had put a bird feeder too close to the house and we got a pretty bad mice infestation. My dad bought all of these humane traps (he’s a veterinarian) to deal with it.

One day, my sister and I got a mouse out of the trap and dumped it into a bucket of water. It swam for about a half an hour and then it just gave up. My sister and I watched the whole ordeal.

That’s always weirdly haunted me.

Parallel Story:

He was accused of shoplifting $20 worth of items from an office supply store. He was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor theft–along with a $500 fine. His inability to pay the fine landed him in jail, and he couldn’t keep his job or meet his rent behind bars.

A Prison Policy Initiative’s report finds that while 636,000 people leave prison each year, at least 9 million cycle through jail. What’s more, the Vera Institute of Justice notes that three out of five people in jail are legally presumed innocent and simply too poor to post even low bail. Even a short stay, the report explains, is more than an inconvenience:

“Just a few days in jail can increase the likelihood of a sentence of incarceration and the harshness of that sentence, reduce economic viability, promote future criminal behavior, and worsen the health of those who enter—making jail a gateway to deeper and more lasting involvement in the criminal justice system at considerable costs to the people involved and to society at large.”

Many people, unable to post bail, plead guilty in exchange for time served. Essentially, say you did it and you can go home—with probation and a record. As Vichal Kumar, with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem says, “Not only does this offend basic norms of human rights and personal dignity, it cuts against the spirit of fairness and equality under the law.” For millions, this means going to court is little more than a costly charade, a performance where the protagonist doesn’t understand the plot, is given few lines to utter, and little agency to improvise or question.