Justice - Crime, Criminals And The System (1977)

foreign [Music] I used to spend a lot of time here family picnics on the fourth of July watching the kids play ball walking the dog not anymore especially at night you know two teenagers were murdered here last year right here then there's those drug and sex parties you read about them all the time I don't know how many uh rapes robberies muggings you know it's just not safe anymore for your ordinary citizen hey B by the way your ordinary citizen you know the the man on the street the average Joe John cute public the guy nobody listens to anymore what the history books call the common man yeah yeah that's me the common man I speak for all of you oh I know I know that takes in a lot of territory but somebody has to huh you can't trust the higher-ups to do it for you okay I'm the wrong sex the wrong color the wrong age hey but we're all human aren't we I mean we could share that I'll tell you something else we all share if we're scared we're scared of each other I'm afraid of my neighbors and the things that neighbors say I know what time I come home and they know when I am away I'll bet they know my income and how my money is spent and I know that you can't trust no one in there no difference [Music] Man's first fear is his fear of War is second fear is his fear of crime one-third of the American people are afraid to walk out at night alone in their own neighborhoods seventy percent of the American people feel that Law and Order is broken down and yet only one half of the crimes that are committed are reported to the police and of those 20 percent result in an arrest and of those only 20 percent result in a conviction on the charges where are you Thomas Jefferson now that we need you you brought forth a plan to punish the guilty and protect the rights of the innocent and you called it a system for criminal justice in a free Society laughs would you recognize it if you saw it now on the other hand not even citizen Jefferson could have envisioned the society as Criminal Justice System would eventually be serving a society of over 200 million people 86 million in automobiles a television set in every home percent of the people in this country crowded into the cities 12 living in poverty seven percent working for their own government and the society that has recently come down with a bad case of the shakes no if citizen Jefferson were here he'd probably tell us common men to take a good look at his system and maybe even to take a good hard look at ourselves it's a good idea let us begin this is where my car used to be first it was the hubcaps and then the whole thing I even got a witness but he won't talk he says he doesn't want to get involved but it's really because he's afraid of what will happen to him if he does the cops they're not too busy handing out tickets or giving those young punks a slap on the wrist you know you don't see them around here protecting people's property no no no no that doesn't happen I even have to walk my wife home every night from the bus stop because she's scared to walk home by herself and I'm paying those guys salaries you see this uniform that's a law brother and I respect that even if some people don't there ain't enough of us to go around we're supposed to protect people from rape robbery muggings reckless driving we're also supposed to break up family arguments take care of drunks stop drugs rescue cats handle parades and traffic close down dirty bookstores and be Johnny on the spot when somebody calls oh yeah and you better be looking the other way when it's Mr Big Shots hey what do you want from me huh we got the Law and Order people on one side the do-gooders on the other you're damned if you do you're damned if you don't listen I put my life on the line every day from the minute I hit the street all right all right now look I don't mind that if it means I could stop some 12 year old kid from getting into trouble or maybe stop some store keeper from getting ripped off but look I'm human too how do you think I feel when some guy I caught in the act gets off when some sharp lawyer gets a hold of him huh look all I could do is catch him somebody else is supposed to make sure they're punished people expect me to be some kind of Perry Mason and what I am is an advocate my responsibility is to make sure my client gets everything he's entitled to under the law that's his constitutional right and if you're ever in court believe me you're going to want everything you've got coming now that means postponing your trial if we need more time to prepare your case find our Witnesses or if the prosecutors Witnesses aren't very patient that means selecting jurors who are most likely to be sympathetic to your case it also means bargaining for leniency or a reduced charge if you're guilty and you want to know something if it weren't for plea bargaining if every guilty client stood trial the whole system would collapse under its own weight in about two months that's the way it is ask any judge my job is to preside over criminal proceedings interpret the law and impose a just sentence on the guilty that's what I'm sitting on this bench for sometimes I feel like I'm presiding over a traffic jam the police send me people who don't really belong here the defense attorney and the prosecutor look on me as some kind of a negotiable item in a bargaining session in the public look expects me to protect them by putting away every law breaker in prison for as long as possible until one of them is accused of a crime everyone complains about continuances but how can I possibly handle over a hundred hearings a day if I don't rely on the lawyer's recommendations we need more help more support what we don't need are more people in this court hey will somebody tell me what's going on I've been in here for five weeks now I got a wife and family what's gonna happen to them what's gonna happen to my job look all I want is a trial I want a chance to tell my side of the story to a judge and I can't get to see him I'm sitting in here like some common ordinary Criminal Just because I picked a fight with a guy in a bar and I can't get to talk to the judge I can't pay a lawyer I can't even raise my bail oh yeah yeah the guys in here keep telling me that the longer I wait the better it is better for the lawyer Maybe somebody tell me what's going on huh please people call this place a school for crime I also hear a lot of talk about prison reform and wasting the taxpayers money because so many of the inmates are repeaters well what do they expect how many of those people would be willing to give an ex-con a job how many of them would be willing to help him get a new start in life better yet how many of them would be willing to support extra money for new prisons this place is over a hundred years old no no they just want to put the criminal away so they don't have to think about it but we simply don't have room for everybody who commits a crime and we'd be a lot better off if we started thinking about things like what really is a crime and who's really dangerous to society but nobody wants to think about that either what is a crime who is a criminal how do we know they seem simple enough questions where have you been where were you I was working late [Music] [Music] you never do a damn thing around here the garbage can have maggots in it before it gets out with you I'm talking to you people do not live like this pigs live like this you cannot hold a job you're a real man would you like something to eat soak a little of the liquor up did you hear me how much money have you got in your pocket because they're turning the phone off I need 30 dollars answer me I need it by tomorrow you got 30 dollars I said do you have thirty dollars or making me crazy and nuts and I you are filth let's sit sit and sit and you can't even work you're not even good for that I hate you you're good for nothing you don't even make any money sit there like a like a passive leave me alone just leave me alone leave me alone I'm not gonna leave you alone I hate you I want you out I want you gone all right you are filled do you hear me I hate you what are you doing [Applause] [Music] oh my God item the risk of being attacked by a stranger on the street is far less than commonly believed the FBI estimates that in two-thirds of violent crime cases the criminal and the victim know each other very often they are members of the same family uh it seems to me right now our system should be asking itself and we the people who are the fundamental uh part of the system have got to ask ourselves whether or not we want to redefine the substance of criminal law now the criminal law is really a way in which people who are in power can exercise penal sanctions against those they don't like and that means when I'm in power and I'm in power just as other people of my background and my race and my economic class are in power there are certain things we don't like so we make that a violation of the criminal law if people do those things and then we command police officers and prosecutors to to prosecute and to try to put in jail people to violate those particular laws that we don't like even though some of those laws may not hurt anyone there's been a tradition in America to uh think that the criminal law can control self-injurious and moralistic behavior of drinking gambling sexual excesses and consensual proclivity they're generally things which are wicked or fattening or immoral of it but this Reliance has not been matched by any success in controlling those types of behavior the effect has been to overload the system pressed towards giving the police the job of enforcing the unenforceable to create crime to fund organized crime and it's been a distraction and a false priority [Applause] good word oh nothing much nothing much going on it's getting big I got a TV dinner in here it doesn't look like a TV dinner some cheesy dinner it looks pretty nice it's really clear how much you're going for 25. how many shots now about five five for 25. yeah that's steep is any good oh this is really good I got some papers Let's Twist oh man that's all right it's already just oh look he comes all prepared I have a light there you go third that's really good stuff man it's Colombian well we'll see I'll get them both smells pretty good [Music] it's good item one half of all arrests in this country off of victimless crimes crimes which do not involve violence or loss of property and we put too many of our resources it seems to me into the victimless crime and too little intelligence into the other two types last year in the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of this County there were 17 judges assigned to the trial of major criminal cases one chief judge and 16 trial judges and last year there were a total of 891 major criminal indictments that were pending in this court and a simple mathematical computation will tell you that no 17 judges can try that number of cases within any reasonable time period [Music] foreign item Street crime in America is essentially an urban crime committed by boys and young men most of the victims are those who can afford at least the poor and the black we have decided in a whole series of periods of time what it is we will call criminal now if we want to say that street crime is the type of the the uh the basic category of criminal law then we will get people who commit Street crime injure institutions and into our system what about equality more people with one type or another or another type end up in prisons or end up being every country in the world the underclassed disproportionately is represented the poor the minorities uh why is that well first of all of course they commit more crime which a very powerful reason secondly the criminal justice system as we built it in our cities is a racially and class discriminatory system it's not only that it sits upon inequity but it exaggerates the inequity one only has to uh attend one of our penal institutions to find out the color of skin is very different between those who are doing the guardian and those who are guarded so I suppose we could conclude uh from a very brief survey of the criminal justice system and say that minorities and poor people are overrepresented uh I don't have any statistics to back it up I rather imagine and I have reason to believe since I do live in a black community that police officers in a black community have a tendency to call and to uh act uh with a faster in a stress situation than they do in a white community in other words they call it closer in a black community than they do in the white communities I've seen in our courts and to use one example that I think is an outrageous example and that thankfully is not not the rule I've seen people sent to jail for going to a grocery store and swiping an 87 Cent package of baloney and explaining to a judge that they did it because their brothers and sisters were hungry we will never have in any system of law total equality because people who enter it are not totally equal and the theory at least is that rational decisions will come out of discussions between diverse pressure groups and interest groups in the community I think from my perspective there is a lack of integrated planning for an efficient criminal law and of course efficient and decent and of the two I would put the decency above the efficiency well I think you know in the face of all the political corruption that's uh you know we're dealing with today and not only at the national level but certainly at the local level uh the fact of life is that money will always corrupt political power I feel that my role in the system is basically to oppose governmental overreaching or in other words to be a constant source of irritation a constant blockage a constant wall a constant barrier against those who seek to use governmental power to deprive individual people of their Liberty and it is not only organized crime that is corrupting the governments and people in official positions it is basic businessman item the United States Chamber of Commerce estimates the cost of business related or white-collar crime at upwards of 40 billion dollars annually this figure does not include the cost of price fixing are you babe finder how you doing great you look absolutely relaxed oh God I'm just thinking how unrelaxed I'm going to be when the kids get here do you want something to eat before they come yeah yeah no no I'll wait for them I'll take a wait for them I like to eat with the kids I got some most beef some salami would you barbecue some hot dogs oh God do I have to do that yeah won't you do it I'm so lazy today I really don't feel like doing anything no I'll give you that that nice apron I watch it for Father's Day God you gotta save Grandfather's Day oh my God yeah it's incredible isn't it anyone know something for a grandma you look pretty terrific because I work at it got a good husband takes good care of me you better item in one state alone the bill for all government purchases dropped an estimated 40 percent after the discovery and prosecution of businessmen and government officials for bribery and kickbacks see ya put it back on we'll use this part of your face oh you're too smart for me you're just too smart but here's the deal it's two hundred thousand the bid five thou under the table ahead listen you got a gift to get business is business [Music] big girl big girl here's my little girl oh yeah we have to recognize the fact that it will always be extremely difficult to reach people who are protected by power and I think what our system has got to do has got to pay attention to the people who are coming from the Grassroots level saying we want accountability from the system and we want an open system that is accountable goes from the garden here yeah do you remember the plant black flowers remember the plastic flowers that your grandmother used to have remember that right she used to spray them with that that room deodorizer to make them seem real I remember that I only remember those if I remember her for anything it will be for the plastic flowers this is going to be during the course of this program you've witnessed four crimes one cost of human life one cost fear and suffering one costs a moral discomfort and one will keep costing for the higher price or a higher tax bill but most of all with another reason to distrust each other and our system of justice for all which of these crimes is most dangerous to society how should we allocate our resources to deal with them where would you put the priorities until the common man asks himself these questions there can be no answers for the reform of our non-system criminal justice system [Music] I'm afraid of the power that I hold in The Firm I'm afraid of all the bribery so difficult to spurn but when I plead my case in court I'll be so penitent and I know that when the judge gives a vertical treat me lenient [Music]