The First 48 and Justice in our Criminal Justice System

Being out of school has been a weird time for me.  Before I could let out my frustrations with our world and this society through student activism–but now all I can do is tweet about it.  Sometimes, as I sit in my warm cocoon of Northern Virginia suburbia, I feel so distanced from it all that i almost forget.  Can you imagine?  All those ECAASU workshops I organized, all those books on institutionalized racism I read, all of those lectures and panels on the prison industrial complex i’ve attended…how could I block it all out like this?

Today in an uncharacteristic move, I switched on the TV while eating lunch.  I flipped through the channels and finally settled on Criminal Minds (I’m a sucker for psychological crime shows).  Half an hour later, Criminal Minds was over and “The First 48″ came on.  Apparently, it was a “real life” account of the first 48 hours following a homicide (the most crucial window to catch a murderer) as conducted by the police.  The episode that followed was called “Shell Shocked/Cradle To The Grave.”

I had never seen the show before, so left the TV on.  Unsurprisingly, the two cases featured were from urban areas around the United States (Memphis and Miami).  Both centered around homicides involving impoverished black youth.  Both contained references to drugs/narcotic dealings.

One of the cases (“Shell Shocked”) struck me in particular.  It involved three young African American males.  Robert was involved with an altercation with his childhood friend, Buck.  And apparently, Buck’s cousin Raphael shot Robert in the commotion.  The altercation had started over an argument over the price of a little bag of marijuana.  Robert threatened to kill Buck and Raphael, and Raphael, shell shocked (he had been shot in the leg just a month earlier), panicked and pulled the trigger on Robert, unintentionally killing him.

I watched as the officers questioned a tearful Raphael, who was handsome, clearly regretful, and only nineteen.  He admitted his guilt and explained that he was shell shocked from being shot earlier, so he had panicked when Robert angrily threatened to kill him and his cousin.  In his ragged T-shirt, Raphael began to softly cry, all the while insisting that he and Robert had been long time friends, and that it had never been his intention to kill him.

My heart cried for him.  Raphael was a boy.  He was 19.  He fought over a three dollar difference for a tiny bag of marijuana because three dollars meant that much.  Because selling drugs was the way he lived.  Maybe it was all he knew.  He was born into a world, a society, a system that set him up for failure.  In his hole-punctured t-shirt, he broke down because he was scared–he didn’t want to get shot, he had gotten shot once–so he pulled the trigger out of fright at Robert’s (most likely empty) threat.

But he received 20 years in prison.  In twenty years he would be forty.  And then what?  The kid needed help.  He needed psychological, emotional, mental help.  Could we take the money in his court fees and prison fees and put it into finding him a therapist or counselor?  Put him on a different track of life?  Maybe education?

There are too many examples of similar cases, where underprivileged youth who may have so much to give, are trapped in a never-ending cycle of petty criminality and prison.  Here in this black hole, their lives become ruined and their futures sucked from them.  Then it’s just rinse and repeat.

The plot would have made this a great moral dilemma and case study for even the most basic criminal justice classes to study. I would have loved to pick this apart with my fellow students. It’s always difficult to weigh the actions of a suspect against what his background and motivations were. But as you might expect, the detectives on the case wouldn’t have any sympathy for the young man

I turned off the show after the announcer victoriously announced the 20 year prison sentence.  So the police caught the “bad guy?”

Well, it wasn’t satisfying at all.