Their primary social function is to strike fear in hearts of society at large. If you don't eat your spinach, you will end up in prison. If you don't obey every rule professional rule makers invent, day in, day out, you will go to prison. Making punishments fit crimes is beyond creative powers of bureaucracy. Instead, they choose humiliation and degradation of caging and totally controlling life of a lawbreaker. To a lesser extent, they do same to all who care about him. They discourage telephone communication, meaningful financial support and visitation. Inside prison walls they heap punishment upon punishment, because simply caging people is too good for them, no matter what crime.

While we are at it, we ought to take a look at crime itself and reasons for its increase. I'm only guessing and my guess is that ten times more behaviors are crimes and felonies than were so in year 1900. That is, bureaucracies are in business of creating crime. Such bureaucracies sincerely believe they are being paid to modify human behavior. They are running ultimate social experiment, where result is seldom questioned. One punishment fits every crime they can create.

A man is imprisoned for theft and released with murder on his mind and in his heart. That's progressive! Society can think of nothing better because society doesn't think at all. Society closes its eyes and turns its back. Society doesn't want to know about life in cages, which is in reality, slow death. Take a man's life one day at a time. Then turn him loose and see how he does. Empty country's zoos and see how animals do. Prisons testify of man's inhumanity as well as war does. President Bush threatens American justice on his enemies. See it at Guantanamo Bay or up road from where you live. American and justice cannot be properly used in same sentence. Americans know less about justice than any other subject, save mercy and responsibility. Blind obedience is their forte. Prisons are expressions of very ugliest Americans and they all support prisons without question.

I have heard vague rumblings of a new compassion in an effort to lower government "justice" costs. The Governor of Arizona is considering stiff fines for driving under influence of alcohol, instead of confinement, which leaves whole families without support. Make a "criminal" pay (Us) instead of taxpayer. There is a novel idea. I've heard a number of bureaucracies are looking at treating drug addicts instead of locking them away.

The problem is, wording allows cruel punishment as long as it is usual. We can be usually cruel. If we can be unusually cruel and get away with it for a year or two, it becomes usual cruelty and legal. This is how U.S. prison bureaucracy has constantly increased in legal cruelty. Like phony wars on poverty, drugs and terror that will never end, so is war on crime. All were created as social cancers that consume national economy by people who want government to be sole employers of people. If bigger is better, biggest is bestest.

Cruelly deprive a child of love, affection, self esteem and build a cage for adult you created. When you have this adult locked in a cage, deprive him or her of dignity, love, affection and self esteem. Make him totally dependent for everything he needs for life. Don't allow him any productive work and don't pay him any meaningful pay for menial chores. Isolate him from all he knew except violence and see that he gets regular doses of violence in continuous survival conditions. Further isolate those who get caught up in violence.

Make whole environment so unattractive, as to discourage visitation. Restrict, for half and non legitimate security reasons, his access to decent food and health care. Repress, oppress, suppress and depress this person who did not properly respect some law or other.

When he has become completely dependent on system, turn him loose with nothing and tell him he better get a job. I say, send him to Washington or State Capitol to make new and never ending laws. He will do better than professionals we hire. He at least knows what justice is not. Turning people into beasts is never justice. It is insanity. Once damage is done it needs to be undone, not compounded.

For years, prison industry has been fastest growing segment of American economy. Those who don't get government jobs will fill these prisons and drive up demand for more, bigger and uglier high security housing. It is such a delightful prospect. If what recently happened in Iraq is unattractive, what would it be like here if prisoners were all liberated? Let good times roll, eh? Millions of people who can no longer take care of themselves, settling scores. Let's try that on global TV.

I have noticed recent progress in animal husbandry and I am sincerely pleased by trend. Could we learn enough about humane treatment for animals to teach us humane treatment for people? Can we warehouse people who are restricted but healthy, happy and productive? Do lawbreakers need to permanently forfeit their humanity as punishment? How can incarceration be a just punishment for anything but kidnapping murder and rape, where one deprives another of liberty?

In Old Testament, we had an eye for an eye and tooth for tooth. It was justice without mercy. The New Testament teaches merciful justice but New Testament is lost on America. Have you noticed? We have become stronghold of devils our enemies claim and this criminal justice is ugly proof. This system is a gauge of national spiritual immaturity. It portrays value we place on soul or spirit. It is an Old World relic of barbarity that needs serious reform.

Government schools don't identify and support neglected and abused children and wasted lives become object of corrupted government. Government sweeps its social mistakes into Graybar hotels, out of public sight, out of public mind. It's a non issue. The public neither knows nor cares. Let's outlaw criminal justice. Let's outlaw public ignorance.