Felon’s Alphabet: J is for Justice

Whenever I think of justice, I think of King Solomon.

You may or may not remember the biblical tale wherein two of his female subjects were engaged in a dispute pertaining to the custody of an infant. Each woman claimed the child as her own. In his infinite wisdom, King Solomon decreed that the infant was to be cleaved in two, and that each woman would get a piece.

Of course, the infant’s real mother could not conceive of this and so she capitulated, ceding her rights to the other woman, who was more than ready to quite literally “share” the baby. Having established maternity to all those in attendance, the baby was returned to his mother and so justice was served.

“J” is for justice.

In Webster’s Dictionary, justice is defined as “being righteous, fairness, reward or penalty as deserved, and also the use of authority to uphold what is just.”

Sometimes myopia, as it pertains to the gravity of our offenses, can stunt our insight. We can get so caught up in our erroneous perception of how unfairly we believe we were treated that we lose sight of how unfair and unrighteous the actions that brought us to prison have been.

How dare we have the audacity to complain about our punishments when collectively we have literally destroyed lives?

Where is the justice there? It should be a two-way street. Let’s be honest, wouldn’t we want justice for a murdered loved one? Yes, we would. In fact, most of us would be more than happy to employ a “lock them up and throw away the key” approach.

So why the outrage when the proverbial tables are turned? Because we are human. And more often than not, we want more than we are willing to give.

We want to be treated with fairness and yet where does that zeal go when we are being held to the same standard?

Now, I concede that there are cases when perhaps justice was applied in a heavy-handed manner, that disparities in sentencing do exist. However, for the most part, it does little for us to hyperfocus on the exceptions to the “justice” rule.

Bottom line, where there are people, there will likely be unjust behavior. Acting unjustly, we harm, steal, kill, etc. By being unjust we damage not only ourselves but also our communities. When we act unjustly, we act out of accordance with the Universe. We will never be truly happy behaving unjustly.

There is a little phrase that is quoted often in CCWF, “nothing changes if nothing changes.” I imagine it’s popular because, sadly, most of the time, nothing does change.

Individuals come to prison for a short while, and because they choose not to avail themselves of self-help groups, nothing changes for them and so they return. Sadly, criminality has a way of progressing and invariably, those that do return, return with more time to do.

Justice is giving others their due, to act in a way that assumes we are not entitled to anything more than anyone else, to act in a fair way, wrong no one, and at all times, promote public good.