Thursday, December 29, 2011
New Year's Resolution
Let's forge a new path in our quest for justice.
Posted by Michael Corbin on Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 4:00 AM
When the ball drops, all the crime-counters will be reset to zero. Shortly thereafter the story of Baltimore’s first murder of 2012 will be broadcast. That death’s "firstness" will be the story’s hook, narrative substance, and public noteworthiness.
The first plea bargain, the first nol pros, the first cop deciding not to worry about that quarter-ounce of pot in the teen’s hoodie pocket, the first bail bond collection, the first adjudicated teen to run out of the dysfunctional group home, the first teen locked-in at the Baltimore City Detention Center on an adult charge, the first prisoner released, the first prisoner put in solitary confinement, the first public defender who meets his client for the first time moments before the case is called, the first public official who invokes Baltimore “crime” for political advantage … these firsts will not be noted.
The Crime & Punishment series and this blog have been a humble attempt to show Baltimore “crime” and our system of punishment up close at a personal level and from up above, with enough distance, to see and think about crime and punishment differently. One goal was to provide some raw material for us to begin to tell a different story than the one we do now.
An assumption in this series has been that crime and punishment are not merely a discrete set of social problems to be remedied by better social programming, more efficiency, or muckraking exposure of incompetence and injustice—however important those things may be.
How we have come to understand crime and punishment and the institutions we have built for meting out justice are at the heart of what both Baltimore and America have been, have become, and are a measure of where we are going.
Brown University’s Glenn Loury in his book, Race, Incarceration, and American Values, with neither irony nor exaggeration, writes that "[n]ever before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens." This is true of Baltimore and the United States.
The series and the blog have outlined very specific things we can do to make change, make Baltimore better—make Baltimore a model for a different and more just America.
I’d like to thank former editor in chief Greg Hanscom, as well as Urbanite's David Dudley, Andrew Zaleski, Rebecca Messner, Tracy Ward, and Joe Giordano, for everything.
When the ball drops, we can resolve to start anew.
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