Blog #5 The Metaphorical Scales of Justice

As you may know, the metaphorical scales of justice are represented by a blindfolded woman holding equally balanced scales. I think this accurately represents the ideal state of the American justice system, and what citizens of this country have been striving to accomplish for centuries. Although ideal in its nature, it is not always that way in practice.

To me, justice means that proven guilty individuals pay for their crime in a manner that equates to the ramifications (pain and suffering) caused by their actions. Criminals who commit minor crimes should be given the opportunity to serve their time and rehabilitate their way back into society. Crimes for which there are no equivalent sentence such as murder or inflicted irreparable physical or psychological abuse should not have the opportunity for rehabilitation or parole and should spend their remaining life in prison.

The American justice system, incorporating a jury of your peers, should be fair and unbiased. However, we know that is not the case currently, and has not been that way throughout history. Minorities, or those without the financial means to defend themselves in court, often do not get the same treatment under the law. Celebrities and those with substantial means often get much favorable results in the courts. We’ve seen examples of this with the OJ Simpson case, and more recently, the college tuition scandal involving several well-known celebs.

There is also a lot of controversy around police and minorities playing out over social media. This has created significant revolts with minorities fighting for equal justice under the law. Without having intricate knowledge of any cases and only having social media and the news as support, it does seem fairly obvious that not everyone is getting treated equally under our eye for an eye system of justice, and other factors come in to play when determining innocence or guilt. One of these factors include generic prejudice, or “prejudices arising from specific pretrial publicity and generic prejudices that cause prejudgments of the case of any defendant perceived as belonging to a general class of defendants who likely are guilty of the crime(s) charged” (Vidmar, 1997). This may result in innocent people being wrongfully convicted.

Although the criminal justice system has been implementing changes over the past couple of decades, the manner of administering justice has several flaws that need to be addressed.

Reference

Vidmar, N. (1997). Generic prejudice and the presumption of guilt in sex abuse trials. Law Hum Behav, 21(1), 5-25. doi: 10.1023/a:1024861925699. PMID: 9058572.

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