I have to agree with you on this one! Our justice system does as much to persecute and injure the victims of a crime as it does to punish the criminal.

Many people that are 'educated' in the criminal justice system (meaning that they are going to school to be part of law enforcement or the judicial system we all know and *smirk* love) have been taught that people have a right to due process. I know this, I was a CJ student myself. They are also educated in the poor quality of our prisons and the standard of life that prisoners are 'subjected' to.

Statistically speaking, according to three major textbooks on criminology, the ONLY way to reduce a crime rate is by deterrence. If you make people afraid of the consequences of their actions, then they aren't going to take the risk to do what they shouldn't do in the first place. Public hangings were the norm in the wild west days, but it served to put a hiatus on criminal ongoings too!

But then again, people were also willing to help one another out back then. If your neighbor needed help to plow his field, you helped him. In turn when it came time to put up hay for the winter, he'd give you a hand. But society isn't that way anymore. No one wants to do anything for anyone else without their being an overt thought of 'what's in it for me?'

And that is even reflected in the 'due process' mentioned in criminal justice. It's a matter of making sure the courts have the right man.

"A jury of your peers." has become an obsolete term. Where once it was the responsibility of people that knew you and knew your character to judge whether you'd done what you were accused of or not, that has been replaced by a jury selection that rules out any bias either for or against the person on trial. For example, if you've been divorced, you can't sit on a jury for a divorce or for a trial where a crime was either to be the cause of a divorce or the result of a divorce. If you knew someone that had a child molested, you couldn't serve on a jury for the trial of a child molestor or a rapist.

What happened to the 'jury of peers?' If there's enough evidence to convince your peers (people that know you personally) then it should be enough to convince a complete stranger! And yet the trial is not the end of things, as you say.

Just to make sure that they have the right man and they don't sentence the wrong person to jail, there's an appeals system. What a JOKE! If the appeal makes it all the way to the top of the ladder but doesn't get heard in that session, you start all over again. And the prisoner sits in jail with a roof over his head, a cot to sleep on with blankets and pillows, and three meals a day. Plus reading materials if he is so inclined and with proper behavior, perhaps some time out in the fresh air in the yard.

What suck about the whole thing is this... over 70% of the time these conditions are better than what he/she was living in before their conviction. So where's the punishment in that?

Sorry... I yield the soapbox to you my dear... I think I took it away for a bit there! Love ya!!

Although it doesn't make one feel better in the here and now we need to be mindful also that even though man's "justice" system is perverse and corrupt, there is One who will judge us all. God Almighty can and will judge us all and will punish those who haven't come to Him and repented. He can do this because He is without sin. The great part is that in John 3 it tells us that "He did not come into the world to condemn the world but that world through Him might be saved". There is still only one that can give either punishment or redemption and that's our Redeemer who died on the cross for all of us.

I know that doesn't make alot of people feel better especially when it's their loved one that's been hurt, maimed or killed. It does make me feel better knowing that the debt for my sins has already been paid.