According to Addicting Info, a Mississippi school has arranged for suspensions to be served in prison–a  real prison, where children serve  alongside hardened criminals who are in for armed robbery, drug distribution, etc. It’s not exactly a surprise to find that a breakdown of who gets sent to prison for school infractions seems to depend heavily on skin hue and national origin. You might ask what kinds of nefarious behavior can get a school kid sent to prison instead of detention – well, passing gas is one.

Students in Meridian, especially African-American and disabled children, face the prospect of prison time for even the silliest infraction. As it turns out, the Department of Justice has been investigating the school system in the city for allegedly having students arrested and placed in juvenile detention. School principals and teachers punish students for infractions such as passing gas, dressing in an unacceptable manner, general disrespect, and swearing.

Obviously, these young people are incorrigible and well deserve being sentenced to jail cells instead of home rooms.

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Glenn Greenwald, in a recent article on Salon, wrote the following:

In a 1795 letter, George Washington vowed that, “the executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity.” Thomas Jefferson—in an April 16, 1784, letter to Washington—argued that the foundation on which American justice must rest is “the denial of every preeminence.” It’s literally difficult to imagine how we could be further away from those core principles. That the culprits who caused one of the worst financial crises in modern history have been fully shielded from the consequences of their acts — set along side the torturers and illegal eavesdroppers who have been similarly protected — illustrates that quite compellingly.

On April 13, 2011, Senator Carl Levin, (D-Mich), and Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) released a 635-page final report on their inquiry into key causes of the financial crisis. The report outlines in detail how Wall Street executives cost millions of Americans their jobs and homes, while wiping out investors, and good businesses.

High risk lending, regulatory failures, inflated credit ratings, and Wall Street firms engaging in massive conflicts of interest, contaminated the U.S. financial system with toxic mortgages and undermined public trust in U.S. markets.

The report describes how bank executives knowingly made loans they knew were tainted by fraud or prone to early default. They then securitized hundreds of billions of dollars in these high risk, poor quality or fraudulent mortgages without full disclosure to investors, which weakened U.S. financial markets. For example, Washington Mutual sold some of its high-risk loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and played one off the other to make even more money.

According to the report, the most immediate cause of the financial crisis was the July 2007 mass ratings downgrades by Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s that exposed the risky nature of mortgage-related investments that, just months before, the same firms had deemed to be as safe as Treasury bills. The result was a collapse in the value of mortgage related securities which devastated investors. Credit rating agency personnel knew their ratings were bogus and delayed imposing tougher ratings criteria to enrich themselves and their clients. In the end, over 90% of the AAA ratings given to mortgage-backed securities in 2006 and 2007 were downgraded to junk status.

Investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, sold billions of dollars in mortgage-related investments and flooded financial markets with high-risk assets. When Goldman realized the mortgage market was in decline, it took actions to profit from that decline at the expense of its clients. For example, at the same time it was betting against the mortgage market as a whole, it aggressively marketed poor quality Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) to its clients and then actively bet against them by taking large short positions on those transactions.

The Senate committee may turn over its findings to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution. But, according to Glenn Greenwald, it is highly unlikely that any Wall Street executive will be prosecuted for their crimes.

Political and financial elites now enjoy virtually full-scale legal immunity for even the most egregious lawbreaking, while ordinary Americans, especially the poor and racial and ethnic minorities, are subjected to exactly the opposite treatment: the world’s largest prison state and most merciless justice system.

So far, no high-level culprits have been indicted or even meaningfully investigated, and few have suffered any financial repercussions from regulators or lawsuits.

According to Greenwald,

the overarching ‘principle’ of our justice system is that criminal prosecutions are only for ordinary rabble, not for those who are most politically and financially empowered. We have thus created precisely the two-tiered justice system against which the Founders most stridently warned and which contemporary legal scholars all agree is the hallmark of a lawless political culture.

He then offers compelling illustrations of facts and events to support his claim:

• When Bush officials were revealed to have established a worldwide torture regime and spied on Americans without the warrants required by law, President-elect Barack Obama, in January 2009, stated that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into the wrongdoings of the Bush administration.

• When Spanish prosecutors decided that it would criminally investigate the torture by American officials, one of the State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveals how the Obama administration, worked with Republicans to pressure Spain to stop the prosecution.

• When telecoms g0t caught participating in Bush’s illegal eavesdropping program in violation of multiple federal statutes, on February 11^th, 2008, the Senate voted to give retroactive immunity for telecoms. Eighteen Democrats Crossed over to vote for immunity.

• In June of 2009, a federal judge threw out more than three dozen lawsuits against major telecommunications companies hat had illegally assisted in the wiretapping without warrants program approved by President George W. Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

• And when it was discovered that the CIA was destroying videotapes of its rough interrogation and waterboarding sessions with accused Terrorists—in the face of multiple court orders directing that they preserve such evidence, strongly suggesting obstruction of justice—in November of 2010 the Obama Justice Department decided not to bring criminal charges.

• And when it came time to decide what to do with one of the most brazen lawbreakers in the financial world— former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo—in February of 2011, federal prosecutors ended a criminal investigation of Mozilo with no indictments. Mozilo dumped hundreds of millions of dollars of stock when he secretly knew that the loans Countrywide was originating couldn’t support the stock valuation. He then walked away with $170 million for destroying Countrywide through predatory lending.

It’s clear that the Angelo Mozilo and Lloyd Blankfeins of the world—who donate heavily to presidential and congressional campaigns—will never suffer the consequences of their illegal actions. As Greenwald reports, all of that stands in stark contrast to how ordinary Americans are treated by this same justice system “with incomparably harsh and merciless punishment.”

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Some may call it a dead topic that should stay dead, but I think that a national discussion of torture needs to continue. Andy Worthington’s March 13 posting on Truthout offers an excellent summary of the issue.

As for me, I think American citizens need to know if their government is living up to its stated ideals or violating the same standards to which it holds other nations. When the U.S. government touts its Army Field Manual,  or signs on to the Geneva Conventions or other international treaties—do we mean it, or do we reserve the right—via American exceptionalism—to change the rules when it’s convenient for us?

The recent ruling by Justice Department official David Margolis—effectively absolving Bush Administration lawyers from responsibility in enabling “enhanced interrogation techniques” in Iraq and Guantanamo—makes this dialogue even more imperative.

I don’t know what Margolis’ motivation was, and he’s not talking. His ruling overturned four years of investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Perhaps he’s protecting his own, circling the wagons around the fraternity/sorority of  lawyers. Perhaps he’s been instructed—as the Obama administration has emphasized many times—to focus on the future, not on the past. After all, if the Obama administration prosecutes, or censures, or even criticizes the previous administration, it could set in motion—horror of horrors—future efforts at holding government officials accountable for their actions.

I can’t say for sure why they’re doing what they’re doing. But we do know that the UN Convention Against Torture, signed by President Reagan in 1988 and incorporated into US federal law, defines torture as:

any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person …

In the infamous “torture memo,” John Yoo and Jay Bybee  tortured that definition into submission—probably at the behest of the Bush administration—and now, they’ve gotten away with it.

When I watched portions of the Congressional hearings on torture in 2009, it occurred to me that one sure way to define torture would be to ask the defenders of “harsh interrogation techniques” a simple question: “If someone did that to you, or to your friend or family member, would you call it torture?”

Thankfully, President Obama took action, shortly after being inaugurated, to reverse the most egregious interrogation policies of the Bush Administration, announcing, in January 2009, that America was reverting to the Army Field Manual’s rules.

But President Obama’s welcome policy shift is not the end of the story.  A terrible precedent has been set, both by the original torture memos and by David Margolis’ recent ruling. Even if we follow the Obama administration’s apparent predilection for not looking backward or placing blame, we will face these issues again in the future. This administration’s unwillingness to establish accountability will undoubtedly come back to haunt us. The Justice Department’s ruling effectively gives cover to future foes to torture our soldiers with impunity.

Blame and punishment for the perpetrators of the Bush Administration’s foolhardy and inhumane policy is probably not the answer. Particularly in today’s political climate, such a strategy would most likely be counterproductive, resulting in endless political warfare.

There is, however, an alternative. It’s called “truth and reconciliation,” and the process–though sometimes painful and complicated–has had good results in post-apartheid South Africa and other regions where conflict and alleged war crimes have divided the community. There’s even a precedent for this process here in the U.S., in Greensboro, North Carolina, where a local Truth & Reconciliation Commission was organized in 2004 to examine and learn from a divisive event in Greensboro’s past, in order to build the foundation for a more unified future.

I acknowledge that getting a truth and reconciliation process in place to examine what happened during the Bush Administration, and to try to promote national healing, is a long shot.  But if we don’t address this issue now, then when will we?

-Photo credit: Bill Concannon, Burning Images

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