A tale of two cities - epilogue

I have a friend who works as a parole officer for DuPage County.

In order to protect his privacy, I’ll call him “Officer H”.

Since he has been a parole officer for nearly 25 years, I assumed that he would be a good source of material for a story about crime and punishment.

In brief, this is what he had to offer:

Although his “client base” covers a wide range of ages, the vast majority of them are young males between 16 and 25.

Within that group, 15% are undocumented residents (illegal immigrants), and an astounding 98% of the convictions for drug use are young black males.

In the 16 to 25 age group, fully 50% come from a single parent household, and HALF of the young men arrested already had children of their own.In our general population, 31% of all births are to unmarried mothers. For Hispanic mothers, that percentage increases to 50%, and for young black women, the rate is currently at about 75%.

As you might suspect, my friend’s clients aren’t particularly well educated.

The illegal immigrants from Mexico have achieved, on average, only an 8th grade education. For the “young crooks” who were born here, the average number of years completed is two years of high school.

After their first convictions, it’s as difficult for this group to find gainful employment as it is for a one handed carpenter in Iran. As a result, the recidivism rate is close to 75%, and they turn to gangs for support.

65% of the young men in my friend’s “care” are gang members.

Although I took a criminology course in college (where three murderers were introduced on the first day), I’m not an expert on the best way to treat criminals.

Common sense would seem to tell me that overly severe punishment usually is counter-productive, and that education, above all else, is still the best remedy. When George Ryan was Governor, the Chicago Tribune uncovered the fact that HALF of the people on death row had been wrongfully convicted. Although George Ryan had plenty of faults, and eventually went to prison because of them, the suspension of the death penalty in Illinois was probably his most honorable act as our governor.

Since 1976, the state that has executed the most “criminals” is Texas, and the “Lone Star State” has executed FAR more people than the state that’s in second place, which is Virginia.

The state that has the MOST people on death row is California, but the number of people executed each year in California is actually fairly low.

It has been estimated that it costs the state of California $1 billion dollars to execute FIVE people. In view of the fact that California has a horrific budget deficit, a number of people have advocated that California should drop the death penalty altogether, and reduce sentences to life in prison without parole.

As a country, the United States has an incarceration rate that is the highest in the world. The second place country, China, is FAR behind the U.S.

Due to the fact that we’ve long had a fascination with “the Wild West”, there are still a number of Americans today who still believe that the brand of justice practiced by ”Hanging Judge Roy Bean” (or even “Dirty Harry”) is the best solution, but I’m not convinced that that’s the case.

When Dickens published “A Tale of Two Cities”, he described, in detail, the abuses that were suffered by the French peasants immediately prior to the French Revolution. In brief, listed below are some examples of what the peasants encountered, and WHY they revolted:

Social injustice

Charles Dickens was a champion of the maltreated poor because of the terrible experience when he was forced to work in a factory as a child. His sympathies, however, lie only up to a point with the revolutionaries; he condemns the mob madness which soon sets in. When madmen and -women massacre eleven hundred detainees in one night and hustle back to sharpen their weapons on the grindstone, they display "eyes which any unbrutalized beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun".
The reader is shown the poor are brutalized in France and England alike. As crime proliferates, the executioner in England is "stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now hanging housebreaker ... now burning people in the hand" or hanging a broke man for stealing sixpence. In France, a boy is sentenced to have his hands removed and be burned alive, only because he did not kneel down in the rain before a parade of monks passing some fifty meters away. At the lavish residence of Monseigneur, we find "brazen ecclesiastics of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives ... Military officers destitute of military knowledge ... [and] Doctors who made great fortunes ... for imaginary disorders".[

The Marquis recalls with pleasure the days when his family had the right of life and death over their slaves, "when many such dogs were taken out to be hanged". He won't even allow a widow to put up a board bearing her dead husband’s name, to discern his resting place from all the others. He orders Madame Defarge's sick brother-in-law to heave a cart all day and allay frogs at night to exacerbate the young man's illness and hasten his death.
In England, even banks endorse unbalanced sentences: a man may be condemned to death for nicking a horse or opening a letter. Conditions in the prisons are dreadful. "Most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practiced, and ... dire diseases were bred", sometimes killing the judge before the accused.
So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanizing and softening to behold in action". He faults the law for not seeking reform: "Whatever is right" is the dictum of the Old Bailey. The gruesome portrayal of quartering highlights its atrocity.
Without entirely forgiving him, Dickens understands that Jerry Cruncher robs graves only in order to feed his son, and reminds the reader that Mr. Lorry is more likely to rebuke Jerry for his humble social status than anything else. Jerry reminds Mr. Lorry that doctors, men of the cloth, undertakers and watchmen are also conspirators in the selling of bodies.
Dickens wants his readers to be careful that the same sort of revolution that so damaged France won't happen in Britain, which (at least at the beginning of the book) is shown to be nearly as unjust as France. But his warning is addressed not to the British lower classes, but to the aristocracy. He repeatedly uses the metaphor of sowing and reaping; if the aristocracy continues to plant the seeds of a revolution through behaving unjustly, they can be certain of harvesting that revolution in time. The lower classes do not have any agency in this metaphor: they simply react to the behavior of the aristocracy. In this sense it can be said that while Dickens sympathizes with the poor, he identifies with the rich: they are the book's audience, its "us" rather than its "them". "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind".



In general, I would tend to side with the compassionate approach favored by a trio of aging singers that all us know very well.

THIS is what they would have to say:



Slack your rope hangman, slack it for a while
I think I see my father comin' ridin' many a mile
Father have you brought me hope or have you paid my fee
Or have you come to see me hangin' from the gallows tree?

I have not brought you hope, I have not paid your fee
Yes I have come to see you hangin' from the gallows tree.

Slack your rope hangman, slack it for a while
I think I see my mother comin' ridin' many a mile
Mother have you brought me hope or have you paid my fee
Or have you come to see me hangin' from the gallows tree?

I have not brought you hope, I have not paid your fee
Yes I have come to see you hangin' from the gallows tree.

Slack your rope hangman, slack it for a while
I think I see my brother comin' ridin' many a mile
Brother have you brought me hope or have you paid my fee
Or have you come to see me hangin' from the gallows tree?

I have not brought you hope, I have not paid your fee
Yes I have come to see you hangin' from the gallows tree.

Slack your rope hangman, slack it for a while
I think I see my true love comin' riding' many a mile
True love have you brought me hope or have you paid my fee
Or have you come to see me hangin' from the gallows tree?

Yes I have brought you hope, yes I have paid your fee
For I've not come to see you hangin' from the gallows tree.

In closing, I’d like to quote another Dickens character.

THIS is what HE had to say:

“God bless us every one”.