A Nation of Experts

Wow! I have had a very eventful couple of days! But I am pretty tired so I am just gonna write about this one little thing tonite. Today I attended a Public Interest Conference at Emory Law School. This is the second one they have had, and I have been to both. One of my good friends, J, is a big part of organizing these events, so I like to go and support him, but it's also just a fabulous event.

Today's theme was "The Intersection of Poverty and Human Rights." It's ironic because they chose that title last year, but the topic is so timely now in light of the "man-made disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina." There were 6 panels, of which you chose to attend 3. Then, the finale was a speech by the Keynote Speaker, Lisa Kung. Lisa is an attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights who practices in the area of prison litigation. Essentially, she tries to combat horrid conditions in jails and prisons in the southeast. Her speech was awesome.

Really the whole day was fabulous. I went to panels on Child Advocacy, Victims and the Criminal Justice System, and Living Wage Legislation. I learned a lot, especially about the living wage stuff, because that's something I don't know a lot about.

The whole day had a theme running through it, though, that made me go back to something I always say and truly believe, and so I will say it here, to my captive internet audience. A major problem in this country is that most people truly believe that they are experts in crime. They think they know who commits crimes, why they do it, who the victims will be, and how the criminals should be dealt with. I have a degree in criminal justice, and the motto of our department was "common sense is nonsense." Because whatever you think you know about crime, you are wrong. And if people could admit their own ignorance, and if we started listening to actual experts, this country could probably handle crime much more effectively. In this country, when we want to talk to a "crime expert" we look to lawyers, cops, or families of victims (Mark Klass and John Walsh to be exact). Why? Why don't we look to criminologists who have done actual research? Because the media wants charisma. And that is the problem with crime policy in this country. People want less crime, but they don't want to spend money and they don't want to treat criminals like human beings. Studies have proven that we could make safer jails and prisons, for less money, if we took away the metal bars, metal walls, and metal cots, and instead used plaster walls and wooden furniture. So, I think, that the answer lies in better collaboration. Lawyers, legislators, and the media, need to invite the experts in and listen to them. All of these non-profit, pro-bono groups that deal with the criminal justice system should have a resident PhD in criminology. The lack of mingling between these fields is absurd. And once the lawyers and the experts collaborate, we need to bring what we learn to the people thru the media. The media likes lawyers because we are good public speakers, PhDs often are not so good at that stuff. So maybe, lawyers can be the liaison, and maybe someday we can break thru the terrible wall of common sense that envelopes this country. Maybe then we will stop treating people like animals, and maybe then we can reduce the number of predators we have on our hands.