Cook, John Raymond. <b>ASPHALT JUSTICE: A CRITIQUE OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN AMERICA</b>

Cook, John Raymond. ASPHALT JUSTICE: A CRITIQUE OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN AMERICA. Praeger: Westport, Connecticut, 2001, hardcover, 211 pages. ISBN0-275-96827Cook is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Mars Hill College North Carolina. He has worked extensively throughout the criminal justice system. This book, one of the most interesting I have read a long time, is part of a Praeger Series Criminology and Crime Control Policy. What I love about this book is that it is almost like sitting down and having a long personal conversation with Cook about his experiences, case studies and lessons learned from his years criminal justice. There is something very compelling and very personal about this book. At the same time, his observations and experiences has confirmed for me some things which I have long suspected about the American system of justice: it is not just, most of those prison are there because they have failed at almost every other aspect of their lives, and the police in terms of personality make-up are very like the criminals they arrest except they carry a badge [in fact, you can think of the police as a large, armed street gang].The book talks about the role of prisons and politics, the police, attorneys, prison officials, gangs, militias and organized crime, juveniles, insanity pleas and the mental health system, coercive treatment, civil liberties, racism, and prison architecture and their impact on our criminal justice system. Cook is most critical of simplistic, one-note, get-tough solutions that get politicians elected but do nothing to rehabilitate prisoners. Cook began thinking about this book when he served as a psychologist with juvenile delinquents and gang members; he was able to see first hand the lack of direction, the wasteful, inappropriate and counter-productive efforts first hand. Cook contends that not only are we not helping to rehabilitate criminals, we are also harming the long-term welfare of our society and its citizens with our criminal justice system. He finally decided to write this book to make a better world for his children and for the society at large.As the author points out, referring to the get-tough-on-crime approach, is doubtful that there is any other area of human existence where the same basic approach has been tried for thousands of years, failed so utterly and completely and yet continued to be the dominant approach to the problem. If there existed a business private enterprise that functioned as the prison system does, it would no doubt be bankrupt. Consider any industry whose primary product was returned to be fixed 80 percent of the time. Further, each time the product was returned it cost just as much to repair it as it did the first time it was produced. In addition, this business has to continually throw out its first-line production before it is ready so it can have room for all the repair jobs being returned. It does not take a genius with a marketing degree to figure out that this business is trouble. The outcome is a warehouse full of broken and damaged products that are being sent back out as quickly as possible just to keep the warehouse from overflowing. [p.2]Cook says that, based on his experience, incarcerated life is very much like life on the streets for those who are jailed. Furthermore, many who are jail are mentally ill, mentally retarded, dyslexic, poor, using alcohol or drugs or both, minorities [the others have the resources, money, the wherewithal and the attorneys to avoid prison altogether], and often with low IQ's or illiterate. Cook recalls one fourteen year old crack dealer who said that his mother was an addict and his father was prison, his grandmother was blind, diabetic and could not walk, and he had a seven-year old brother and a five-year-old sister. The dealer was too young to get a job and somebody had to pay the bills and keep the family together. Far from being brilliant master criminals, living the life of Riley, most criminals have so many strikes against them that they cannot seem to make it the real world. …

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