This was an interesting and really aggravating series to watch. Growing up, I believed our criminal justice system was the best in the world. I believed that the police and prosecutors were there to ensure the right person was prosecuted, but that’s just not the case.
There’s a lot to unpack after I watched the nine episodes of this limited series. My emotions went from disbelief to anger in every episode. I could only imagine myself being were many of these men had been. To see how vigorously the state would fight against the evidence was gut wrenching in each case. The anger came from knowing the prosecutors and police involved often faced no accountability for what they had done on purpose.
I don’t like the label “All Cops Are Bad”, but how can you trust them when we see so many instances of innocent people being railroaded just makes it impossible to not feel that way. It was thinking about cases such as these that caused me to oppose the death penalty. There are so many people who just don’t care if an innocent person dies just as long as someone pays for a crime. It’s just not right and I can’t support that.
I can understand why a detective and prosecutor would want to just get a conviction, though. The public sees convictions as a scorecard. If they aren’t racking them up, they’re not being tough on crime. It’s very sad that a public official’s performance rating should be based on the number of people made to suffer just for getting a conviction.
I also have a huge problem with the way prisons are run in The United States. We are so quick to just warehouse people and not think about how we can make society better. We treat people as if they’re no longer humans and no longer deserving of basic dignity. A lot of people like to say, “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime” or “prison isn’t supposed to be comfortable” or “what about the victims”. I think we should be focused on how we can help make our society better and help people heal. Every prisoner in this country is an indigent person; our tax dollars get used to sustain them and they have no way of giving back. We use them for slave labor to help make the prison systems work even though we outlawed slavery.
I don’t know what the answers are. Yes, there are always going to be some really terrible people who want for nothing more than to kill or do other crimes. I don’t think it’s quite fair to lump everyone who makes a mistake into that category. Every person needs the chance to redeem themselves. I think we should be focusing on helping people learn a trade, learn how to read, learn how to live within the law.
I think I’ve digressed too much so I’ll close with saying I think everyone needs to watch this series. It is quite eye opening to the complete bull shit that’s been used to lock people up.
