All Things Criminal Amber Carlsson

I’ve served almost three decades in the Canadian Criminal Justice System. This is what I know: The current Criminal Justice system brings the government in between citizens to mediate the conflict when one person or organization does something wrong to another person or organization. The problem with this intervention (by an organization that is not held accountable for the negative outcomes it creates) is in the usurping of the offended parties rights to receive claim for damages. Instead of the offended party receiving justice or retribution, agents of the government claim the rights through farcical pomp and circumstance of antiquated tradition, and arbitrarily collect retribution from the offenders. To appease this taking of rights from the offended, there is an assumption of vengeance in the form of heightening of claim to so-called Justice, raising the stakes sharply, and harshly against the offender, to compensate the government for its involvement -on top of the vengeful consequences exacted using the full resources of government organizations. This grossly imbalances the collection of Justice in favour of the government -not the offended- in the magnification of it’s response. Because they represent the offended party they have more expectation, public pressure, and public bestowed power that raises the interests of offended parties to the unfair detriment of the offending party. The introduction of the third party government naturally skews the balance of fairness given the criminal stigma and judgment that follows an offender by way of permanent criminal record, and social and psychological damages that only modern history is discovering, and is eliminated from the equation by the propaganda of the Criminal Justice System’s claims to “protect and serve”. The balance of justice between offender and offended is unfairly skewed simply by this addition of the third-party government into the justice equation. We must remove powerful government interventions, that are not accountable for the destruction they cause, in order to maintain the natural balance of true Justice and the fair balance of power, rather than favoring the offended party by piling on the indulgent resources of the public funded government, as if only the government is able to correctly exact justice from an offender. As if the offended can only receive Justice with the destructive “assistance” of the government. In reality the government is creating more damages for the community with the social costs it incurs while providing a negative outcome in the process -that reduces the value of communities, including the victims.

The current government involvement in the form of Criminal Law is a self-defeating and unnecessarily costly and destructive social construct created by the wealthy to profit from the conflicts that arise from creating the poor. Our Criminal Justice System is above all, a tool of control by the wealthy over the poor. The growth of the population of the poor over the wealthy will be the end of this unfair criminalizing system, but only if the poor can overcome the disconnecting social constructs that wealth supports, like television, radio, and social media, all tools of division. The wealthy will continue to invest in developing these technologies of division, that are being used to separate and control the poor, racialized, and mentally ill, who will continue being harmed by the Criminal Justice System in the meantime.

This podcast goes where not many other podcasts have been before. This coverage of Canada’s criminal justice system and the very human stories within it is a must-listen for any Canadian.

Such an important topic to cover. By bringing some tough topics to light in a humanizing and destigmatizing way will creat some new and needed perspectives. Very professional and well done. Can’t wait to see what comes next!