by Ben Frayser

Created on: February 09, 2010   Last Updated: February 10, 2010

Judicial Reform?  Ha!

The only way to get a judge to reform is to catch him red handed with a needle in his veins and send him to rehab.  Even then...good luck with that.

The last time the judicial system fell under scrutiny and was told to reform, they agreed. They set up a former or presiding judge in each of fifty states to monitor complaints and throw out ninety eight percent of them without prejudice. That's to say, they don't care who complains or why (they're not prejudiced), the paper is going into the trash can.

A further one and a half percent of all complaints are settled with a phone call to the presiding (and probably offending) jurist. A mere and measly half percent of all complaints filed are acted upon.

In short, a sitting judge is more likely to be struck by lightning while shuffling papers than to be called accountable for the travesties he wreaks upon an unwary though witting population.

In all walks of life, in all occupations, we are being asked to be accountable and customer oriented. The few exceptions are my mailman, CEOs of major corporations, guards at maximum security penitentiaries, and lawyers (you can assume judges since they are attorneys first).

There is nothing to be done about my mailman. He's Civil Service and works with impunity since I'm too busy - and wimpy - to file a complaint. The truth is, he scares me. He wears wife beaters and smokes unfiltered cigarettes for criminey's sake!  At least he gets my mail right about two thirds of the time. 

The CEOs are above even the law or the President, so nothing's happening there either and, face it, do we really want kinder and gentler sentinels for our hardened recalcitrant bad boys?

But, should our justice system be customer oriented? With a captive consumer base, they really don't have to be. Ah, now there's the point. It's not necessarily the emptor that benefits from a quality improvement/quality control program. 

There are many unexpected rewards from taking an objective look at any system. For the legal archipelago, a fair and honest viewpoint can only help.

Foremost, there is the issue of escalating incarcerations. There is no end in sight and not nearly enough prisons to contain the offending masses. There is a degrading respect for the legal system in general because of this. They let some go and make examples of others in such random fashion that the rest of us have no idea what they

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