Culture of the System
Sometimes a cultural misunderstanding can cause problems.
The culture of the criminal justice system is not like the culture of the rest of the country.
In the culture of this country, being special is good.
One thing you’ve got to understand when you find yourself in the criminal justice system is that being special isn’t usually a good thing.
This goes for most systems. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in different systems. This probably helped prepare me for being a criminal defense attorney.
Right around my 18th birthday I found myself at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. Having an August birthday, I was always a year younger than my classmates. I have always looked younger than I am. The Citadel has what they call a “Fourth Class System”. It means that your first year you are at the bottom of the system. It means that the first year you are “a knob”(because your head is shaved like a door knob). When they shaved off my high school hair, I looked like a Six-Foot-Two boy.
It was on the hottest August day of my life that my parents dropped me off at The Citadel. In Steven’s Barracks on the edge of a murky marsh...A white, rectangular castle-looking building…Surrounded by grey bearded oaks…That’s where I met the cadre.
The cadre were a group of the most distinguished upperclassmen. They wore black military style dress hats that covered their eyes. They had black tee shirts and green pants with shiny black shoes. They were all monstrously fit. They wore no expressions. They were there to give the knobs “a system”.
When I think of somebody being “special” in a system, I have a glaring memory from first day as a knob.
Four members of the cadre surrounded me. They were screaming at the tops of their lungs inches from my face. Circling me as I stood at attention. I had made a big mistake. I stood out.
“Is this a joke? Somebody let a kid in here!” “Showe! How old are you?” “Where’s your bottle baby-boy?”
I found myself running stairs with trashcans full of water for many hours that night. At every flight of stairs was a member of cadre to scream at me to do something different. Pushups were the friendliest thing I was ordered to do. Whatever I was doing, it was wrong in the eyes of the cadre.
They thought I was “special” and I paid for it...but that was a different system.
Nobody is going to make you run stairs at the courthouse. But you don’t want to stand out if you can help it. I have seen people’s cases go about just as well as my Citadel hell night because they made themselves stand out.
I have a million examples of people making themselves inadvertently “special”: tee shirts with political phrases, phone calls in court, speaking out of turn, asking the judge legal advice, being emotional, chewing gum, etc…
The reaction of the system to any of these things could be minor or severe based on factors unknown to the common person. A person acting outside of the process could find themselves facing a harsh situation. Direct criminal contempt can be based on failure to observe “courtroom decorum”.
To understand this, one must understand the criminal justice system is designed to process cases. One prevailing principle behind many of the policies in this system is “Judicial Economy”. This means that the courts need to be efficient and cost effective. This means that a lot of court is pretty routine. There is a process for everything. When someone is “special” they cause the court to deviate from its routine. In the mind of the court employee, somebody who requires any more time than routine is a problem. They can see the log jam forming behind every inefficiency.
Go to court sometime and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
This is why you need a lawyer as soon as possible if you think you (or your child) may be taking a ride through the system. Your lawyer should know culture of the system. Your lawyer should have the time to tell you how to get through the culture of the system.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of patient and kind people in the system. But even patient and kind people get frustrated. Especially when having to sit in a government building all day.