My generous hosts introduced me to the local holiday tradition of swimming in the springs then making your own pancakes for breakfast. Mi gusta mucho! We also enjoyed a night at the cinema and saw 'The Butler', the truish story of the elderly African American man who had been the White House butler through 50 years and several presidencies. It was something to see such a film in the south of the US in the week of the anniversary celebrations of the civil rights movement and among a modern,ethnically mixed audience. At the end this diverse audience of Southerners applauded together and I'm happy to say I felt quite privileged to be there.
Yesterday everyone went back to work and I began mine.
The city of Daytona Beach is best known for its various motor races, and its vibrant waterfront is reminiscent of any popular, garish, hotel-lined holiday resort, though bigger and hotter than most. (It is very hot here at the moment. 90+ each day so far.) Yesterday however my destination was the Justice Center where the arraignment Court was taking place. Here people are brought before the Court to enter pleas and, less frequently, set trial dates. Much of it was familiar to me from previous experience as a Court duty Probation Officer. Two things were strikingly different however: the speed with which each case was dealt with and the relative informality of the proceedings. This is largely due to the system of 'plea bargaining' which means that negotiations between prosecution and defence have already taken place and the defendant has agreed to a guilty plea and commensurate sentence.In Court, Judge, Public Defender and State Attorney all engage in the briefest of exchanges before the outcome is agreed. The defendant has little contribution to make and appears, if anything, even more marginal to the proceedings than in a British court.
One consequence of this is that any detailed assessment of specific need or circumstance is unlikely to be given priority. In talking with the enlightened and reflective Judge afterwards I learned more of how Florida's Circuit Courts have been developing at least one example of possible responses to the kind of oversight this is likely to create. Whether individuals come before the Courts with issues of family breakdown, substance dependency, mental health or, (of particular interest to me) learning difficulty, effectiveness of response will be dependent on correct diagnosis of need. This takes some time, attentiveness and recognition that the person before the Court is an individual. Daytona's 'Drug Court' provides a model which acknowledges that time spent addressing the underlying motivation for offending and properly resourcing alternatives to punishment is more likely to reduce reoffending and improve life chances than simply sentencing.
The model is so clearly transferable it's almost painful. In fact, here may be one instance where one size may very well fit all, or at least be worth trying on. If a specialist Court can assess people for substance dependency issues can't it also assess mental health and learning support needs? And if that is shown to be more effective in reducing recidivism and increasing opportunity isn't it worth the additional resources in the long run? You'd think. Seeing and hearing all this has been exactly the start to the project I hoped for , but more than that it provides a kind of koan of enlightened thinking that is even more potent in this corner of the world where a quite different approach to criminal justice is arguably more prevalent. Among the many things I've taken already from these early stages is that it's true what they say about America: whatever you find, you can also find the opposite. I'm also a little humbled in my snooty European prejudices about where creative and compassionate thinking occurs: anywhere if you have the right people motivated by the right things.
Fyodor is also sending up the assumptions of self-righteousness. His central character, Raskolnikov has fallen foul of the belief that meaning well excuses anything and is convinced that his own good intentions will mean even his worst excesses can be explained away. Those of us who spend our working lives in the 'doing good' industries need to take note. Professor Tom Tyler of Yale University, (Google him!) one of the gurus for me of this project and my thinking about criminal justice processes, has developed his 'procedural justice' theory in a manner consistent with the moral direction of a novel like Crime and Punishment: what we do 'for' others may be much less important than how we do it.
I go to Savannah, Georgia at the weekend and fulfil another literary ambition in seeing the setting for 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'. Joy! Before then another Probation Officer tomorrow, more with the Public Defender and finalising a meeting with the drug court Judge when I come back here in early October. More later.
