Quit enabling NM’s criminals

IS SPENDING more money the answer? On Sept. 19, Rory Rank, a lawyer employed by the Public Defenders Office, wrote an op-ed piece titled, “Tougher penalties don’t address the cause of crimes.” Rank states that it will take increased funding for the police, the courts, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, social workers, post-release programs and early child intervention programs to have any significant impact on crime in New Mexico. A statement that is very disheartening considering the fact that New Mexico is facing a deficit through 2017 and the state Constitution requires a balanced budget.

Another point of view was expressed by Audrey Lietzow, a WWII veteran, in our Albuquerque paper that contained the following by author Victor E. Frankl who wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Frankl was a prisoner in one of Hitler’s death prisons during WWII.

He writes that he had witnessed good enacted by prisoners and he witnessed evil enacted by prisoners. Frankl goes on to write that ”man has both potentials within himself, which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”

Lietzow raises the question, “…do these evils continue because parents, courts, judges, clergy become enablers and ‘hope’ that evil will cease if we are all ‘not judgmental’ and believe that everyone is able to be rehabilitated?”

Rank does not address why for every juvenile delinquent or criminal from a broken family or poor neighborhood there are thousands of kids similarly situated who choose to not do drugs or become criminals. It is apparent that our punishment for criminal activity will not influence an individual decision to choose to not become a drug addict or criminal and realize due to our social norms this society is an enabler of individuals who choose to become criminals.

Until this society stands up and demonstrates that it will no longer tolerate violence, this society is an enabler of violence. Spending more money on this society’s failed justice system will not reduce the level of crime.

We are enablers due to our tolerance and the refusal to hold individuals accountable for their actions be they children or adults. TOM CLARK Albuquerque