PRISONER EXPRESS

The Natural Depravity of Mankind by Ferdinand Lundberg looked promising until I reached page 44. There he suddenly blasted his prior good work to oblivion, with the asinine, patently false statement, "Unfortunately in the United States there is a large public constituency that sentimentally favors criminals rather than the victims of crime." Throughout the remainder of the book he plays mind games.

He is very persuasive, but doesn't even make his lies correspond with each other. For Example, on page 44 he states, "The average time served in prison in the United States can expect to spend only 1.8 years in prison." He continues on page 101 asserting: "For rape, the expected punishment is 60 days. Expected time for robbery is 23 days, 6.7 for arson and 6.4 for aggravated assault. And for stealing a car, a person can reasonably expect to spend just a day and a half in prison."

He seeks to escape consequences from such outrageous lies by crediting them to Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. Consider the source. The reality is that in Texas one does not even go to prison for any sentence less than two years minimum. It is a fact often publicly commented upon, especially in Europe, that the U.S. has the most severe sentencing in the world, and Texas more so than any other state. There have been cases in Texas where a mom convicted of simple theft served more time in prison than the average served in Europe for murder.

Mr. Lundberg states on page 46, "Not only is the death penalty excluded in some state jurisdictions but parole is freely used to release dangerous multiple offenders from prison." He uses this propaganda for his own agenda without explaining the facts behind it. That it has not been abolished in America speaks for itself. Prisons in America are not about crime and punishment. They are America's new slave plantations, producing huge profits for those whose hands are in the till (not the taxpayers). Those people don't want violent offenders in their industries. By paroling them out rather than those who should be paroled, the system gets them out of the industries, and terrorizes communities into shelling out more prison money and making more Draconian criminal laws.

On page 47, "As to the claimed failure of the death penalty to deter murderers, all experience shows the precise opposite." Mr. Lundberg, if by that you mean that those convicted then "legally" murdered don't commit any more murders, you are probably correct. For everybody who is still alive, study after study over many years has proved that the death penalty is not deterrence at all, a fact agreed upon by all the knowledgeable experts.

Also on 47, "It is sometimes argued that when a death penalty is carried out and the prisoner is in fact innocent there is no way of redressing the injustice. But the way to avoid this injustice is to be sure the evidence sustains the conviction." The first duty for this remedy falls upon the prosecutor and police, but what he says about them is far truer than he hints. "It happens that police and prosecutors sometimes obtain a conviction by means of manufactured evidence or with withholding exculpatory evidence. (Emphasis mine throughout). Sometimes? It is so rife they ever tried it in the O.J. Simpson case, internationally televised, losing the case when they could have convicted him legally. Being on TV, the jury felt compelled to obey the law â€" for a change.

He says, "As any reader can see I am a hard-liner in support of respect for established law." No, sir you are not! You support reinstituting for your own purposes Draconian laws which every time tried in the past have caused the downfall of the totalitarian governments using them. Be careful what you wish for. Were you followed for one day, one could point to sufficient of your acts to convict you to a life sentence under the habitual criminal laws.

On page 49; "Additionally, the US contains segments of population that are alienated and will not perform according to the established standards. The earliest of these segments were the aborigines or American Indians who simply refused to take the ways of the white man."

What?!! Who is it that refused to perform according to established standards? This land was the property and home of those Indians who had established the standards over a thousand years. Then suddenly the white man came and took their land by force, burned their homes, raped their wives and children, and utterly destroyed their society â€" and now you, sir, fault the Indians because they would not adopt your depravity? Yet you claim to respect the established law?

Lundberg makes many other statements that cannot be tolerate exposure to the light of truth. I cannot answer them in the space available. Two of his statements though, put to the lie much of his propaganda by their own truth, "When members of the lower orders see members of the upper classes, government officials and the wealthy disobeying laws, the lower orders take this to signal a general holiday from law observation." And "the elements always trying the lead the way into such savagery are the deliberately criminal elements at all levels of society. But if such elements gain ascendancy, everybody else must join them in the same game if only as a matter of self defense."

Throughout your book your rant about the government molly cuddling your version of criminals and doing little or nothing to "punish" them, then on page 123 you say: "Judging by the fierce way the government goes after offenders against the law, the government want the laws to be observed, not ignored or scoffed at."

Mr. Lundberg, get a life! Stop playing mind games!