Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Capital of Prison Industry is Berrien County, Michigan

by Rev. Edward Pinkney

While the United States celebrates over 200 years of the obliteration of the slave trade, the city of Benton Harbor, Michigan in Berrien County is trapped in a time warp of monumental proportions. Living in Berrien County feels like it must have felt in America before Brown vs. The Board Of Education.


All world citizens should know how corrupt the Berrien county legal system is. It is a danger to every traveler, visitor, and guest worker from out of state, and to every individual who takes the risky steps of entering Berrien county. Just ask the Hispanic families of prisoners, who are not informed that family members are arrested. Many are serving long prison terms in Michigan after they were jailed on flimsy, tainted evidence from
Berrien county law enforcement.


The reality is that Berrien county which proclaims itself the land of freedom has the most dishonest, dangerous, and corrupt legal system (or equal to the worst) within any developed nation. Legal corruption covers Berrien county like a blanket. It is well-known, but well-hidden by the news media. The corporate media owners are afraid both of the reprisal and social revolution that would come from exposing the truth.


An April 24, 2007 Detroit Free Press OpEd states that in Berrien County, most or all defendants are sent to prison. The prison industry is growing all across America, and Berrien County is leading the charge. The USA, land of the free, has twenty-five percent of all prisoners in the entire world, and the largest prison gulag.

Many are innocent and being arrested. The police, prosecutors, and judges in America have no concern at all whether they have arrested someone who is innocent. They just do not care. When a crime is committed, they arrest almost anyone just to say they've caught the bad guy. Police, prosecutors, and judges do not like to admit they made a mistake. Once they arrest you, the police, prosecutors, and judges will try to make up and plant evidence to help convict you. A common trick is to take criminals they know who are facing jail on other charges and have those criminals to be false witnesses in court.


The police, if they do arrest you in America, they like to pile on the charges. The ideal is to charge you with as many crimes as possible, to make you look as bad as possible.

The only people who can really expect fairness in American courts are the rich and the corporations. Nobody else really matters to American judges and prosecutors.


There is a huge amount of bribery in America, perhaps even more than in the courts of any other country. Nearly all bribes are given to judges by lawyers. This is considered the safe way to bribe a judge. Bribery is rarely spoken about - just understood.


No one should be fooled by this country's propaganda - about being the land of freedom. The system is broken. It is the Have`s against the Have-Nots, Rich against the Poor, and Corporations against you and I. They are attacking all of us for the same reasons: political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation. All from the same enemy. We must say enough is enough.