THE FEAR OF GAZING INTO THE BALANCE BETWEEN THE LEGAL AND OUR DEFORMED CULTURAL SHADOWS

I WATCHED, with amazement, on my wife’s phone as a naked man made his way into his neighbour’s residence, with the occupant’s home invasion and obvious cooperation in respect to his intent expected to be a non-issue. I watched as the police lifted him out of the building and could not help but wonder, had any writer of fiction started a novel with a scene like this they would have had to have a strong supporting chapter to define this action and to have a following script rooted in both medical science and mysticism to convince the roaming imagination of readers to remain loyal to whatever the expression was, be it novel, graphic novel, or movie.

The difference is, this was real and not foreign news, but ours. However, I had my interpretations of what may have happened. I did inquire from friends out there, “All dem things could happen nowadays; banna using Molly and all kinda pills and drugs, we time was different.” Was it? I asked myself. We have always been a society with a “look the other way” tendency void of the use of intellect to social problems that were different in a deadly way.

I remember an age-group person I knew well. He was nicknamed ‘Sexy,’ based on how he conducted his engagements (he can be called a serial rapist and was at one time charged for over a dozen such acts). After the act, he then turned up carrying chocolate to the victim. The police were looking for him and when I had a conversation about his approach to courtship, he honestly couldn’t understand what he did wrong. The police took the primitive illegal path and executed him with multiple shots. If a relative of one of his victims had done that, I would have understood, but not law enforcement. With all those bright judges and lawyers, doctors, etc., that could have contributed to a more sensible method of handling this contradiction of normalcy; how come no one thought of exploring the deformed shadows that emanated from ‘Sexy’ and learning to identify and understand its content before it matured?

I had a conversation recently on the differences, more like our parallel cultures that exist, almost invisible to each other, except for stereotypical assumptions. When it comes to some grey areas with certain incidents, they eventually reach the courts. The courts are populated in the majority by citizens who have evolved from comfortable upbringings, and nothing is wrong with that because that’s what every child should be allowed to benefit from. In many cases, if a child from that home seeks a tainted adventure that goes wrong, influences automatically in most cases, will intercept and cushion the outcome. This is not to say that things don’t go wrong in those privileged homes that can also be damaging in other ways to children and society at large eventually. On the other side, however, poverty has been relatively a majority condition for most of the population.

Poverty is not only in missed meals, a missing parent, and a lack of close social empathy, but also an open-gate alternative of nightmare options, dressed up as machismo that is fuelled by desperation into acceptance; in comparison to being subjected to the social impositions of inferiority complexes, also rites of preservation. Thus, when applied to the courts, the prisons swell while nothing changes. The fact is, that the command helm of the court should be guided by what is lacking, a competent corps to package cultural rites, responsibilities, and loyalties to conditions beyond the working value system of who sits at the command helm of the court, guiding how best to create policy bridges, instead of further chasms. Two references can be used as a guide, one I have used before.

‘Flashback’ to a youth whose mother had begged pushers not to sell her son marijuana, because it affected him negatively, (this was not the first mother who had done so) but they ignored her as they do, and he stabbed a male whom he had accused of trying to rape him; that was in 2015. In 2018, this same youth was sentenced to 23 years in prison; one wonders how did the judge arrive at this extreme verdict, against the evidence published? Second, a drug addict in 2013 was sentenced to 16 years for killing a man whom he accused of repeatedly indecently assaulting him when he was stoned. There was interesting professional evidence given, yet the judge’s comments were baffling.

There was an incident that happened at Bar and James Street, Albouystown years ago that I almost witnessed, which defines the cultural chasm, that with males growing up in Creole Culture, the violation of manhood has to be ritually responded to, with extreme prejudice, whether judged wrong or right. The same applies in the defence of women folk. What is deformed in the shades of our culture in contrast to the laws that govern us is the cultural knowledge chasm; the ‘Will’ to address where the true guilt rests.

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