Addict Nation (21 page)

We, as a culture, much prefer to pull out all the stops, dive into action, and leave no stone unturned
after
the rape and murder. The politically incorrect, unspoken truth is this: the horror of a violent crime is like a line of cocaine that gives us a buzz, energizes us, and propels us into action. Our justice system prefers to spend untold millions of tax dollars sealing off the crime scene, searching for a victim, dusting for fingerprints, testing DNA, offering rewards for information, issuing all-points bulletins, arresting the suspect, holding news conferences, arranging a “perp walk” of the defendant so the media can get a close-up visual of him on camera, gathering evidence, formally charging him, setting the bail, holding the preliminary hearing, fighting over pretrial motions, selecting the jury, preparing witness lists, delivering opening arguments, cross-examining witnesses and experts, presenting closing statements, reading the verdict, hiring psychiatrists to assess the defendant, listening to the impact statements of the victims in the sentencing phase of the trial, and then locking up, feeding, clothing, and guarding the killer . . . rather than spend a tiny sliver of that cost preventing his crime in the first place. This addictive mind-set is a crime in itself.

Like so many others before him, John Gardner had a disturbing rap sheet. Ten years earlier, this same character had lured a thirteen-year-old girl home on the pretext of watching
Patch Adams,
a movie starring Robin Williams. Once he got the girl home, he attacked her. The DA’s sentencing document says Gardner began “Rubbing his erect self against her private parts . . . got on top of victim . . . put his hand down the victim’s pants . . . hit victim repeatedly in the face while rubbing himself and touching the victim in her private area under her clothes and sucking her breast over her clothes.” The girl was begging for him to stop while crying. She says she felt like she was suffocating. She says she thought she was going to be raped. Eventually, she managed to run out the door “with only one shoe on, holding her pants” because they were unzipped. As a result of the pummeling Gardner gave her, the thirteen-year-old suffered a “laceration to the inside of her lip, a contusion under her left eye, bruising around the left eyelid area, numerous bruises on the left side of her head and face” plus other injuries.

John Gardner reached a plea deal in that attack and was sentenced to six years in prison. He got out after five years. Five years for molesting and pummeling a child! If he had been prosecuted to the full extent of the law, he might have gotten thirty years. Had the girl been raped and murdered, he might have even gotten the death penalty. But, hey, like Candice would a decade later, this thirteen-year-old got away before he could carry out the actual rape. So, even though the prosecutor’s own report describes Gardner as extremely predatory and without “one scintilla of remorse,” he gets a six-year sentence and is out in five.
¹
Wow!

In the prosecution’s 2000 sentencing report, a psychiatrist warns that John Gardner will attack girls again. A year earlier, he had fondled a fourteen-year-old girl’s breasts and vaginal area and was never prosecuted at all. The activity was considered consensual, as if a fourteen-year-old has the capacity to give an informed consent to anything sexual.
²

A few days after Chelsea’s body was found, fourteen-year-old Amber DuBois’s body was discovered by authorities. Amber had disappeared on her way to school less than eight miles from where Chelsea King vanished. Gardner was immediately described as the focus of the investigation into that girl’s murder as well. Amber’s case had gone unsolved for a year when Chelsea’s murder, nearby, suddenly reactivated interest in what had become a cold case. Amber’s mom revealed to me live on
Issues
that, when Amber first disappeared, cops waited three crucial weeks before pulling out all the stops to search for her daughter.
³

Ultimately, John Gardner confessed to sexually assaulting and murdering both Amber DuBois and Chelsea King and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The families of both victims expressed anger and disappointment in how the criminal justice system handled John Gardner.
⁴

America’s Crime Machine Functions on Autopilot

After Chelsea’s body was discovered, the community came together in an emotionally charged candlelight memorial several thousand strong. Again, the rites of America’s addiction to violence have become all too predictable. We’re all swept up in the drama, including me. I am certainly not suggesting that memorials not be held. It was obviously a tremendous comfort to the grief-stricken King family, who have shown enormous grace and vowed to devote their lives to preventing another needless death. But I’ll bet my condo on this: the King family would gladly forsake that huge memorial if they could only have their daughter back.

The time for action is
before
the next horrific killing. We need to take all the energy we apply
after
the fact, including vigils and memorials, and harness that people-power to change this bankrupt system and prevent future senseless killings. But that won’t give us the quick fix that we, an
Addict Nation
, crave.

Defining Crime Addiction

Addiction is an overpowering compulsion to use a substance or exhibit a behavior repeatedly despite consistently dire consequences. The pattern of addiction is an endless cycle of craving, bingeing (sometimes followed by remorse), and withdrawal, which sparks a new craving.

This perfectly describes America’s approach to crime. Let’s look at it for what it is. We all find sensational murder cases fascinating, myself included. Year after year, TV ratings have consistently shown that high-profile murder cases are guaranteed ratings grabbers. We
binge
on the coverage and almost simultaneously experience
remorse
. These stories are so gruesome, we tell ourselves, “They’re hard to watch,” even as we remain glued to the coverage. These horrific crimes make almost everything else—politics, the environment, education, international affairs—seem dishwater-dull by comparison.

If America goes too long without a sensational case, we experience
withdrawal
. A
craving
arises for another huge story. We’re jonesing for another fix. Soon, we hit upon the next monstrous case and begin soaking up all the gory, new details.

Our Nation’s Addiction to Crime Dictates
How a Murder Case Itself Is Handled

A horrible, violent crime occurs. Neighbors feel a charge as they express outrage. Police feel the adrenaline rush of a high-profile case. They’re pumped up to hit the streets and question potential witnesses. They display a competitive zeal to crack the case. Every resource is poured into solving it. Just as an alcoholic doesn’t think of his family budget when he goes on a drinking spree, when crime reaches the crisis point of a sensational murder, then budgets be damned, money is no object!

The
binge
of effort soon gives way to a collective sense of
remorse
and sadness over the crime, which takes the form of vigils, memorials, funerals, and the creation of foundations and laws in the name of the victim: Jessica’s Law and Megan’s Law being just two examples. Thanks to these well-meaning efforts, a solution seems at hand. Hope returns. Until the next horrific murder when the pattern starts all over again.

We Are All Unconsciously Under
the Sway of This Addictive Pattern

Let me stress that none of this is malicious or intentional. Everybody, including myself, feels obligated to carry out our assigned roles in this addictive drama. Most everyone, from law enforcement to the media, means well. But that’s the nature of addiction. Cravings are baffling, powerful, and cunning. Addictions overwhelm our intellect and take it hostage. In the throes of our addiction, we “forget” the reasons we should be sober and reach for our vice by reflex—despite the wreckage we create in the process. So, we find ourselves justifying irrational, self-destructive cycles of crime glorification because we’ve lost control. The addiction rules us and turns us into mindless zombies on a constant mission to get the fix. We have become so powerless over the process that we now accept and expect that there will always be more and more horrific crime to report about in the United States. In fact, when something good happens, we rarely notice. It’s hard to make headlines unless at least a few people are hurt in the process.

However innocent our intentions, we must face the truth, namely that this play is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions that consistently ends in heartbreak and shattered lives. America needs a script doctor who will rework the story line, getting rid of our fascination with pain and violence and replacing it with evolved, sober, rational, proactive, preventative, compassionate approaches to our crime problem.

“When you look at our society, which is so heavily saturated in violence, there is an opportunity and an opening here for us to begin to explore the potential of creating structure within our society that would help us as individuals, families, and groups lead more peaceful lives. Once people start shooting, it’s a little bit late to start talking about programs to create peace.”

—Dennis Kucinich, Congressman (D-OH)

When an addict finally tires of the vicious cycle of addiction and decides to seek help, it’s called “hitting bottom.” America needs to hit bottom on our crime habit.

Addiction is as old as humankind. In all of history, there has only been one effective antidote to addictive behavior. It’s called the Twelve Steps of recovery. These Twelve Steps, a distillation of timeless spiritual principles, came into the national consciousness through Alcoholics Anonymous, which was founded in the late 1930s and has since grown into a global force with millions of members.
⁵
The Twelve Steps operate on the premise that addiction is a form of “spiritual bankruptcy.”

As it stands, our criminal justice system is cynical, jaded, lazy, complacent, and often corrupt. In terms of justice, it is spiritually bankrupt. Think I’m exaggerating? Well, let’s look at how lazy, complacent, and jaded “the system” was in the case of John Gardner. Not only did they sentence him to five short years in jail for beating and molesting a thirteen-year-old girl, but—once he was out on parole—he brazenly defied the terms of his parole at least a half a dozen times and was not punished! Records show parole officials caught Gardner illegally living near a school. Yet they stamped his paperwork “COP,” Continue on Parole, despite this offense. Parole officials acknowledge that Gardner also repeatedly let the battery on his GPS tracking device run low. He also missed a meeting with his parole officer. And each time Gardner thumbed his nose at the rules, he got the same response from our lazy, cynical system: COP, continue on parole, COP, COP, COP, COP, COP! Can you say COP OUT?

When asked about the failure to revoke Gardner’s parole for repeated violations, a corrections official said, “These are considered minor. Quite frankly, if we were to blanket the system of parolees with minor offenses, we would . . . overwhelm the system.” WHAT? So essentially the corrections department is admitting that parole rules are a joke and criminals can violate the terms of parole with impunity without fear of consequences. Does this seem outrageous? The idea that the system is incapable of enforcing its own rules with regard to violent sexual offenders is mind-boggling and the potential repercussions are grave—literally. This man was free to hurt and kill other women and girls while nearby prisons burst at the seams with nonviolent inmates doing time for drug offenses. After all, those offenses are a slam dunk to prosecute. You catch someone with drugs and it’s game, set, match.

Just days after his last violation, Gardner was let off parole and his GPS tracking device was taken off his ankle. He was now totally free! That was in the fall of 2008. A few months later, Amber DuBois vanished while walking to school. The next year, Chelsea King was also dead.

The parole official justifies his department’s lackadaisical attitude this way, “There was nothing to indicate that he would . . . do this . . . I guess one can always look back, but we don’t have that luxury.” We don’t have the luxury to enforce the rules? Are you kidding me?

Oh, but I guess we had the “luxury” of letting Candice Moncayo get tackled and assaulted on a jog. I suppose we had the “luxury” of letting Chelsea King and Amber DuBois get sexually assaulted and murdered? Outrageous!

There was plenty to indicate Gardner was likely to attack again. A decade earlier, a psychiatrist warned he would! Do you see now how our system acts like the junkie who nods off and forgets to pay his bills or even bathe but is suddenly propelled into action when his body demands the next fix?

“If a criminal justice agency were to pursue this offender early on, in the hopes that the benefit would come later—five, ten, fifteen years down the road in terms of incapacitation—that’s more difficult for them to get behind because they can’t claim credit for that benefit. What they can do is, when something horrific happens, immediately jump into action. They can demonstrate the benefit—‘Look how many people we’re putting on this particular case. Look at the resources we’re devoting to this. Look at how hard we’re working.’ The benefits become immediate. This is very consistent with the addiction metaphor. We don’t do delayed gratification very well.”

—Travis Pratt, associate professor at the School of Criminology
and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

Addiction to Crime Leads to Short-Term Thinking

Another excellent example of our “criminal justice junkie” mentality can be seen in the Jaycee Dugard case. Jaycee was eleven years old when she was abducted near a school bus stop. She was held for eighteen long years in a wretched warren of flimsy tents in a registered sex offender’s backyard. Cops say Phillip Garrido raped Jaycee repeatedly and fathered two children by her who are now teenagers.