My day in court

I was on jury duty today. They treat jurors right in Newark. The free coffee is good, the wireless is good, the chairs don't kill you. There's even a small landscaped area outside the front doors, where I spent a pleasant hour during lunch, bending my laptop into the shade. The orientation video was effective (and followed by a short video pitch for volunteers to serve as Court Appointed Special Advocates for foster children that made me cry a little). The master of ceremonies for jurors was jovial and funny ("the intercoms reach everywhere, including the bathroom. So -- Jurors! If you're in the bathroom, and you hear your name called, cut it short"). The judge during voir dire was respectful, friendly, almost courtly to the jurors. All this was as it should be.

And yet, after reading a rash of articles recently about the depravities of criminal justice in the U.S. -- the mass incarceration, the inane mandatory minimum sentencing, the grotesque overuse of solitary confinement, the ubiquity of rape, the law-shaping clout of the private prison industry, the mass deportations, the faux forensic "science" deployed by prosecutors -- I couldn't help but reflect that I was being shown the civil public face of brutal penal system.