To a Superior Judge

I could not do what you are mandated to do every day on society's justice bench, weighing retributive justice against restorative healing. I cannot look with any comfort at police and correction officers' routinely criminalizing vocations, and courtroom injudicious levying of fines against the young and black and brown and homeless Punishing prison sentences for the most obvious trauma victims of chronic blue-shirt bullying, theft, not really clever lies, racial profiling, diminishment and derision by militarized and miseducated mercenaries of a rabid Estate. My son, now twenty-seven, was not expected to reach full emotional maturity until his early thirties, as evinced by research on ADHD. However, that pessimistic projection may be optimistically skewed, not accounting for trauma histories common to significant learning disabilities, nor a special education black male experience in a racist and homophobic "corrections" society. Economic and political maturity security integrity may never arrive at the Promised Land for the young black male separated from his birthmother during infancy to be parented by a mixed-race gay male couple, having to defend not only himself but his out gay younger brother from predative peers under the radar of teachers and school administrators disabled by "zero tolerance" means zero compassion retributive justice dysfunctional trauma-inducing systems. This is the third time that police officers have failed to include in their self-righteous reports that they took hundreds of dollars out of my son's pocket and put it in theirs off-camera, and triumphantly reported only a fraction of the high quality, organic cannabis found in his car, while the majority disappeared out of sight but not out of trauma mind Not reported, not seen, not returned; stolen from my young black homeless, high school diploma with a fourth-grade education, son. If my oldest son could easily choose to work at a full-time living wage job If he could get to work on time, on the right remembered schedule, with a reliable car, and feel like he was not being judged, ridiculed, and bullied by peers and supervisors, shamed and blamed for not being smart enough, clever enough, quick-witted enough, middle-class white enough, man enough, successful enough, then he would not choose to spend long hours and sleepless nights delivering the only therapeutic self-medication to others that has helped him numb the pain of childhood, community authority, chronic post-traumatic stressors which have led to his current social, economic, and political ostracization, and potential imprisonment. I am a certified multicultural community mediator, so my training is about how to most effectively support those experiencing trauma and actively looking for restorative peace and resilient social justice therapeutic outcomes. Mediators begin with identifying victim(s) feelings safety needs and healthy wants, and then explore the probability that perpetrators too are victims of childhood, community, and environmental trauma histories, fraught with win/lose zero-sum contextual stress critical and chronic non win/win events overwhelming panic suppressing slower choice making so also making healthier choices during critical trauma-triggering events. From that lose/lose potential perspective, my son has been repeatedly victimized by police officers defensively trained to tolerate their own predative bullying behaviors. If anyone would benefit from jail time, and/or fines, it is the perpetrators of organized, anti-social crime. But, again, from a restorative justice perspective, blue-shirt officers, too, have been victimized by a militarized, miseducated retributive justice system, rooted in judgment, blame, and shame And not compassion, curiosity, and contextual intelligence Which is why I could not do what you are mandated to do. With unconditional regard, GD, MDiv, MPA, and heartbroken DD's Dad