The corporate media continues to give the American public a steady diet of seamy, scandalous, frightening, and sensationalized stories. Despite their attention getting nature, most of these tales are simply not important enough to make national headlines. No sooner is a missing child, bride, or pregnant woman found, alive or dead, than our intrepid reporters go searching for the next shocking but useless headline.

Fortunately, even as broken clocks are right twice a day, we are sometimes given a sensational story that is worthy of our attention. “Five year-old handcuffed” fits that description perfectly. To make a long story short, a kindergartener in St. Petersburg, Florida had a meltdown, a temper tantrum from hell. Children will do that. The adults who educate them are supposed to know how to handle such situations without calling the cops. The five year old in this case is black in a country that is on a binge of criminalizing as many people as possible, with blacks heading the list.

Ja’eisha Scott is the Rodney King for children. Everyone knew that the LAPD loved to beat the crap out of black people, but King’s beating was caught on tape. Ja’eisha’s tantrum and handcuffing by three adult cops also took place when cameras were rolling, making what has become common place a subject for debate.

Ja’eisha isn’t alone. Every American child is now presumed to be a Columbine killer or drug dealer until proven innocent. Another five year-old was handcuffed in St. Louis, a ten year-old was expelled from school for carrying scissors, and a nine and ten year-old were led from school in cuffs because of a drawing. Zero tolerance drug policies have caused suspensions and expulsions as punishment for taking legal, over the counter medications.

It was a bad week for anyone who cares about true justice in America. Not only was five year-old Ja’eisha Scott taken downtown for questioning, but the Justice Department announced that more and more Americans have been put behind bars. The United States has a larger percentage of its population behind bars than any other nation on earth and crime rates do not explain the appalling figures on incarceration.

In 1980, prisons and jails held about 40,000 inmates for drug offenses. That figure has increased more than ten-fold to about 450,000 today, nearly a quarter of all inmates. Thus, despite the fact that the U.S. has a higher rate of violent crime than other industrialized nations, much of the unprecedented prison population increase of recent years is explained not by crime rates but by changes in sentencing and drug policy.

In other words, the powers that be made a decision to put more people behind bars. Of course, the impact is worse for black people than anyone else, with 12.6 percent of black males in their late twenties in jails and prisons. Comparable figures for Hispanics and whites are 3.6 and 1.7 percent respectively.

The powerful historically used the fear of rising crime to get the public to support the most punitive measures, and of course it was always an excuse to put certain groups in their place. Now the high and mighty don’t even use the fear of crime to exact the worst punishment imaginable.

Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has introduced a bill to restore the death penalty to his state. Massachusetts has done just fine without executing anyone since 1947. Even if there were proof of a death penalty deterrent effect – there isn’t – Massachusetts would still be a curious choice for executions to take place. It has a very low murder rate, ranking 42nd out of the 50 states. 

The Governor may be blood thirsty but he is no fool. He knows that there is rarely a political price to pay for advocating death and violence, even in a low crime state. The death penalty has lost some public support but a majority still approve of its use. Politicians who oppose it are afraid to do so, anticipating campaign commercials charging them with being “soft,” - on crime that is. The lynch mob mentality allows Romney to advocate for death without even a pretense of concern about crime.

A society that prides itself on shaming, punishing and fear mongering just can’t get enough. The system is running out of adults to punish and now must begin the criminalization process at younger and younger ages. The next handcuff victim may be an infant in a stroller.

Our society is so thoroughly propagandized that a large sized burrito can invoke hysteria and a visit from a SWAT team. Truth is stranger than fiction after all. A New Mexico middle school student’s burrito was mistaken for some sort of weapon. The school was locked down, streets were closed, parents rushed to the scene.

It all happened because of a lesson in capitalism. The guilty student had undertaken an extra credit assignment to create commercial advertising. He imagined a restaurant that makes big burritos.

Fear, stupidity and lessons in capitalism all converged to make idiots out of adults who are supposed to educate or protect kids. It seems they are doing neither of those things. The burrito kid may go on to entrepreneurial success. If he does it will because he learned how to manipulate people into doing what serves him.