Growing up in Australia, I vividly recall learning about the formation of the country. That during the late 18th and 19th centuries, large numbers of convicts were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the Brits—mainly to alleviate pressure on their own overburdened correctional facilities. I remember stories of convicts who were shipped to Australia for little more than stealing a loaf of bread. It didn’t seem to matter that poverty was prevalent in 19th-century Britain and stealing food, in many cases, was the only means of survival. Over-strained correctional facilities or not, the punishments being doled out seemed horrendously incongruous with the crimes they were addressing. Imagine for a moment, how a man living in London during the 19th century must have felt after being forcibly separated from his loved ones and sent to rot in a jail roughly 9,000 miles away—all because he was trying to feed his family at a time when food, employment and social justice were in short supply. Now imagine if you will, being pulled over by a New York City police officer because you were “caught” riding your bicycle [slowly] on the sidewalk. You respectfully point out to the officer that the bike path is littered with potholes, construction and orange cones, leaving the sidewalk as the only feasible path. You assure him that you’ll return to the bike lane as soon as its obstructions no longer threaten your own safety. Then you realize that you are pleading to a brick wall—albeit with a uniform and gun. Some days later you arrive at community court to state your case, confident that common sense will prevail, yet once again, your arguments fall on deaf ears. You’re told that for your “serious infraction” you’ll be required to don a brightly colored jumpsuit with the words “Midtown Community Court” emblazoned across the back, walk through Times Square for seven hours sweeping up trash and dumping the piles of putrid waste into an oversized garbage can on wheels [which incidentally sounds like the engine of a jalopy as it’s being dragged across the concrete, attracting irritated looks from passers-by.] Sure, it’s no penal colony half way across the world, but it is a similarly warped application of the justice system.
Last week I found myself in the company of a young gentleman convicted of shoplifting, a portly, toothless woman found guilty of drug possession, two turnstile jumpers, a pickpocket and a bar room brawler. We were all reporting for duty at The Times Square Alliance—a government funded sanitation service responsible for keeping the area as tidy as humanly possible [a tall order indeed]. My supervisor was Keith, a burly middle-aged man who’d recently completed a seven-year prison sentence for dealing crack. Keith spoke like a journeyman boxer who had taken too many clean shots to the head. I struggled to decipher much of what he was saying but I assume it had something to do with picking up trash. Keith didn’t seem to notice the look of utter confusion plastered across my face every time he opened his mouth, so I simply got to work and prayed for time to pass quickly. It didn’t. In fact those seven hours spent cleaning trash and hiding my face beneath the large brim of my baseball cap, were the longest of my life. At the conclusion of my community service I was left feeling just as confused as I had been all those months ago when I heard the words, “Driver, get off your bike” booming through a patrol car speaker. A warning would have sufficed. A ticket would have been excessive. Community service was just absurd. I imagined the ghosts of my convict ancestry looking down upon me and remarking, “I know how you feel mate.”
