This virtual event will explore the American criminal justice system – its massive extremes in number, its extension from socio/economic disparities, its foundation in racism, its inevitable bias extending from a flawed court system, its raw concealed display in appalling prison conditions, its ambivalent shadow of the death penalty and its perpetuation through inevitable astronomical rates of recidivism.

It will begin with a case study followed by a mythico/historical exploration of antecedents in ancient Western cultures. A historical view of justice in the Western tradition will lead into philosophical insights pertaining to the necessity of the criminal for cultural order based on power of the privileged.