April 22, 1975. That day was supposed to be the happiest days in my mom's life. It ended in tragedy. That was when my parents where scheduled to get married until they got the news. My grandfather was returning home from work as a third-shift supervisor at defense contractor Sperry Gyroscope. He was fatally struck crossing a street in New York City by a young mother who was trying to control her 4-year old kid who was jumping up and down on the seat next. She hit the gas instead of the brake.

My grandfather was dead. He left a family behind. It was tough on my grandmother who suddenly had no income. She had to quickly find a job and find ways to support herself. Fortunately, she had several relatives around to help out. Ultimately what helped her most was the civil suit and the driver's insurance which helped make up for some of the loss. It was nothing compared to what he could have made, but it helped her retire with a decent standard of living.

Civil justice works. We probably could have put the mother who hit my grandfather in jail for manslaughter resulting from her gross negliance. Why was that kid allowed to dance around in the car? The mother should have put the kid into a child seat or at least buckled him off. If he had refused to comply, the mother should have pulled over and disciplined the kid. Instead of jail time for the mother, my grandmother got money for damages. What good would it do to my family to jail the mother? Not much.

I am angry that I never got to meet my grandfather. His death in 1975 should never have happened, and he should have been able to fully enjoy the fruits of his work long into his retirement. Couldn't she have been more careful? Yet, I believe in the words that we repeat ever week in church, namely: forgive your trespassers, as you forgive those who trespass against you. I forgive her, and I am glad that the courts gave us something of hers that both worked as a punishment and made up for the damages to my grandfather.

Fast-forward three decades. A kid drives drunk and kills a beloved college professor in a tragic car accident.  It's unlikely that he intentionally wanted to kill him, but regardless of that he should not have been driving drunk. This man like my grandfather should still be alive. People are understandable angry about this thoughtless of action of driving drunk. Why did he have to this? Couldn't he had just spent the night in his car or gotten a designated drive to take him home? Everybody knows the dangers of drunk driving.

We've set tough penalties for drunk driving, though they are often flaunted by judges and drunk drivers who think they are a joke. After all, many politicians commit the offense of drunk driving. One out of seven drivers late night on weekends are drunk drivers. District Attorneys are ultimately politicians and might not act in the best interest of the victim if the defendant or his lawyer is a big supporter. Most of David Soares and Paul Clyne's biggest backers where defense attorneys. An independent suit by the parent's would be without such a conflict of interest.

What we need in this case is a strong civil suit that will recover damages and minimize all around. The kid should have to pay as much of the monetary damages he caused to the professor's family. He should be responsible for loss wages and their pain and suffering damages. He should be allowed to work and pay a reasonable percentage of his wages for the next 30 to 50 years to that family to make up for what he did.

You might think that's not punishment. Yet it is punishment. That kid would under that system have to live with the embarrassment of the horrible thing that he did, and have to live a lower standard of living as consequence. Instead of purchasing a nice house and a Silverado pickup truck, he would be stuck with an old car and an apartment. He would see a major portion of his wages constantly go to the family he so badly hurt. Without such a system, we would be gaining no tax dollars from this kid, the family would receive no compensation, and we would be spending $70,000 a year to incarcerate him.

At the same time, we could provide better treatment for this mentally ill individual who chose to drink and drive outside of the criminal justice system then inside it. He could be required to attend alcoholics anonymous and drunk driving victims impact sessions. Mandatory counseling to deal with his personal pain and awareness might also be required. Powerful psychotropic medications might be able to make alcohol an incredibly displeasing taste for him.

Any solution to reforming or replacing the criminal justice system should do the following things:

• Effectively use our knowledge of psychiatry and psychoactive chemicals to prevent essentially intolerable behaviors that substantially cause injure to others after such behavior has occurred at least once.
• Replace wasteful incarceration with keeping the criminally ill in the community through powerful behavioral modification through drugs.
• Keep offenders employed and working to pay back their damages.
• Make the losers pay for legal fees. It's not fair that taxpayers are stuck with the bill whether or not a district attorney has a valid case. It also encourages procecutions when the evidence is not damning and there is a good chance the District Attorney might lose. People should be using their own money to procecute.
• Compensate victims. Our current criminal justice system works almost entirely on revenge and not paying people for their actual loss or pain and suffering. We must get beyond hatred and go to a more practical level of paying for actual loss.
• Eliminate the notion of crime against society except where it affects us all. Illegal air pollution and desecration of public property are examples of real crimes against us all.

I have some concluding thoughts on this matter. I can understand why some people think crime is against us all as it effects our notion of what we perceive as safety. Yet, too often criminal prosecutions that should be private civil matters become public matters, even when there is no public interest. When matters are inheritably personal, a civil case that seeks mandatory treatment for essentially intolerable behavior is far better then one that seeks solely to imprison. We also need to give compensation to victims in the form of monetary award instead of revenge through the criminal justice system.