[News] Mass Incarceration Creates Costly Disaster Across America

[Anti-Imperialist News]

April 4, 2011


Mass Incarceration Creates Costly Disaster Across America

By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/545

Herman Garner doesn't dispute the drug charge 
that slammed him in prison for nine years.

Garner does dispute the damning circumstance that 
doing the time for his crime still leaves him 
penalized despite his having ended his sentence in the penal system.

Garner carries the "former felon" stain.

That status slams employment doors shut in his 
face despite his having a MBA Degree and two years of law school.

"I've applied for jobs at thousands of places in 
person and on the internet, but I'm unable to get 
a job," said Garner, a Cleveland, Ohio resident 
who recently published a book about his 
prison/life experiences titled Wavering Between Extremes.

Recently Garner joined hundreds of people 
attending a day-long conference at Princeton 
University entitled "Imprisonment Of A Race," 
that featured presentations by scholars and 
experts on the devastating, multi-faceted impact 
of mass incarceration across America.

The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than 
any country on earth, accounting for 25 percent 
of the world's prisoners, despite having just 
five percent of the world's population.

America currently holds over two million in 
prisons with double that number under supervision 
of parole and probation, according to federal government figures.

Mass incarceration consumes over $50-billion 
annually across America – money far better spent 
on creating jobs and improving education.

Under federal law persons with drug convictions 
like Garner are permanently barred from receiving 
financial aid for education, food stamps, welfare and publicly funded housing.

But only drug convictions trigger these 
exclusions under federal law. Violent bank 
robbers, white-collar criminals like Wall Street 
scam artists who steal billions, and even 
murderers who've done their time do not face the 
post-release deprivations slapped on those with 
drug convictions on their records, including 
those imprisoned for simple possession, and not major drug sales.

"Academics see this topic of mass incarceration 
as numbers, but for millions it is their daily 
lives," said Princeton conference panelist Dr. 
Khalilah Brown-Dean of Yale University.

Exclusions mandated by federal laws compound the 
legal deprivations of rights found in the laws of 
most states, such as barring ex-felons from jobs 
and even stripping ex-felons of their right to vote.

"Mass incarceration raises questions of 
protecting and preserving democracy," Dr. 
Brown-Dean said, citing the estimated 
five-million-plus Americans barred from voting by 
such felony disenfranchisement laws.

Many of those felony disenfranchisement laws date 
from measures enacted in the late 1800s which 
were devised specifically to bar blacks from 
voting, as a way to preserve America's apartheid.

During the 2000 presidential election Republican 
officials in Florida fraudulently manipulated 
that state's anti-felon voting law to bar tens of 
thousands of blacks from voting. For example, 
many people with common names like John Smith who 
shared their name with a felon were also barred 
from voting, despite having clear records.

Yet George W. Bush won by Florida – the state 
where his brother Jeb served as Governor – by 537 
votes. That victory in the state where George 
W.'s brother Jeb served as governor sent him to the White House.

Policies creating barriers to things like 
education and employment make it "increasingly 
difficult" for persons recently released from 
prison to "remain crime-free" according to a 
report released earlier this year by the Smart on Crime Coalition.

More than 60 percent of the two-million-plus 
people in American prisons are racial and ethnic minorities.

"The U.S. imprisons more than South Africa did 
under apartheid. A nation that promotes democracy 
has a racial caste in its prisons. We must break 
that caste system," said the special guest 
speaker at the "Imprisonment" conference, 
Pennsylvania Death Row Journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who telephoned from prison.

Racism is written all over the 
economically/socially debilitating practices embedded in mass incarceration.

A recent University of Wisconsin study found that 
17 percent of white ex-con job seekers received 
interviews, compared to only five percent of 
black ex-con job seekers – a race-based disparity 
that is additionally devastating for people of color like Garner.

Ohio State University Law Professor Michelle 
Alexander, the featured speaker at that Princeton 
conference streamed live on the internet, said a 
major reason why imprisonment rates soared during 
the past four decades despite decreases in crime 
rates is anti-crime policies craftily manipulated 
by conservative Republican officials for political purposes.

Harsh anti-crimes policies of the 1970s and 1980s 
were largely a "punitive backlash" to advances of 
the Civil Rights Movement, said Alexander, author 
of the hugely popular 2010 book The New Jim Crow: 
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Pennsylvania's prison population, for example, 
soared from 8,243 in 1980 to 51,487 in 2010, 
while the California prison population leapt 
during the same period from 23,264 to over 170,000.

Incarceration costs are particularly obscene when compared to college costs.

A report released in January 2011 by 
Pennsylvania's auditor general that noted the 
Keystone State now spends $32,059 annually to 
imprison one person
a cost that exceeds the 
annual $20,074 tuition for the MBA degree program at Penn State University.

A report released in January 2010 by a UCLA 
professor noted that the Golden State spends over 
$48,000 annually to imprison one person, more 
than four times the tuition cost of UCLA for a 
California resident. Back in 1980, California 
spent more of its state budget on higher 
education than on prisons, but that had reversed 
by 2010, with more of that state's budget going 
for prisons than for higher education.

America's corrosive War on Drugs – a "war" that 
basically ignores drug kingpins – has devastated 
black families, author/professor Alexander said.

"A black child today is less likely to be raised 
in a two-parent household than during slavery," 
she said. "In major urban areas almost one-half 
of black men have criminal records. Thus they 
face a lifetime of legalized discrimination," 
encompassing exclusions from employment and 
access to financial assistance required to secure a viable quality of life.

Africa-Americans are 13 percent of America's 
population and 14 percent of the nation's drug 
users but are 37 percent of persons arrested for 
drugs and 56 percent of the inmates in state 
prisons for drug offenses, noted the 2009 
congressional testimony of Marc Mauer, executive 
director of the Sentencing Project and a conference panelist.

Both ex-felon Herman Garner and Dr. Eddie Glaude 
Jr., chair of Princeton's Center for African 
American Studies, which hosted the conference, 
expressed similar views on the impacts of mass incarceration.

Dr. Glaude said mass incarceration is a "moral 
crisis with political and social consequences for 
America's future," during his remarks opening the conference.

Garner, in an interview, described the US prison 
system as the "biggest problem" in the American black community.

While politicians pushing punitive policies help 
drive mass incarceration, its budget- busting 
persistence implicates the blind-eye of society, 
said one conference panelist, history professor 
Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the new director of 
the fabled Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

"Middle-class whites and blacks in the U.S. are a 
new kind of 'Silent Majority' regarding mass 
incarceration," Dr. Muhammad charged. "This 
'Silent Majority' supports unjust policies of 
increased law enforcement and incarceration as 
the only way to address crime," ignoring proven 
alternative approaches like "jobs, education and ending societal inequities."

Famed Princeton Professor Dr. Cornell West 
criticized both the black middle class and black 
leadership for inaction on mass incarceration.

"The new black middle class and black leadership 
are not attuned to the suffering in poor black 
communities," West said during the conference's 
Keynote Conversation between him and Professor Alexander.

"We need more middle-class people with genuine 
respect for the poor. This is more than serving 
as role model mentors," he said.

Author Alexander said ending the "mind-boggling 
scale" of mass incarceration requires "a major social movement."

One attendee at the Princeton conference, Daryl 
Brooks, an activist in Trenton, NJ who operates 
the popular "Today's News N.J." blog, backs Alexander's suggestion.

"To fix this problem we need mass boycotts. 
America only understands money and violence. We 
need to shutdown businesses like during the 60s," 
said Brooks, who spent three-years in prison for 
a conviction he says was false and aimed at crushing his activism.

"Blacks leaders allowed this incarceration to 
happen by doing too little to challenge this repression," he said.

The Obama Administration is doing too little to 
address mass incarceration and its impacts, many 
of the Princeton panelists and conference attendees agreed.

These critics blast the Obama Administration for 
what they called its tepid approaches to the 
torturous scourge of 240 sexual assaults daily in 
state and federal prisons, charging it with 
foot-dragging on the Prison Rape Elimination Act 
which was approved by Congress during the administration of George W. Bush.

While Obama fulfilled a campaign pledge to 
address the sentencing disparity penalizing 
powder cocaine more harshly than crack cocaine (a 
drug derived from powder cocaine), Obama's 
proclivity for bipartisan consensus has resulted 
in legislation that lower but did not eliminate the disparity.

That legislation did not apply retroactively, 
thus failing to mitigate stiff ten-year-plus 
crack cocaine sentences that have already left 
many blacks and Hispanics languishing in federal prisons.

"Obama and [US Attorney General Eric] Holder have 
no courage when it comes to the prison-industrial 
complex," said Dr. Cornell West.

LINN WASHINGTON, JR. is a founding member of 
ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, 
collectively-owned, journalist-run, 
reader-supported (hopefully!) online alternative newspaper




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