Jim Crow Incarceration Nation - Land of the Free?

[teryang]

Must read this article which is filled with interesting data. Excerpts cannot convey the impact of this well written description of our penal system. 5 percent of the worlds population but 25 percent of the worlds prisoners and the world's highest imprisonment rates.

Starve the Racist Prison Beast: Review of America's System of Mass Incarceration

by Paul Street

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=STR20060419&articleId=2284

April 19, 2006

Prison Nation: "Not Unless This Country Plunges Into Fascism"

...Contrary to the "law and order" rhetoric cultivated by many politicians and policymakers, however, there has been no clear or consistent pattern of rising criminality, including violent criminality, that might explain the upward trend of America's prison numbers. "Since 1980," journalist Vince Beiser notes, "the national crime rate has meandered down, then up, then down again, but the incarceration rate has marched relentlessly upward every single year." During the 1990s, indeed, the US incarceration rates rose dramatically in spite of crime rates that fell, thanks largely to fairly robust economic growth during the "Clinton boom." "Crime is dropping," noted the well-regarded public affairs journal Illinois Issues, "but the prison population isn't."

...The central factor is that imprisonment in the US has "changed," in Pager's words, "from a punishment reserved for only the most heinous offenders to one extended to a much greater range of crimes and much larger segment of the population . Recent trends in crime policy have led to the imposition of harsher and longer sentences for a wider range of offenses, thus casting an ever widening net of penal intervention." It is largely for this reason that the majority of Americans entering the inherently violent space of America's "prison nation," where as many as 7 percent of inmates are raped, now do so for nonviolent crimes. Between 1980 and 1997, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) reports, "the number of violent offenders committed to state prison nearly doubled (up 82 percent)," but "the number of nonviolent offenders tripled (up 207 percent)." People who committed nonviolent crimes accounted for more than three fourths of the nation's massive increase in prisoners between 1978 and 1996. The Justice Policy Institute estimates that there are currently more than 1.2 million nonviolent criminals behind bars in the US.

...These trends have impacted black communities with special harshness. While blacks make up just 15 percent of illicit drug users, they account for 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses. They comprise 42 percent of those held in federal prison for drug charges and 62 percent of those in state prisons. Not surprisingly, white drug offenders are much less likely than their counterparts to serve time in prison. Blacks constituted more than 75 percent of the total drug prisoners in America in one third of all states according to a report issued in 2000 by the prestigious human rights organization Human Rights Watch. In my own state, Illinois, Human Rights Watch reported that "blacks constituted an astonishing 90 percent of all drug offenders admitted to prison in Illinois" in 1996. By 2000, the percentage had barely fallen to 89 percent, making Illinois number two in the nation in terms of this key disparity.

Chicago Story

As of June 2001, I learned, there were nearly 20,000 more black males in the Illinois state prison system than the number of black males enrolled in the state's public universities. There were more black males in the state's correctional facilities just on drug charges than the total number of black males enrolled in undergraduate degree programs in state universities.

[DELUSIONAL]

1. This country has a very long history of using prisons

to enforce cultural whims.

When I was researching my family's genealogy I discovered that my Colonial Ancestors -- who lived in the New England area did jail time for really trivial offenses. Cussing was one that kept getting Baker Nason jail time. Now this guy was a seaman -- but the uptight puritans couldn't put up with "bad language". I wonder how they would judge Cheney. Maine has put most of the Colonial records on the Internet. If you've got New England seamen in your family tree, my guess is that they did jail time. Talk about family values -- the guy's been away for months and end up in jail.

Ah and then a woman who was chasing after a married man -- got jail time. But then after his wife died, they got married.

I believe that the current fad of jailing people for drug offense is just as stupid as the Puritans jailing mariners for talking like sailors. We need to understand why people use drugs and look at other countries who successfully deal with the drug addicted citizens. In the long run it would be cheaper to treat -- or provide drugs than the high cost of keeping drug addicts jailed.

Jails should be reserved for the truly dangerous individuals who must be removed from society.

Also jails today are being used to house people who should be in mental institutions. This is a whole other issue that must be addressed by our society.

[teryang]

2. drug offenses are the key to locking up minority males n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Yup. Not only does it take them off the streets and out of the

work force, but in many states it disenfranchises them so they can have no say in changing the system that created them.

BTW - how many people are incarcerated in China? IIRC, they are the only country in the world with a greater number incarcerated, but that's only because of the size of their population - that our RATE of incarceration is the highest in the world.

And we are the 'leaders of the FREE world'?

[sweetheart]

7. The US has passed china

The USA is now the world's largest prison, bar none,
no need to fiddle per-capita numbers to get clear, its
both in absolute and per capita terms.

[JeffR]

4. Many thanks, teryang

I just read the full piece you graciously linked, and I urge everyone here to do the same.

[DrBloodmoney]

5. k/r for an important issue n/t

[leftchick]

6. These figures are just stunning!

And outrageous! :(

<snip>

The incarceration rate for African-Americans is 1,815 per 100,000 compared to 609 per 100, 000 for Latino-Americans, 99 per 100,000 for Asian-Americans, and 235 per 100, 000 for American whites. For black adult males the incarceration rate is a remarkable 4, 484 per 100,000, compared 1, 668 per 100,000 for Hispanic males and 1,318 per 100,000 for white males. Roughly one in ten of the world's prisoners is an African-American male. In mid-year 1999, 11 percent of Black US males in their 20s and early 30s were in prison and 33 percent of Black male high school dropouts were in prison or in jail.

Especially chilling is a statistical model used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the turn of the 21st century to determine the lifetime chances of incarceration for individuals in different racial and ethnic groups. Based on current rates, it predicts that a young Black man age 16 in 1996 faced a 29 percent chance of spending time in prison during his life. The corresponding statistic for white men in the same age group was 4 percent.

Consistent with these findings, nothing is more likely to predict high incarceration totals and rates at the state level than the possession of a disproportionately large black population. Also worth noting, race is the single largest factor determining which states deny voting rights to felons and ex-felons. The higher the black composition of a state's prisoner population, the more likely that state is to disenfranchise its officially marked "criminal element."

[Nay]

8. The high incarceration rate is a natural outcome of a for-profit

prison system. I grew up in Florida, which experimented with one of the first for-profit prison setups. Many of us, even back then, could see that for-profit prisons would invariably lead to. . .more people being thrown in prison for lesser and lesser offenses. After all, if we had a program that encouraged other ways of dealing with minor offenders, the prisons wouldn't make money. And we were right.

Add to that the desire of many racist types to disenfranchise blacks and also give employers reasons not to hire blacks ("he's got a record!"), and the powers that be got a powerful weapon in the prison system as it is set up today.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

9. We are doing everything we can to create a permanent criminal underclass

bred of racism, poverty and hopelessness which leads to desperation. We offer nothing but despair in the large economy size.

"The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small." In other words, some day there will be a day of reckoning for these heartless actions.

[tom_paine]

10. K & R --and now with Halliburton Homeland Camps, it will get much worse

You think those monsters are building them so they can sit unused?

[Asgaya Dihi]

11. Good post

In addition to the more obvious aspects of the problem such as the for profit prison system we also have a fairly hidden aspect that most people aren't aware of. The population is shifted for the census, rather than being credited to the districts where they were taken from, will be released to, and where their families live, the census count is shifted to credit that population to the homes of their jailers. That shifts everything from funding for schools and other infrastructure to the representative and voting power of the district. It's a large and mostly hidden incentive for growth for its own sake.

http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/

[vickitulsa]

12. Thanks for this article, Teryang!

I've read about 1/3 of it and will finish it later, but I thought perhaps that after the statistics have been boggling the minds of many DUers, it might be helpful to hear about the PERSONAL side of America's status as "Prison Nation."

I was in the State pen in Oklahoma for 4 months back in 1990. I don't reveal this fact to a lot of people, normally, for obvious reasons. But because I felt DUers would be way more understanding and tolerant and because this history gives me a certain amount of experience and therefore knowledge of prison issues, I have mentioned it here several times. Not one single time did anyone reply to such posts I've made, however. (I think almost everyone who hasn't "been there" feels somewhat uncomfortable talking directly with a FELON, no matter what political views they have on prison issues. And then there are many if not most in the "Free World" who just plain reject any ex-cons they may meet....)

When people ask me WHY I did time, why I'm a felon (which they can't imagine when they get to know me), I usually say, "I was in the same room with some pot." That's about what it amounted to, though of course my husband at that time was technically selling small bits -- all to friends, not "customers" we did not know. He did that much solely because it was the only way he could afford to acquire some for himself.

I had been growing more and more nervous about Dave's "dealing" as I saw some of those friends we knew go to prison for piddling little drug "crimes." One of them, the nicest one of the bunch, died in prison under suspicious circumstances -- but of course his death was never even investigated.

Anyway, I was engaging in an all-out campaign to get Dave (who is now my ex) to STOP dealing, in part because, as I warned him, "They're probably gonna arrest me too if they get you." I chose to try to persuade him rather than to just leave him -- and for that "crime," I was scooped up along with him when he got busted, just as I had predicted!

Dave was a good man and did not deserve what they threw at him, and even the circumstances of his arrest amounted to a "set-up," where cops who are busting one drug offender threaten extreme punishment if that person doesn't give up (or "roll on") others of his friends for arrest and incarceration. Cops often then claim that they have "broken up a large ring of drug dealers," when in fact that's just plain nonsense.

But you must remember that the climate in which law enforcement officials have been operating for quite a long time has been the "get tough on crime" one which calls for ever larger numbers of American citizens to be imprisoned. They can't reasonably "roll up" all the major, serious drug dealers, of course. They are the ones at the top of the chain who almost NEVER go to prison but who DO GET RICH just like their white-collar-criminal counterparts such as those at Enron (and virtually every other big corporation).

Here's a demographic about prison you might not read in any article full of statistics: "Prisons are for poor people." Now that isn't my own observation I'm voicing, although I did notice it right away upon entering "The System," as we who have been on the Inside call it. That is a quote from my Case Manager at one facility, and she sighed as she said it to the five of us who were part of her caseload. This lady happened to be black, and she didn't add the other obvious truth: that blacks often become the majority in prison populations, for the first time in their lives. A fact which also correlates to the poverty stats.

From that you should understand that for most whites who end up in prison, we find ourselves in the minority for the first time in our lives! Quite a shocker, I can assure you.

But because of this one fact, it's the blacks who create and spread the peculiar language of prisons, too. They set trends not just in speech but in clothing and overall behavior. The tables are turned on the whites and we lived in a certain amount of fear at all times. Especially the whites that clearly prefer to keep to themselves and their "own kind." I wasn't one of those since I'd been comfortable around blacks all my life, but I witnessed many times the intimidation factor that arose from that fact alone.

Blacks grow up knowing their chances of going to prison are high. The boys especially are well aware that incarceration will likely be a "rite of passage" for them. I think many may look upon it almost as a proving ground -- or "gladiator school," as many inmates refer to it. Younger convicts can learn a LOT about committing future crimes in prison and they do. They learn to accept violence as a way of life, so that they are often hardened and bitter when and if they do get out, and that makes it all the more difficult for them back in the Free World.

GANGS are also a huge problem that may have begun in prisons. For many gangstas, prison life has a lot of rewards because the men are unfettered by a feminine brake on their violent behavior. Other cultural norms have little to no influence on the Inside, such as tender thoughts and loving behavior toward family members -- young children in particular. The gang becomes the family for them! And all gangs have members both on the Inside and on the Outside.

Asgaya Dihi made an excellent point, too, with respect to the negative effect of prisons becoming for-profit operations instead of state-run institutions. Just like our health care system in this country went to hell in a handbasket when it ceased to be non-profit and was "privatized." (The Repugs love that word, don't they? "Privatized." Sounds so good to them! Doesn't have any negative connotations to most people -- YET.)

But the change in our prison system from state-run to for-profit has had a terrible affect for everyone involved, including the employees and staff who work there! The private employers pay substantially less than the state did, and many offer only minimum wage or barely above it to their C.O.s. There are many more escapes of prisoners now because private companies want to hire as few as possible to keep their payroll amounts low. Those who are hired are largely unskilled, untrained, and unwise in the ways of managing inmates, which creates horrendous problems.

Also you have to understand that CONDITIONS in our prison system have grown measurably worse than they were in the last half of the 1900's. Because it's all about profit now, there is skimming in every area, doing things on the cheap, embezzling right and left ... it's just a nightmare. No one wants to THINK about all these things, so nothing is done to fix the situation. The medications that are provided to be given to inmates who require them are largely "palmed" or outright stolen en masse by the STAFF and sold on the street for huge profits. Even the food they serve in prisons is terribly substandard because the Man wants to save money for himself in every possible way. Who cares, after all, if inmates have to eat greasy slop for years on end? They're FED, aren't they?

You would not BELIEVE what prisoners have to eat, I can tell you that. We made dour jokes all the time about it ... the "green baloney" which was honestly GREEN IN COLOR because it's the cheapest made and untreated to retard the greenish appearance meat can get. During lockdowns, which happen more and more often in our huge, unmanageable prisons, all inmates get to eat is green baloney sandwiches and apples -- if they still even provide the apples!

I'm sure things have gone downhill significantly since I was released -- and that's a scary thought, trust me. Those who come out of The System in this prison nation are understandably angry. You treat a human being like a wild beast and s/he will behave more like one. And like the article pointed out, the barriers to re-assimilation are daunting to say the least, so that anger builds and builds.

My felony record didn't impede my employment much at all, but only because I was a secretary, a woman, and I LIED about being a felon on the applications. Not many employers check a lowly female employee's record. But for Dave, it was significantly different! He was always having to beg for work even though he was highly skilled, and that gets awfully discouraging over time.

When I was released from prison, I was so concerned about the powder keg The System had become in my country that the first thing I did was start to write a book about my experiences. I thought if the American people just knew what was going on in prisons, they would be outraged and fearful and might actually DO something about it. It was the best book I'd written so far, and the only reason I didn't seek to have it published was my house burned down and I lost all my computer files when they were destroyed in the fire.

So if anyone has any questions or wants to discuss this issue with someone who HAS "been there, done that," I'd be happy to respond. The statistics are powerful and frightening; but the reality of the humanitarian crisis building in this prison nation is at the heart of the matter. Those aren't "others" inside those razor-wire fences and towering walls -- those are your fellow Americans!

[Asgaya Dihi]

14. Thank you

It couldn't have been easy to post that, thanks for doing it. I had a bad time with the system as well, though mine was as a kid. Skipped school to avoid a gang problem and they thought they'd teach me a lesson by locking me up for it. That turned into four and a half years including two rounds of over 30 days in isolation between the ages of 10 and 14. Lots of fun, and it did have lasting effects.

Too many of us try to hide from the past, try to just ignore it. I did for years, but I found that the anger didn't go away and it was still eating at me under the surface decades later. That's why I got involved in learning about the system in the first place, and the more I learned the more I realized that I wasn't anywhere near to being alone in this, rather the system was expanding and taking still more lives.

We've got to get involved and change things. The prison and jail systems have grown by about 6 times in size since the early 70's, well past any justification that population growth could offer. We are creating an institutionalized generation of dysfunctional citizens who don't even know how to survive on the outside anymore, and the cost of that is only starting to show. Even if we stopped today the damage is going to still be becoming more clear over coming years, and if we continue it just gets worse.

[Mythsaje]

15. I know several people that ended up in prison

though, unlike you or even your husband, what they did DESERVED prison time. My oldest friend, who I'd known since Jr. High, spent 9 years of a 15 year sentence behind bars. Another acquaintance--I hesitate to call him a friend at this point--has life without parole.

My wife is a former CO and I'm afraid it influenced her outlook on people in general, which is too bad. I love her, but she's not the most empathetic person in the world.

Prison scares the crap out of me. I'm pretty sure I'd rather be dead.

[vickitulsa]

22. I KNOW I'd rather be dead than back in prison, Mythsaje!

At least if I had to stay more than a week. I was 41 then and already on crutches with my bad knee. Imagine being in prison and on crutches -- it's like being in hell with a broke back!

I understand that there certainly are people who deserve to be and should be incarcerated. Unfortunately, because of the way the prison system works, it's the ones who are already Inside that get rotatetd OUT again as more NEW ones come in. That means a lot of times violent offenders who don't have really long sentences are put back on the streets way sooner than they should ever be. It's making life for free citizens even more dangerous than it was before.

And one of the things that grabbed me the hardest while I was Inside was that about 60 percent of those inmates never should have been incarcerated in the first place! Of course I was in women's prisons, where there are lower numbers of violent offenders. But still, the last institution I was in before release was "co-ed" (believe it or not!), and I met plenty of men there that I was frightened to realize were about to be free again.

What shook me up was that I looked around me in the general population and thought, "How many of these people really NEED to be locked up?" And it was a rude awakening, I assure you. Yes, I was in miminum security joints, but even there, we just don't need to be filling cells and dorms with citizens who could do with some social programs and education instead of lockup.

And what about people like Asgaya Dihi who got tossed into jail or some form of lockup at age 10, supposedly for just a short time to "teach her a lesson" but then she ended up in there for 4-1/2 YEARS? That just doesn't make sense, and it happens more often than people like to think.

Another of the dirty little secrets about The System in this country is that once you are Inside, your stay can easily be prolonged beyond your sentence because you are always subject to be attacked or otherwise involved in crap that gets you more charges and more years. I tiptoed through my four months knowing that at any moment a fight could break out near me and fall into me, and if I even tried to just get away, the guards would throw ALL of us into the hole. Didn't matter who started anything, not in there!

When I first arrived at the main facility I served my time in, there was a woman in the hole who had been there for a month and still had EIGHT MONTHS IN THE HOLE to go -- simply because she cussed out a C.O. When this guard told her to shut up, she kept cussing her (we called that particular C.O. "Hitler"), so the officer gave her THREE Class A Writeups and that meant three months in the hole for each one! Nine months with nothing, no books to read, no exercise, no nothin to break the intense, unmitigated boredom that drives humans insane.

And what too many people do NOT understand yet is that IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. They think it can't, that there's NO WAY they would ever find themselves locked up. But they're wrong. You should hear the stories of those who arrive in prison -- one was a 73-year-old lady who'd just received her third DUI, and our hardass OK judges thought she needed to be in prison for that! Take away her driver's license and even her car, YES, but putting a vulnerable old lady into the pen? It's just madness run amok.

I'll bet your wife is glad she's not working in The System now that it's being privatized, huh?

Oh, and you can tell her, I wrote a song about the guards in prison, and what a shitty job THEY had. The lyrics were to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's song about "I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail." My version went like this:

I'd rather be an inmate than a guard
It's so hard
Out in the yard
Oh yes it's hard.

I thought they must go home depressed every single damned day... what an environment to work in!

[Asgaya Dihi]

23. Right

I'm a he rather than a she, but you're right on the money with the rest. Once you go in it doesn't matter how it started, and it doesn't matter who was right or wrong. Defend yourself and it could be time, try to argue and explain and it's just more trouble.

Worse than that is the fact that there's actually negative reenforcement, when the only people around you are either bad guys or trying to get along with bad guys then that's your peer group and you've got to fit in too if you plan to survive. People might go in for simply buying a bag on the wrong corner and violating a safe school zone, but that same kid is likely to come out mean, trained and pissed. We're creating a lot of our own criminals, we aren't preventing them. Yeah, prison (edit: or any other lockup) is a nasty place, and the longer a person is there the greater the chances that one day they'll be the guy the new kid is scared of.

[Mythsaje]

25. In a word...

counter-productive.

[vickitulsa]

29. Sorry, I couldn't tell for sure but figured you'd tell me if you're a he

not a she. :)

I wish I could say things as succintly as you do! Your one-paragraph summary about the negative reinforcement in prison is excellent!

This is something people just don't stop to think about or I think they might well see the flaws in a system like ours. You put an inexperienced, younger person in prison with older ones who "know the street," and the first thing that happens (particularly among the males) is that the young guy watches the others and starts to pick up on whatever they are willing to teach. Toughness and even violence are "respected," while any sort of conscience and kindness are frowned upon and even punished.

Our prisons really ARE turning out, as you said in your other post, dysfunctional human beings who really don't know how to survive on the Outside! The coping mechanisms they develop inside -- especially if they do a few years of hard time so that behaviors become second nature, they try to transfer to their free life, and this just gets them into trouble again immediately. The only places they can "fit in" in the free world is with other ex-cons, gangsters, and thugs.

Oh, and that's another thing that is really ridiculous. When you're released, they tell you not to associate with other felons or you can be sent back to prison (if you are paroled or pre-paroled). Oh yeah, RIGHT! Like as if the fine folk out here who are NOT felons and who find out you ARE are going to associate with you!

So many of the rules and regs they give you just don't work or aren't practical or reasonable for so many people. They tell you you MUST get a job, but then employers turn ex-cons down over and over again. Our system creates recidivism by its very nature.

Free people don't quite get it that there is a society on the Inside. It's not like the ones out here, but it does have its own culture and norms and accepted behaviors and unacceptable behaviors. The problem is, it's like a mirror image -- the acceptable and unacceptable behaviors are flip-flopped from what they are out here. So when people get out after a few years inside, their values and instinctive behaviors are all upside down.

They don't call prison "gladiator school" and a "jungle" for nothing. It's a dangerous world, even in minimum security. The C.O.s are NOT there to protect inmates from other inmates. And one of my biggest gripes about The System in this country is that rape is rampant and absolutely unchecked inside prisons.

You hear about it all the time, so people living in free society can't even claim not to be aware of this travesty. Even on Law and Order or other cop or court shows, you hear the detectives over and over again actually theatening suspects by warning them about how they're gonna be raped in jail or prison! For women in particular, the guards are a source of rape threat as well ... it happens all the time, and you have NO RECOURSE. Try to file a grievance on a C.O., and you're in for big trouble from ALL of them.

People don't know that you have NO RIGHTS as an inmate, even though you get papers telling you your rights Inside. The brutal truth is, you're just meat, you're subhuman, you're not "normal" anymore to anyone who might be able to help you. New inmates, first-timers like I was, often see things going on Inside that they can hardly believe. We say, "But, but, but.... they can't DO that!"

And a seasoned inmate will always reply: "THEY CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT." Period. And it's true. If you cause trouble, make waves for the staff, they can write you up, throw you in the hole for extended stays, punish you in ways people out here cannot begin to imagine. And if that doesn't bring you in line, they can "disappear" you. You think ANYONE who claims it was an employee of the prison that caused a death of an inmate will be BELIEVED? Fat chance! The other inmates just shrug it off when serious injury or death of another inmate occurs. They KNOW not to try to report the truth. Who'll believe a convict?

I'm not saying all guards and prison staff are sadists or killers or jerks or brutal sorts who thrive on others' misery, but they do get hardened and impatient and fed up. Imagine the world they work in, what they witness, every day. If they CARED, they wouldn't last a month in there! (But at least they only spend eight hours a day there, unlike the prisoners!)

If the guards and other prison staff let it bother them the way inmates are forced to live, they couldn't go on with their jobs. So all empathy for the human beings who end up in prison has to be shut down.

And all this doesn't even address the fact that somewhere around five percent, conservatively, of those in prison are not guilty of the charges they were convicted on. Doesn't matter, though. Even when new DNA evidence forces the State to release prisoners who were on DEATH ROW or in for life or long sentences, some having served 20 years or more, you have little to no recourse. At best they award such a person a few thousand dollars ... and NO APOLOGY!

That's why I say people who think "it could never happen to me" are just dreaming. And in an America that becomes more coldhearted every year as the prison population swells, it becomes more and more likely that it WILL happen to more of us.

IT IS A BUSINESS, people! FOR PROFIT BUSINESS. It's a machine that needs to be fed, needs warm bodies to incarcerate and warehouse.

BTW, I'm still reading that speech you provided a link to, Asgaya, and it's EXCELLENT! I knew most of this info because I've researched it, but it's really well put together by this guy with terrific credentials. Thanks for that, I've bookmarked it to share with anyone who is willing to listen.

Actually, a lot of the things Undergroundpanther said about our willingness to submit to authority are very true, and that frightens me as it DOES ring true in my ears. We've become far too willing to OBEY. We've allowed our own government to convince us "They" own our public parks and forests -- the very substance of Nature herself! Now they're selling them, and we just TAKE IT!

It's crazy ... and we're headed down a dangerous, scary, dark path in this country.

And yet, even if many read all our words about the serious danger they're in regarding our Prison Nation, most of them, even savvy DUers, will move on and not let what we say worry them. But in a time when the Bush Reich have asserted their right to imprison ANYONE without charges or legal representation, INDEFINITELY, folks really ought to start thinking about making sure our most basic rights are still respected.

[Asgaya Dihi]

31. No problem

The name itself doesn't really make it clear I guess. I'm a small part Cherokee and it's a historical name as well as the name of a wolf in a refuge south of me that I'm fond of, so I figured it was as good a choice as any. No problem on the link and such :)

It is pretty hard especially for people just coming out, or for those who have been living on or near the streets who are trying to rise above it. Inside if someone grabs you from behind it's probably an attack, on the outside maybe they just want to know what time it is. The rules change and people aren't prepared for that after a few years.

I used to resent authority and couldn't understand how anyone could be a cop or a prison guard, but although there are some who have no business with any authority over others most are probably trying to be decent people and just don't know what else to do in a screwed up system. What really gave me faith that we had a shot at real change was the guys at LEAP, every one of them is either current or former law enforcement and listening to them was a lot like what I had been trying to tell people for years. It has a lot more authority coming from narcotics cops, prison wardens, and ex-Governors. I talk to cops and such any chance I get now, see if I can't refer them to LEAP and get them to talk to another cop about it.

People tend to understand that they are the real deal, not some kid with bright ideas so they aren't as easy to ignore. That's why I help spread the word around about them where I can. Cops and other law enforcement have the potential to be some of our best friends in this, they can tell it from a perspective that few have reason to doubt if we can just get them to understand it from our point of view.

In my opinion the best thing we could do would be to do the best we can to put the anger aside and just talk to people, tell them the parts that the news doesn't cover. We've got a growing base of results with new studies on alternatives being done, and a growing list of believable supporters. We aren't there yet, but we're closer than I've ever seen it and awareness is spreading if we give it a push.

[Asgaya Dihi]

34. A few details you might be able to use

I should have wrote a better note last night, was a bit tired. Sorry ;) I wanted to leave you with a few links that you might find useful, maybe you've run across some of them in the past but if so then others can use them.

You do have a skill with people that I don't, I'm good with facts and details but it's a bit cold to some people at times. You do a better job of putting a human face on it than I ever could, it's a skill worth using. Have to be careful how we do it though, although anger can be therapeutic to us and is fine between us the public doesn't understand it most of the time. They think they are seeing why we were put in, not the results of it. It's something to consider, we have to be aware of who we're talking to and control the impression we give if we can.

A great site that you might find useful is The November Coalition, the lady who runs it is good people and started the project when her brother got locked up and told her what was going on inside, said they needed help. She's been doing it ever since and has a great list of resources, both for support and for activism.

Home Page of The November Coalition: Working to End Drug War Injustice
http://www.november.org/

End Prohibition is a web page that pulls together links from a few groups, kind of a catch-all for some current news and links including to a weekly radio program on the drug war that interviews some of the leaders in the reform movement. Not all links are obvious, but move the mouse around over topics and many are click-able.

End Prohibition
http://www.endprohibition.org/

The next one is an extensive collection of facts and figures on the drug war, it takes a bit of time to figure out how to find all the parts we need but I've yet to find a better collection of useful info all in one place. Quick links to topics at the bottom of the page, select page list and you'll get an idea of how big the place really is. Most charts are click-able and lead to more info.

Homepage of truth: the Anti-drugwar
http://www.briancbennett.com/

Last ones for the moment, it's a collection of radio programs from American Radioworks public radio that explores the system and shares some details worth knowing. Audio should be linked on the page. First is the system itself, how it grew and how it still grows. Second shows how and why it's so hard to get back into life after prison. The last one is plain scary, it shows how we're taking violent felons and all but sending them to college to perfect their skills, then releasing them so we can lock up a drug offender. Prison gangs.

American RadioWorks : Corrections Inc.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/corrections/index.html

Hard Time: Life After Prison
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/hardtime/index.html

Locked Down: Gangs In the Supermax
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prisongangs/

I've got a lot more, literally dozens, but that should be a good bunch to start with. Let me know if I can do anything to help, and thanks for the posts yesterday. It does help a lot to put a human face on the stats.

[vickitulsa]

36. Very good info, thanks for the links!

I just checked back to see if there were any further posts to this thread ... sorry I didn't see this one sooner but yesterday I was busy all day long dodging hailstones as big as baseballs and watching the wall clouds for twisters dropping down out of them!

Yep, here in Tulsa we had three direct hits from three different storm systems on Monday, so I had to keep the PC shut down most of the day. Lightning fried my system once before, and I've learned a surge protector doesn't protect my DSL modem!

Anyway, I really appreciate all the helpful info you've provided ... you really have done a lot of research that will be VERY useful, to me and to anyone else who wants to join this fight.

I haven't done much in this regard since my house burned in '93 and I lost that book about my experiences in prison that I was writing. It was so discouraging to lose that, and I was also kept pretty busy working full time since Dave could hardly get work; and then he was so angry about how being a designated FELON affected his life, he ended up hanging with other ex-cons and drugger types and just went downhill, becoming a crackhead eventually. That's why he made the mistake that caused our housefire, in fact -- and why I finally divorced him.

Doesn't mean I'm not still interested in making more people aware of the dangers and wrongs of this Prison Nation's practices, but I am only now trying to write anything about my experiences again. I was disappointed in the lack of response here at DU when I'd mention what happened to me, since I felt folks here would be very concerned about this problem and might want to actively work against the system that creates so much misery in our country and poses a major threat to all of us. I do understand why people shy away from someone who admits she is a felon (I was told there are no "ex-felons," that once you were one, you were one for life). But if I can't even talk about it without people running the other way, it seems I can't be very effective in combatting the problem.

Meeting you here has lifted my hopes, however! :) I guess I'd better send this post to you via DU mail, just in case you've stopped checking this thread, but I'll go ahead and post it here in case anyone else cares to read it.

You're absolutely right about the anger, btw. Another reason I had to take a break from this thread was I needed the time to cool down. ;) The strange thing is, I normally get angrier at the apathy I encounter among others when I talk about these issues than I do in recounting what happened to me, Asgaya! Not angry AT people, but angry that repeatedly I seem to hit a wall the minute I bring up the subject.

But then anyone trying to tackle such a huge problem and one with such a stigma is sure to suffer immense frustration, and I'd better get used to it if I plan to keep on this road. This is why I felt the book I was writing had such promise. One always cools down and talks more evenly (and rationally) when writing a book -- if not initially, then in the editing phase. So in my book I didn't come off like a person filled with rage; and I was about halfway through the book when the house burned, so I could already see that it had real potential for publication.

I had learned from my earliest writing efforts when simple computer crashes sent large chunks of my writing into the "cyber black hole" that what I wrote the second time around was often even better than the first try. (I also learned to hit Control-S frequently to save my work every few sentences!)

What I'm saying is I think if I tried again to write that book, it would be even better than the first attempt, so I may think about doing that.

However, it might be a better use of my time to shoot for shorter pieces such as magazine articles. I'm disabled now, so I have plenty of time; but my hands are crippled with pain (from 33 years as an executive secretary typing 130 wpm) and that limits my ability to type now. I can use a voice recognition program, but even though I've got it "trained" it is still clumsy and slow for me in doing creative writing of any sort. The good news is that since I haven't had to type for eight hours a day now for the last five years, my hands have recovered somewhat so that I CAN type again. Even for extended periods, if I'm careful.

I appreciate your encouragement and the kind words about my writing, especially regarding putting a human face on the prison problem. In part because I do type so fast, my writing often comes off very much like spoken conversation, and I've been told many times that this makes it easy to read -- even draws people in. I hope so! Because if I could do anything with my "golden years" that would make me feel good about what I've done in my life, it would be to effectively inform others of the humanitarian travesty of our legal/court/prison system in this country. If I can motivate them to take action to reverse the present trend, I would be ecstatic!

Thanks again for the links and for your own excellent posts, Asgaya. I think YOU put a very human face on the problem, too, especially since you experienced the horrors of the lockup as a CHILD. I have one question at this point for you. Do you find that others react more positively to you because you were a child when you were incarcerated? I would think that might give you a little bit of a break from the kneejerk condemnation that we who were adult felons receive.

Let's keep in touch, if that's okay with you. Your encouragement here at DU has fed my desire to get active and do what I can to alert people to the problem of what Whitebread called "mass incarcertaions." I'm still reading his speech, and it's just so very GOOD! I'll be quoting him for months, I'm sure! :)

[Asgaya Dihi]

37. First things first

I'll answer the more personal aspect last since I might ramble a bit, but I do want to get a few thoughts out first.

One of the most important things that I've found since I started this was we have to pace ourselves, this is a long term thing that's going to take years. When it comes to the idea that we can regulate better then get rid of drugs it took me a couple of years to get used to the idea, it's going to take others time as well. The studies we've done so far bear it out though, it's just a matter of reminding people how bad what we're doing now works and putting options that do work better in front of them. They'll take a couple of years too maybe, it's not a debate we'll win today. It's just about putting information in front of people, give them something to think about. When we start to look at it like a debate we're going to push them away instead, it's uncomfortable at first.

I tend to do this stuff morning to night and most days of the week when I'm at it, then when I start to get frustrated I take a break for a bit and find other things to do. Find your own pace and don't get burned out, minds can be changed or opened with just a few well placed words here and there. It doesn't have to be a full time job if it's something that's going to eat at you, and if that's the case it shouldn't be. Take a long term view, it'll help.

Last point for the moment, don't make it just about the prison system. There is SO much more involved here. Our drug war in the late 1990's was estimated at roughly 8% of all international trade, referenced in the following link in a letter on the right hand side. http://www.dpft.org/voices.htm

That money finances terrorists, organized crime, and revolution around the world as well as the corruption of our own police and judiciary. In Columbia they are moving billions of drug profits into politics and trying to take over the system, in Afghanistan it finances the resurgent Taliban, and it's felt around the world in one form or another. It's a market we created, and we can destroy as easily as regulating the stuff ourselves.

Prohibition was supposed to protect our kids, it doesn't. Death rates have climbed by 7 times in cocaine with a similar rise in heroin as well. Lifetime use is up, not down, more people know what drugs feel like now than ever and more die from it. Rather than getting rid of drugs we've spawned new variants such as crack and designer drugs as well. And in the end we can't even keep the stuff out of our own prisons, it's been a record of nothing but damage and failure from start to finish. The facts are all on our side, just share them. As Jack Cole of LEAP says, drugs are just too dangerous to leave in the hands of criminals, better that we regulate and control them instead.

Ok, to the rest. I'd love to stay in touch with you, anything I can do to help just say the word. I sometimes don't check in here for a while, sometimes for a couple of months, so I'll send you my email and you can contact me there if need be. I tend to have too much of a one track mind and don't want people to get tired of it by being too pushy in one place all at once ;)

This part isn't as easy to answer, both because reactions vary and because I suck at reading people sometimes. Now and then yes, people seem to think it's ridiculous that a kid could go though something like that. More often though it seems to bring confusion, they just don't understand or believe how something like that could happen. There's a dirty little secret to the juvenile system, at least there was when I was a kid though it probably varies by State. If you commit a crime they give you a sentence and you've got an idea when you might get out, but if you just refuse to cooperate they declare you uncontrollable and they now own you either till you turn 18, or till they think they are done with you. It's not easy to convince them that it's time to let you go, especially when you don't really understand why you're there in the first place. When I was a kid gangs weren't as bad as they are now, it was more fists and knives than guns, but it was bad enough at 10 and it didn't make sense to me that I was the one in trouble. Oh well.

Problem I have now is that I do suck at reading people, I try to be a nice guy but always end up offending someone somehow it seems. I don't know what the laws or rules are like for juveniles in particular these days, but in addition to the lockups themselves the two rounds in isolation didn't help. Did shorter ones as well that weren't too bad, but these 30+ day ones were fun. Cell was about 8x8 or so, solid inch or more thick wood door with a deadbolt on one wall and an translucent plexiglas block on the opposite wall for a little light and that was it except for a bare mattress. All day every day, only got out for a few minutes each meal to eat at the desk in the same room or to shower a couple of times a week. Gives you a lot of time to think, and it does change you.

These days I'm honestly happiest alone, I can go weeks or months without seeing a single soul except for my wife and kids and be perfectly happy with that. People tend to annoy me to tell the truth, I wish them well and tend to smile and laugh when I read them or see them interact with each other, but I don't belong and really don't want to.

In the end I guess I do this so we don't keep making new people like me, either the current form or the angry kid I used to be. This isn't a good result for a "justice" system, and neither are most of the others.

[Mythsaje]

24. She says she thinks they should be rotated out

after a year or so. The burnout rate is so high it really makes it hard to empathize with anyone after dealing with some of the people in there. She's totally opposed to criminization of consensual "crimes" (good, because I wouldn't marry a freeper) and saw stuff in there that honestly makes her sick.

There's a difference between people who belong separated from society, and those people society would just like to be rid of...or those who are victims of a growing industry that thrives on stealing money from the tax-payers to incarcerate those who don't deserve it.

[vickitulsa]

30. Well put, Mythsaje.

There's a difference between people who belong separated from society, and those people society would just like to be rid of...or those who are victims of a growing industry that thrives on stealing money from the tax-payers to incarcerate those who don't deserve it.

I imagine the burnout rate for C.O.s is right up there with the nurses. Maybe even worse -- and especially as the pay and benefits go down for them. I'd rather dig ditches all day than be a C.O.!

And you know, in my entire four and a half months Inside, I did not see one single white-collar criminal. Not a one. Nor anyone with money to speak of. Anyone who can hire a really good lawyer who will fight for them, attend to their case, stands a good chance of avoiding doing time altogether. Those on the bottom rungs in our culture who have to accept a Public Defender usually get NO DEFENSE WHATSOEVER.

The PDs have unrealistically heavy caseloads and often don't even get a chance to MEET their "clients" until they appear in court with them! They don't even know your name ... or the crime you're accused of. They have to shuffle through papers to check the info. They don't have the money to hire "experts" to testify in your behalf, as the Prosecution does. It's a system completely and totally out of balance.

Imagine how people like me feel when we sit back and watch the likes of Ken Lay and his buddy Fastow and all the other rich bastards, on the rare occasions that they are even charged with crimes that destroyed people's LIVES, make backroom deals to get reduced time or flat GET OFF or pay fines instead of doing time. George W. Bush gets away with sending our young American soldiers to their deaths and to be wounded and have their minds bent forever, and MANY thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis killed and maimed ... but oh, let's be sure we imprison and BREAK American citizens who smoke a little pot!

Yes, I'm outraged, and it's true that talking about it riles me up. But it's with just cause I'm upset, and I feel a righteous sort of indignation. Part of me wishes MORE regular citizens would get locked away for awhile so they'd get MAD ENOUGH to rise up and STOP this insanity.

[pitohui]

33. thank you for a gutsy post

another issue i've heard from some of my friends is that while prison can be a positive experience for a man then there is nothing offered for women

one of my friends really turned his life around in angola prison (yes where they have the famous rodeo, although my friend was too chubby and new age-y to do rodeo!) which offers many terrific programs for self-awareness and education, which he had never had in the real world because of his background of poverty and abuse, so he always talked abt how it turned his life around -- but all you hear about the women's prisons is that there is not even basic health care or once in a while some woman has to sue the prison system because she can't even get an abortion, can you imagine, being forced to have a baby in prison?

[BlooInBloo]

13. Need the chorus of "good white" DUers to chime in now....

It's not about race, it's about class!
It's not about race, it's about class!
It's not about race, it's about class!
It's not about race, it's about class!


:sarcasm:

[Mythsaje]

16. Cynic...

The drug war is inherently racist. Its inception and prosecution has always been racist. But classism plays a part as well. No matter the race, the elite rarely go to prison. They can afford the best lawyers and, as we've seen with O.J. and Michael Jackson, among others, they manage to avoid paying for their misdeeds regardless of race.

edited because I'm a perfectionist.

[Asgaya Dihi]

18. It's probably a bit of both

I'm not going to analyze everyone who ever voted on the issue, in effect it's clearly racist and no doubt some of the people voting on the issue realized what they were doing. Some may not have, safe school zones seem to make sense till you put it in practice and see how it really works. Effect is racist, intent is debatable.

That aside I'm white and found my way into the system, just lived in the wrong neighborhood and they were trying to send messages. I got the impression from the poster above that she was white too, or not black at least. It happens. So it's likely a bit of both, a black is more likely to be pulled over and harassed or locked up but a white kid in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time gets no sympathy either. If your economics change and you or your kid find yourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, it could be any of us.

[Mythsaje]

19. A lot of it was racist at the onset...

there was a strong element of racism in the original criminalization of cannabis, for example.

Racism is obvious, classism not so much. Out of all the whites in prison, how many come from disadvantaged areas? I'd bet it was nearly all of them...with a few notable exceptions that prove the rule.

Race plays out because many cops ARE probably racist--though they're better at hiding it than most. It's easy to target someone with a specific appearance--the black guy standing on the corner in a hoody and loose pants with lots of bling is far easier to target and catch than the frat boy on the college campus selling dope to his friends.

[Asgaya Dihi]

20. Agreed

The start was clearly motivated by a combination of racism, greed and a lust for power. You'll get no argument about that here.

For anyone that's not aware of the history of prohibition a Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School gave a speech to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference and the following is a link to the text of that speech. He's the author of some of the earliest research into the subject and has had access to the governments private archives to research the issue. A bit odd at times since it was meant to be spoken instead of read, but a good look at the history involved by an expert on the subject.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

[Mythsaje]

21. Thanks...

I've already read it. The drug war is a personal axe of mine. I think it's nonsense and has been one of the things used to prepare the US for the kind of tyranny we're beginning to see now. Once people accepted that the government could do fucked up things (allegedly for their security with regards to drugs) and not raise an outcry, it just became that much easier to transfer that willingness to tolerate it with regards to terrorism.

[femmedem]

28. I agree: a bit of both. However...

I think it's racist that this isn't closer to the top of more white progressives' "What's gotta be fixed" list.

I was a member of an unintentionally all white Peace and Justice group. Well, for a while it had a couple of black women attending. But every time the black women started talking about prison issues, there'd be a brief silence. Then the white folks would change subject.

Eventually the black women stayed home, or found somewhere else to go.

[MountainLaurel]

17. Snork!

:spray:

[Blue_Tires]

26. sadly, there is another (related) RW meme that has become

accepted wisdom after years of not being contested:

most of the upper/middle class GOP/libertarian pukes i know (who obviously have never been within 10 miles of a real prison) have been convinced after years of talk radio that prisoners have it too good...That every prisoner has the cell phone, fluffy couch, the XBox, and DirecTV in their cell, steak, lobster, and fine wines for lunch, and conjugal visits 6 days a week....It makes me sick to hear some piece of shit drone on and one about how much harsher prison life would be if they were in charge...

[Mythsaje]

27. I fight with my wife about this a lot...

and my best friend, for that matter. We had a rough one a couple years back about a Texas Sheriff or whatever who was running a labor camp for inmates...he provided them with the bare minimum for survival. No "luxuries" whatsoever.

Personally I don't care what they do with dangerous, violent felons. Work 'em till they're exhausted so they can't cause trouble...but when they're doing it to people who haven't hurt anyone? I draw the line there. As long as the drug war is in full swing, and the justice system is weighed against those who don't have the resources to fight against far more capable prosecutors with large budgets, I say leave these people alone. Treating them like animals isn't going to do anyone any good...not them, and not the society they'll hopefully be able to rejoin someday.

A lot of the "luxuries" they rail against are there to keep them busy and less likely to make trouble. Bored, frustrated people come up with dangerous notions that get people injured and killed. I'm much happier with the inmates having the chance to be distracted by the next episode of "Survivor" or "American Idol" than the average citizen on the outside.

I think weights and similar machines are a bad idea, myself. Why in the hell give the more dangerous types the opportunity to become larger and more dangerous on our tax dollars?

[pitohui]

32. prison is the new slavery, not the new jim crow

prisons are a source of slave labor and even more w. the growing trend toward private for-profit prisons

this is way beyond jim crow, this is a way to get around the laws liberating people from slavery

altho studies suggest blacks do not use drugs at the same rate as whites -- prob. because they're afraid to because the consequences tend to be more severe! -- we all know that blacks are more likely to be prosecuted and made into slaves this way

what white person can't tell a tale of being warned and let go when caught using drugs as a teen or twentysomething?

the black person in that same situation is effed

the cop doesn't think of himself as enforcing racism or slavery, he thinks of himself as helping out a "nice kid" who shouldn't be caught in the system

he just doesn't notice that usually the "nice kid" is the paler one

even if i thought all drugs the devil, which i don't necessarily, i would support legalization for that reason -- it would knock the pins out of their ability to pick and choose who they make into a lifelong slave

[anarch]

35. land of the free labor, for companies

that utilize prison slave labor.


But hey, freedom is on the march and stuff...maybe someday we can imprison people in other countries in larger numbers than we do here in the Heimat.