December 30, 2003
Land of the free?
Via
Common Dreams. In a moving article,
American 'Value's Cast A Global Shadow, James Carroll questions the claim that this was a year in which America helped spread democracy and "freedom" to the world by reviewing the increasing horrors happening in American prisons.
But the year just ending marked other milestones toward a reckoning with the real meaning of American democracy. In late October, in a speech in Fall River, Robert A. Mulligan, chief administrative judge of Massachusetts, noted current characteristics of US criminal justice. The American prison population recently went over 2 million for the first time, putting the United States ahead of Russia as the world capital of incarceration. Add to that number those on parole or probation and the total under "correctional" control grows to 7 million. Thirty years ago, one in 1,000 Americans was locked up; today, almost five are. In famously liberal Massachusetts, the prison population has grown, since 1980, from under 6,000 to almost 23,000. In 2003, for the first time, the amount of money Massachusetts spent on prisons was more than what it spent on higher education.
These statistics accumulate a punishing weight falling more on African-American males than anyone else, and from that springs the year's fundamental epiphany. Justice? Democracy? In the United States, according to Judge Mulligan, one in three African-American males between the ages of 20 and 30 is "under correctional control." In places like Baltimore and Washington, more than half are. The number of African-American men in college is less than the number of those under supervision of the courts. And why? Such facts reveal far more about the way justice is administered in America than about the moral character of any group.
Mulligan, for one, points to the "war on drugs" as key, a war that has seen the rate of imprisonment of drug offenders jump by 700 percent since 1980; a war that depends on narrowly targeted law enforcement and on mandatory prison sentences. In 2002, 80 percent of those receiving such sentences were minorities. The war on drugs has been disproportionately a war on young black men.
2003. The death penalty set loose. Prison populations setting records. Effective torture as part of punishment. A system of racial injustice that rivals slavery. American values across the world. Please.
That's a remarkable statistic: that thirty years ago only 1 in 1,000 Americans was locked up, while now it's 5 in 1,000. Despite the evidence that violent crime has been decreasing. It says so much about what is happening in this country and how bad it's become. More Americans are killed by government officials conducting racial cleansing in the name of some mythical war on drugs than by terrorists. Many, many more.
How long can Americans continue to lock up more of their people than any other country on earth and continue to claim it is the "Land of the Free?" And the claims of torture and slavery are quite accurate, backed up by many sources, including Amnesty International. Prison inmates are now routinely turned over to corporate interests to be used as free labor. And that's slavery.
But you won't hear a word about it from Howard Dean or any of the other Democratic candidates. No, they email you to "support our troops." And they ask for the endorsements of Clinton and Gore, two southerners under whose administration the rates of incarceration for black men, women and children broke all records. And those who blame Gore's defeat on Nader might better ask why he never even mentioned the issue. Not once.
Relief however seems to be coming from an unexpected source, California Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appears to have some sort of heart. He has begun paroling people that Democrat Grey Davis, who had a formal no parole policy, refused to release, even after recommendations from the state parole board. Even better, he recently called for the release of as many as one-third of California's inmates. His motives seem to be budgetary, but it's still the right thing to do. Prison costs have been skyrocketing in California, especially prison guard salaries, the average of which is now double the average teacher salary, and it's time someone addressed the problem.
At least Arnie is not hypocritical enough to advocate keep people in prison for smoking pot, something he himself has admitted doing. And while he has been accused of very sexist behavior towards women, it has to be noted that an awful lot of California's prison population is female, and that what they've been experiencing in prison is a lot worse than just being groped. A lot worse.
