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TechnoratiAnd Justice for All: We Must Reverse Our Zeal to Incarcerate
The movie Atonement is a heart-breaking love-story, a historical WWII saga. Without giving away the ending, which must be seen to be adequately felt, it tells the tale of two lovers' lives irrevocably changed by false testimony against one of them - for a crime he did not commit. Thus, it's also a condemnation of unreliable witnesses, the willingness of people to believe the worst, particularly of those in a lower economic-class, and the havoc that a false accusation and conviction can wreak upon human life. It's a film and message that every judge, jury member, and prosecutor should see and consider before convicting or sentencing anyone accused of a crime.On December 10th, the United States Supreme Court voted 7-2 to recognize a gross injustice with respect to sentencing guidelines which disproportionately penalize those convicted of crack versus cocaine related crimes. The disparity gives equal punishment to a person caught with 5 grams of crack (a poor person's cocaine) and one caught with 500 grams of coke (a drug dealer's amount). In their validation of a federal district judge's below-guideline sentence for a crack case, the Supreme Court reconfirmed the 2005 Booker ruling that federal judges could have more discretion in levying below-guideline sentences. They did not rule on the validity of the guidelines themselves.
This decision should be viewed as the tip of an iceberg. American prisons teem with non-violent prisoners. Our juries are caught between wanting to rush home for the evening and wanting to appear law-abiding. Members are too quick to bow to the loudest voice amongst them, and not necessarily in The Twelve Angry Men direction. Meanwhile, false convictions, due to witness error, prosecutorial misconduct, inferior defense lawyers or coerced 'snitching', continue to destroy multiple generations of lives. They throw the idea of 'equal protection under the law' under the same bus as our Declaration of Independence mantra of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'
We've simply got to reverse this zeal to incarcerate. The United States has more inmates and a higher incarceration rate than any other nation: more than Russia, South Africa, Mexico, Iran, India, Australia, Brazil and Canada combined. Nearly 1 in every 136 US residents is in jail or prison. That's 2.2 million people, an amount that quadrupled from 1980 to 2005. (There were only 340,000 people incarcerated in 1972.) Adding in figures for those on probation or parole, the number reaches 7.1 million.
Over the next five years, the American prison population is projected to increase three times more quickly than our resident population. The Federal Prison system is growing at 4% per year with 55% of federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses, and only 11% for violent crimes. Women are more likely than men (29% to 19%) to serve drug sentences, dismantling thousands of families. One-third of prisoners are first time, non-violent offenders. Three-quarters are non-violent offenders with no history of violence. More than 200,000 are factually innocent. Whether our citizens are wrongly incarcerated or exaggeratedly so, our prison figures are shameful.
December 19th marked the five-year anniversary of the 2002 exoneration of the five 'perpetrators' who were originally caught, indicted, and convicted in the infamous Central Park Jogger case. The five black and Hispanic youths, ages 14 to 16 at the time of their imprisonment, were exonerated only after they had spent between 5 and 13 1/2 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Their freedom came late, even as it was conclusively confirmed by DNA testing results. At the time of their arrests, they confessed to crimes after prolonged interrogation by police.
The Innocence Project counts 210 people, mostly minorities, who have been exonerated post-conviction by conclusive DNA results (350 people have been exonerated including non-DNA related exonerations). Fifteen of them spent time on death row for crimes they did not commit. The average age at the time of their convictions was 26 years old. The average time served was 12 years. The total number of violent crimes that were committed because the real perpetrators were free while the innocent were imprisoned was 74.
Those total numbers may seem small, as those who favor a harsher penal system would argue, but they only consist of the situations that have been put through years of legal battles to conclude innocence. They don't include cases where there is no money left for the wrongfully convicted to fight for their freedom. They don't include the cases of people who are so beaten down mentally or physically by their imprisonment, they can't fight. They don't include the ones who don't even know what steps to take.
Freedom is a basic human right destroyed by a felony conviction. And in some states, so is the right to vote. Other casualties include the ability to adopt children, find housing or have certain employment. The stigma is permanent. Thus any mistake in a court-room, whether due to a self-serving witness or an ambitious prosecutor, costs someone a part of their life, severing them from the fabric of a justice system designed to protect them. As Martin Luther King said from the Birmingham Jail in 1963, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
Thus, there's more work to do. Providing judges more latitude to reverse jury convictions in which there's no physical evidence, or there exists the potential of fraudulent or self-incriminating testimony coerced under hostile conditions or threats, would be another step in the direction of justice. Reducing guidelines substantially would also help, as would be alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders. Without addressing these issues, our prisons will continue to burst beyond the seams of their present 134% overcrowding rate, our prisons systems will continue to get more funding than our schools, and we will be a sadder nation for it.
Nomi Prins is a journalist and Senior Fellow at Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization. She is the author of Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (whether you voted for them or not).
Copyright © 2007 The Women's International Perspective
34 Comments so far
Show AllA couple days ago I read about some 200 or more concentration camps that have been prepared by Halliburton and are now ready to receive occupants. There was also an article about a series of executive orders that Bush has spewed forth regarding martial law and the responsibility of the military to take over in case of any crisis whatsoever at Bush's discretion. Given that situation, do you think that the Bushies will be releasing anyone anytime soon?
This was the original point:
"In case no one has noticed the entire United States has become a prison for most of it's citizens. If you are not VERY wealthy or very educated in the right fields you cannot emigrate out of the US."
That US most citizens can't emigrate and are thus incarcerated in their own country.
Then clear-think said this:
"Try investing your money outside of "The United States""
It looks like you are changing the subject. I was looking for a citation that "The United States government leans heavily on governments who might accept people who could be considered "refugees" from the harsh conditions in the US. " Your criteria "outside the control of domestic handlers, (banks, mutual funds, etc.)" isn't much of a point, citizens in any country who wish to invest outside of their own need to use an intermediary, and doing so hardly relinquishes "control" of the assets.
The idea that US citizens are held as captives in their own country is pure hooey. But I would be happy to hear any other ideas as to why someone think it's true.
Do you have any citation for this?
Yes indeed I do jakenewton.
Try investing your money outside of "The United States"
much like those who do in other places on their own free will if legal or determinedly so if illegal.
You'll find your direct and open attempt to put your "capitol" outside the control of domestic handlers, (banks, mutual funds, etc.) something made heavily difficult if not impossible on part of this governments controllers who view this as an escape attempt worthy of treatment to prevent you from being a refugee unless penniless!
You and your money are so much like crops in the field to be harvested.
Let me tell you about the granddaddy of all malicious conviction cases. Search for "Free Tim Masters Because" and prepare to be amazed.
"The United States government leans heavily on governments who might accept people who could be considered "refugees" from the harsh conditions in the US. "
Do you have any citation for this?
The WOD is a government's instrument of fear and a corporation's instrument of profit.
In case no one has noticed the entire United States has become a prison for most of it's citizens. If you are not VERY wealthy or very educated in the right fields you cannot emigrate out of the US. The United States government leans heavily on governments who might accept people who could be considered "refugees" from the harsh conditions in the US.
If you are middle class, poor, sick or previously convicted of a crime the US is one big prison. Good luck with that.
dudleydoright and his compassion for child molesters is not an example I would have used. I know that if one of my daughters were harmed they would not make it to prison, so no worries, dud.
I do know for a fact there is a pedophile trolling through rooms who has molested his 2 and 4 year old daughters, he has many aliases, real name: Christopher Kidwell, from Maryland, be wary.
There are many innocent people in prisons, now, and yet people still call for the Death Penalty. Too many young people guilty of petty crimes, should not face prison time, where they will be ruined for life.
Violent crimes with DNA and other evidence are a different story.
But as someone mentioned earlier how they offer pleas when the person is actually innocent, they are so frightened they accept a plea for something they never were guilty of, again ruined for life.
I read all the comments above, and I am reminded of how far the people themselves are ahead of the politicians. As a social worker in a jail, I know it is my job neither to condemn nor to exonerate. But as a citizen, I take a step back and observe police giving in to a corporate-induced frenzy to "round up all the usual suspects," while war criminals "lead" the nation astray and their subsidiaries (such as KBR and Halliburton) make unprovoked war against sovereign nations, then literally get away with gang rape and murder.
Those of us who work toward the cause of social justice have branded upon our hearts the words "Not in our names." We look forward to the day we all as a nation move toward, and not away from, the social justice we seek.
What we've been looking at is the total rejection, by the judicial system and by the general public, of the basic elements of justice that underpin our system. Instead of the presumption of innocence and due process of law, we have plea bargaining and arbitrary imprisonment. Real criminals play the system with great skill, serving short "bids" or walking away altogether from serious crimes, while the addicted, the illiterate, and the mentally ill do most of the serious time. Force prosecutors to try their cases to juries (which are assembled only rarely in our system), and everything will be transformed.
DO NOT REVERSE the zeal, but shift it so that it's correctly applied; such as against Cheney, Bush, all of the criminal ruling elites, etc., etc., the world's most very worst of criminals.
We wouldn't be against the zeal if we made a proper and due correction of how and against whom to apply it. We'd then welcome the zeal.
Hence there's more than one way to consider this zeal, and I recommend shifting it from misdirection to correctly directed. We NEED the latter.
I recommend compassion.
Let me amplify the thought of iwarrior a few comments ago, that the people who are in prison today deserve our thoughts. Personally, I spent two years in federal penitentiary myself, having refused the draft during the Vietnam War. I can say from experience that the people behind bars are just people.
Both violent and non-violent. They are people.
We should care about them.
Our society is basing itself on fear more and more, and building upon our fear to make us into inhumane monsters of repression and hostility. We are frightened even to travel on the subway.
We will eventually reach the point, if we keep going this way, where we repeat the final line of Sartre's famous play: "Hell is other people."
"...Our Zeal to Incarcerate"
Our zeal?!!
I imagine that the progressive community has NO zeal to incarcerate. The bastards in power - the oligarchy like the various industrial complexes - military, prison, petrochemical/automotive. Their zeal for easy money and control over the herd will be disentigrated - when they lose their power and that will happen when the stock markets totally collapse. Very soon.
We need to rechannel our zeal to incarcerate criminals who damage society. So many politicians, so few prisons.
Yeah, I speak from personal experience on this. The guidelines were anything but; they tied judge's hands. This is a great ruling, long overdue. I'm very surprised by it.
Of course the P.I.C. wants non-violent offenders; who would you rather guard?
In econ 101 there was something introduced called the multiplier effect. It said that for every dollar that a comes into a community because of large industry, it multiplies by a factor of about 20 because of all the side jobs created. However the military multiplier effect was considerably less. I'll be the P.I.C multiplier effect is negative because of all the harm it causes.
The war on drugs is a great way to vilify a sector of society that is viewed as marginal anyway. Long-haris, 'ner-do-wells, the fringe element. Throw them in jail, take away their rights. We sure don't want them voting.
The M.M. sentences and guidelines were supposed to standardize sentences. But they moved most court venues from local to federal because there the sentences were harsher, the locals didn't have to pay for the incarceration, and the rules to convict were easier. But the same "crime" in small-town midwest that got you 5 or 10 years still would not even get their attention in Miami, or New York, so there was just a different kind of disparity. Not just crack, the whole thing was ill-advised.
Oh, so the non-violent druggies are all doing years. But the Kenny Lays of the world would get a slap. 10 years for drugs, 7 for killing, 4 for rape, 18 months for child molestation. How many years did Ivan Boesky do?
Careful tj, it was actually Schwarzenegger who single/under-handedly destroyed the initiative to amend CA's "Three Strikes". Then, went on to propose two more prisons to our overcrowding problem.
Johnny Sutton is a real piece of work. Putting away those two border guards for doing their job! Why don't you pardon them BUSH!!
Bill O'Reilly was touting a mandatory 25 years! First time sexual offense. And was insulted that some states didn't want to buy it. As terrible as child abuse is we have to quit being such a punitive country!
It seems that California's right-wing Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger is having a hard time even proposing a mild reform of the type suggested by this fine piece by Naomi Prins. And the Dems and prison unions are leading the charge against sanity. Makes me ashamed of being a Roosevelt Democrat and trade unionist.
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/586046.html
Is'nt the united state the land of opportunity?
Then how come such a large percentage of the population have taken to crime?
And then there is the police force and Blackwater, who would be criminals if they were not the gun toting masochists.
Legalizing and regulating drugs alone would help a great deal. The instead of fighting the war in drugs by jailing people, we could decrease the demand via education and treatment. People in power know this, but there's too much money to be made. That's what it's all about. Keeping drugs illegal keeps drugs the on the streets and keeps bank accounts bloated.
greenerthanthou sez..."Don't forget the total lack of human compassion showed by comedians and average Americans when they joke about the crime of rape in prison. Joking about rape is no longer acceptable in America-unless it happens to a prisoner. Then it's considered funny. How sick is this country?"
Oh yeah, even liberal Bill Maher is guilty of it at times. People don't realize that prison violence just makes criminals all the more hardened.
mbruton sez..."Yet we are oh so rigorously soft on corporate crime and the crimes of the wealthy or well connected."
Absolutely, and one of those corporate criminals and welfare kings can have a negative impact on so many people with just one act.
That's not to say that I don't favor imprisonment for violent criminals. I even wrestle with the death penalty. If we are to imprison non-violent offenders (burglars and such), we need to rehabilitate them. That's one thing that people miss. No one thinks about what might happen to the guy that stole their car once he gets out after a few years. What's he gonna do? While people should pay a debt to society for their crimes, we shouldn't be ruining lives either.
One thing I think play a role in all of this is fear. People, and rightfully so, are afraid of violent criminals. They watch television and think that there's a rapist or serial killer hiding behind their garage. They want to know that those people aren't going to hurt them or anyone else ever again. I don't think it's as much about revenge as it is the removal of a percieved threat.
Showing pictures of Ted Bundy's dead body showed the world that the bogeyman is gone.
Hey, I'll admit that I didn't shed a tear when I heard that Jeff Dahmer, or any other killer for that matter, got whacked in prison or got the chair. It's a relief for people.
And what of those who have been victimized by violent crime? How are they supposed to feel?
I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't investigate and fix the root problems that cause criminality. People (the law and order types) forget about that also. If we did legalize drugs, and made sure everyone had free health care, a job, an education, food, and a decent place to live, you'd probably see crime rates absolutely plummet.
Sure, it's about right or wrong also, but often times, people have never been taught to properly distinguish between the two because dad's out of the picture and mom's working three jobs to keep the family fed, clothed, and housed. Not to mention the fact that for many people, the wrong thing is the only thing they can or know how to do, and that's if they're minds aren't already poisoned by drugs. Desperation can cause a person to do things they later regret. Not everyone has a choice. Social and economic justice, investing in and taking care of the people (not coddling mind you) will help make it easier for people to make the right decisions.
Just locking people up and throwing the switch won't alone keep people safe. Neither will browbeating and waving our fingers at people to get their acts together.
Wow, excellent piece by Ms. Prins. An excellent analysis of the harm done to society by poor public policy.
As Judge Edith Jones in the USCA 5th circuit observed back in March '03 in an address to the Federalist Society, the american legal system is corrupted beyond recognition.
The social pathologies of drug prohibition...
The Prison Industrial Complex rivals the Military Industrial Complex in influence if not size.
A very serious issue and most of it has to do with what people here are saying: profiteering. It's so much per head and so much skimmed off food budgets; the moneymaking never stops.
Another perspective is provided by a BC Supreme Court Justice who talked about being at a one week workshop for justices all over Canada. Collectively, they agreed to address a particular case that none of them had ever heard about and to acquit or convict the defendant. You would expect that justices would rule 80-90% in one direction. The truth is that the final vote split fifty-fifty. When this justice saw how random the system really was, she became involved with me in wrongful convictions.
The privatizing of prisons, turning them into profit making engines for private corporations and stockholders, is both a further step towards and an enabling of the vindictiveness that infects US society. People are so pressurized by the war machine economy and religious mind control; some of this emotional pressure is seemingly released by this obsession with punishment. It's a great method for maintaining lateral hostility among the populace so they won't revolt against the overlords.
What's missing from the article is the way that prosecutors will threaten to lay 10 or 12 completely false charges on you if you fail to accept a plea bargain. Most people facing combined charges that would effectively put them away for life choose to accept the plea bargain. This amounts to convictions that are based on coerced self incrimination.
About 80% of convictions are obtained this way without a jury of your peers or a judge ever being involved except for when the judge rubber stamps the plea bargain. The whole thing is less messy and public than waterboarding for confessions would be, but the result is the same. Add to this that the budgets for Public Pretender offices is dwarfed by the budget of the Prostitutors office thus assuring that even if you get a the rare decent pretender he is likely to be overworked and understaffed, and no reasonable person can support our out insane legal system.
Yet we are oh so rigorously soft on corporate crime and the crimes of the wealthy or well connected.
More Shock Doctrine. Just as the fundamentalist Christians want to punish those who don't tow their authoritarian line, the lust to punish those who step out (cannabis) is given power by policies such as these. The "right to life" movement has no problem with building bombs that kill others' children, and the legal bullies who use these ridiculous standards to incarcerate people see no disconnect that the same society so ready to offer punishment, easily countenances the flagrant use of alcohol (highway fatalities, domestic abuse, hate crimes), tobacco (how many deaths per year?), guns (how many deaths per year?), and violent porn. Our nation has a sickness of soul, it is as devoid of compassion, the singular thing Christ championed, as it is under thrall to violence, dog-eat-dog hierarchies, and basic injustice taken either as A. reality or B. 'god's' will.
These statistics show the nations of "the free world" what's really going on. While Goliath builds weapons to prove his brutish strength, the Davids of this world are designing the technologies that might well score that bullseye to the beast's third eye.
It's a natural consequence of that Anglo Saxon/Protestant proneness to judge and condemn. America's penal system (like the UK's) is punitive and designed only to take revenge. Of course, there is no end to that. And since there is money to make from a privatised penal system, there is every reason in a capitalist economy to maintain it.
we are pursuing economic policies which destroy an increasing number of our citizens: so where are we going to put the bodies?
This is indeed a travesty. In Southern Illinois, where I live, there were 3 prisons in 1980, when the evil reagan took power. There are now 14, and they are a strong part of the local economy.
This is what happens when you let an oppressive government grow. Now the prison guards don't want to give up their jobs for justice. Who would?
Don't forget the total lack of human compassion showed by comedians and average Americans when they joke about the crime of rape in prison. Joking about rape is no longer acceptable in America-unless it happens to a prisoner. Then it's considered funny. How sick is this country?
As a regular reader of CD , I have the inexpensive privilege of reading a wide variety of international newspapers that allow me to discern the truth or falsehood of a particular story or situation without the xenophobic filters of MSM .
As a Canadian , out of gratitude for my fateful Canadian birthplace and citizenship not deserved , good fortune , I have a cosmopolitan perspective that again affords me the opportunity to recognize , appreciate and at least try to emulate in a small and personal way , distinct societal characteristics throughout the world.
Albeit a small-polled sample of French citizenry , but when asked about effectiveness and fairness of the ultra-socialized French health-care system the answer was ," We are drowning in taxes but so what?
Around about 1990 when the Red Army still occupied the Baltic countries ( Lithuania , Latvia , Estonia )three-hundred thousands of Estonian citizens packed into the university square to openly defy the Soviet edict against expressions of nationalism by singing the national anthem.Extrapolating by equal ratios , any protest against inequalities in America like emergency response , education , healthcare , incarceration be would attended by 50-60 millions of Americans instead of the hundreds of thousands at best.
Alterior motives aside , Cuba , Scotland ,Russia , Japan... has taken the hollow mantra , " No Child Left Behind "and put hollow words into substantial action : Cuban literacy to perpetuate the Revolucion , Scottish literacy to read the Bible , Russian literacy to educate Yuri Gagarin and Japanese literacy to make and sell Sony.In Canada in the mid-eigtteen hundreds , Egerton Ryserson proposed 100% gov't funded universal education for no other reason than it was the right thing to do and even today generally , educational opportunities are not as fair and equitable as in Europe but more than in the USA.
Generally speaking , the majority of Americans who tend towards xenophobia and jingoism either out of choice or out of ignorance are no different than the Romans , Japanese , English...
" The Last Place on Earth" produced by BBC (?) , aired by PBS and written by Peter Hungerford is an excellent documentary comparing the strategies and actual race to the South Pole in 1911 between the British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott and the Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen .
Without the logistical details that Hungerford painstakingly describes , Scott failed because he stubbornly equates success with inherent British grit and knowledge ( no help from the outside , thank you very much )while Amundsen succeeds under the tutelege of Greenland Inuit ( you know , bin there ; dun that ).
Just in the area of this article of disproportate incarceration percentages , Europeans would have turned off the televised football match and headed for the streets . The same reponse goes for soaring tuition/health-care costs , bull-dozed-flood-damaged houses , illegal wire-tapping...
When Americans know Cuban doctors or health-care technicians provide basic health-care to about 300 citizens for each provider within a ten-minute walk of each centralized clinic and , what's more important , they can say sociallized health-care without gagging and they can willinly turn off the televized Rose-Bowl or Paris Hilton's breakfast menu and take to the streets,will the sadder nation start to "smile"
I'll never forget that in California a few years back, one of the interest groups that were opposed to the voter initiatives to make first time drug offenses not punishable by jail, was the California correctional officers union. Imagine, these goons wanted to preserve their employment by caging non-violent drug offenders like animals. That's how twisted American society has become.
Of course the idea that the prisoners in jail will likely come out of prison with severe health problems from the experience is a boon to the health care industry...
A right winger might argue that there are more people in the prisons of Cuba, as long as you count the whole country as a prison...
In some places, like my state of Colorado, we already spend more on prisons than we do on education. This state, for instance, is 49th in education spending, and 3rd in prison spending. And what do we get for it? Destroyed families, ruined cities when a prison moves in and takes over the entire economy, and devastated lives. This is a no win situation for everyone except the prison industry and the politicians who get to look "tough on crime".
Prison should be the last resort, not the first. And in places like Colorado, unless it's clearly a nothing crime, you WILL be going to jail. Especially if you are a minority. But then, the whole drug war was always based on racism, and it's working perfectly. Look at the first anti cannabis laws, for instance, which were all passed so that the southwestern states could "legally" kick out the Mexicans. By the time it got to the federal level, it was all about keeping white women from sleeping with black men. It's ALL about racism, period. As such, the whole drug war should be repealed. It does nothing but take people who should be treated as adults and makes them felons instead.
The next thing that has to go is that stupid "three strikes" crap. Justice is NOT a baseball game, it's time we stopped treating it like one. There is no sense in clogging up the jails with people who don't belong there, and to lock someone up for stealing food when they are starving and it's their third offense is just plain stupid as well as being mean spirited as hell. Why is it that our "leaders" can't understand that if we made jobs available again, things like that wouldn't be necessary?
We need to get off of the right wing idea that everyone needs to be put in jail for things that would have gotten a slap on the wrist before. We are doing nothing but destroying our society for the sake of politicians looking "tough on crime".
I've been saying for at least a decade now that the righties wont' be happy until 50% of us are in jail, and the other 50% are watching us. That is their "full employment" program. Unfortunately it's just plain stupid, and not a way to have a society.
Locking people up is a huge industry and it's popular too. The lust of punishment, a form of self-righteous elation, timeless from the efficiency of Dracos in Greece, to today's zeal to curtail freedom. Lead the mob to terror and you'll have thousands of them standing in line to be security guards, a robotic euphoria to hammer down anyone who steps out of line. What better way to wage class warfare then to brand people with a label, like "felony".
A permanent line has been drawn in the sand, even the author has an empirical belief that's generally unquestioned, if there's violence, then we can throw the book at people.
Yes, then we can get out the guillotine, (If they're homeless, hungry, badly addicted, psychotic, these are irrelevant) For many Americans we have a system of "rehabilitation." a profitable growth industry.