A job for every person willing and able to work -- this is the definition of a decent economy. But the United States does not adhere to what most might consider a basic economic right. Over the last three decades, instead of creating jobs for those able to work, the United States has built jails for those unable to find work. And African Americans and Latinos are the direct targets of this decision.

The current economy is considered just about ideal by the nabobs who run the Federal Reserve. Unemployment is less than 5 percent; inflation is low. Incomes aren't doing so well, but profits and productivity are up.

But this economy leaves out too many. David R. Jones, the president of Community Services Society in New York City, reports that 40 percent of all black men in New York City are jobless. For those who don't graduate from high school, the situation is at deep Depression levels. A hearing chaired by Sen. Chuck Schumer reported that among African-American men who are high-school dropouts, jobless rates over the last few years range from 59 to 72 percent (compared with 29 percent for white high-school dropouts).

Over the last three decades, the United States has essentially abandoned the effort to generate sufficient jobs. Federal investment in job training has been cut by about 75 percent as a percentage of the GDP since the 1970s. Businesses have turned to immigrant labor -- often undocumented workers paid sub-minimum wages.

Jail has taken the place of jobs. Over the last three decades, the federal government and the states have ratcheted up sentences for nonviolent offenses, particularly drug crimes. Instead of spending money on education, the states spend it on prison and prison guards, with incarceration costs rising faster than any other category of spending. America locks up a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world.

The prison population expanded 10 times from 1973 to 2003, from 204,000 in 1973 to 2.2 million in 2003. Nine percent of black men ages 25 to 29 were in prison at the end of 2003, according to a report by Adolphus G. Belk Jr. for the 2006 Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, titled "Men of Color and the Prison Industrial Complex." The federal government's spending on prisons soared from $541 million in 1982 to $5.2 billion in 2001, according to the report.

Violent crime hasn't driven this rise; it has been tending down. No, driven by law-and-order politicians, the United States decided to throw the book at nonviolent offenders, limiting early release, imposing mandatory sentences, cracking down particularly on drugs like crack cocaine that are prevalent in the cities.

Jail isn't a solution. It is simply a very expensive, immoral contribution to the problem. Once someone has been sentenced to prison, chances of getting a job plummet. Training and education, rehabilitation and psychological counseling in prisons have been slashed. Increasingly the only skills learned in prison are those that prepare inmates for a life of crime.

We do know what works: early childhood health care, nutrition and learning. Intervention to train pregnant young single women for motherhood. Preschool. Skilled teachers and smaller classes in the early years. Affordable housing and health care. And most of all, stable jobs that provide hope and opportunity. It costs money and energy and commitment. But it doesn't cost as much as cleaning up after the human damage has been done. Prenatal care, day care and preschool on the front side of life are a lot less expensive than police, jails and crime on the back side.

Why do we choose what we know doesn't work? Here's where race and politics intertwine. Politicians -- from Ronald Reagan's "welfare queen" to George Bush's Willie Horton to Bill Clinton's Rickey Ray Rector -- learned that they might benefit by posturing tough on crime. Now, just like the president's squandering of lives and resources in Iraq, we're wasting lives and billions of dollars in the prison-industrial complex -- while the jobs and education programs that might work face ever deeper cuts. Will no leader be courageous enough to speak this truth?

  © Copyright 2007 Sun-Times News Group

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