Mass Incarceration is an Abomination

BRUCE DIXON / Black Commentator i.147, 21jul2005

“A great force of suffering accumulated between the basement of heaven and the roof of hell...”

[Reading the source document is strongly suggested]

Zora Neale Hurston wrote those words almost seventy years ago at the beginning of her great allegorical work on black America, Moses, Man of the Mountain. She could have been speaking about African America today. As black activists ponder how best to build a mass movement to transform America, a mass movement that must start in but not be confined to our communities, one single low-hanging fruit of organizing opportunity is hard to miss. That opportunity lies in the manifest unfairness and hypocrisy of America’s system of racially selective policing, prosecution and mass imprisonment. These awful public policies are inviting targets for electoral and other mobilizations in black communities and beyond.

The fact that America does implement a public policy of racially selective mass imprisonment is well documented and beyond dispute. With under 5 percent of the world’s people, the US accounts for 25 percent of the planet’s prisoners. More than half its 2.2 million prisoners come from the one eighth of its population which is black. Today, an astounding 3 percent of all African Americans languish in prisons and jails, and nearly as many more are on probation, parole, bail, house arrest or court supervision. Tens of thousands of jobless, skill-less, often anti-socialized inmates are released into black communities each month in which jobs, medical care, educational opportunities and family or official support are almost completely absent. Unsurprisingly, many are back behind the walls in a matter of months. Right now, the shadow of prison squats at the corners of, and often at the center of nearly every black family’s life in this nation.

Since 1970, the US prison population has multiplied more than six times. The explosive growth of America's incarceration and crime control industries have occurred despite essentially level crime rates over the last four decades. This has only been possible because the public policies which enable and support locking up more people longer and for less have until now been exempt from analyses of their human, economic and social costs or any reckoning of the relationships of spiraling imprisonment to actual crime rates or public safety. Most tellingly, while public discussions of these policies are deracialized, their racially disparate impacts are a seldom discussed but widely known fact. Thus even though the damning numbers are widely reported and well known, mass incarceration is practically invisible as a political issue, even in those heavily black communities which suffer most from its implementation.

Making mass incarceration a political issue

In the absence of an independent, adversarial press, which might be willing to raise issues on its own and educate the public, US political discourse is limited to what officeholders and candidates say and what the media chooses to report about what they say. As long as no candidate or official can be heard calling for a moratorium on the prosecution of juveniles as adults, it is a non-issue. If no candidate or official is cited in the media advocating the extension of health care, job and educational opportunities or the rights of citizenship to the prisoner class such proposals are absolutely off the table. And unless some candidates or officials somehow get ink or air time publicly questioning the economic and social effects of mass incarceration on children, on families, on whole communities, these concerns remain politically invisible.

The fact that sizeable chunks of the population, including likely majorities in constituencies with large numbers of African Americans might support radical reforms of America’s racially skewed policing, prosecutorial and sentencing practices, if anybody would ask them, is irrelevant. The establishment political consensus and media lockdown assure that no section of the public will ever be asked such questions, and hence will never know how widely shared their own views on the clear injustice of these policies are.

If we are to build a mass movement in opposition to America’s crime control and prison industries, we must succeed in putting the facts of racially selective mass incarceration, impoverishment and criminalization, first, in front of our African American communities, and then before the whole of America, and do so effectively, persuasively, consistently and persistently. America must be forced to publicly unpack and examine the myths that have justified its incarceration binge. An indispensable tactic in this struggle must be the mounting of competent, effective campaigns for elected office which directly question the unfairness, along with the social and human costs of these policies, political campaigns which propose radical and understandable measures to shrink the “crime control” and prison industries rather than expand them, and to ameliorate some of the harm already done to families and communities.

A short list of such down-to-earth public policy proposals might include, but not be limited to the following:

• A moratorium on the prosecution of juveniles as adults, and the confinement of juveniles in facilities with adult inmates. 
• A moratorium on all privatization of prisons and jails, including piecemeal privatizations of such services as inmate feeding, medical care and probation. 
• Repeal or sunset of all “two-strikes”, “three strikes” and indeterminate sentencing legislation. 
• The imposition of mandatory ethnic and racial impact statements for all future prison construction and sentencing legislation, with a period set for mandatory review comparing the statement at outset with the results no less than four years out. 
• Elimination of sentencing disparities between powdered cocaine and crack.
• End felony disenfranchisement in those states where it exists, perhaps with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing voting as a right. 
• Repeal of legislation banning Pell Grants to convicted felons and inmates, and require states to offer college credit courses to inmates who have completed their GED or the equivalent. 
• Refocus parole systems upon the re-entry and productive reintegration of former prisoners into society rather than re-imprisonment. 
• Civilian review boards with teeth to oversee police and prosecutorial practices. 
• Explicit commitments to reduce and eliminate disparities in prosecution and imprisonment. 
• Over the next several months we should refine and expand the list of policy positions that campaigns must incorporate if they expect the support of a mass movement to end the nation’s policy of racially selective imprisonment.

Organic connections between electoral campaigns and mass movements

In BC’s June 30, 2005 issue we described some of the essential characteristics of mass movements, progressive and otherwise:

“Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions….

”Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or they don’t exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. ”

There are already many serious people in our communities involved in churches and voluntary organizations that try their best to offer services to the families of inmates, that lobby and agitate against drug and incarceration policies, that attempt to offer counseling and re-entry services to those emerging from our state and federal gulag. An electoral campaign and a mass movement is an unparalleled opportunity for grandmothers in church-sponsored re-entry programs to work with unchurched young people who know that they, their siblings and classmates are destined to be fodder for the imprisonment industry if things don’t turn around. If that isn’t a formula that can feed a mass movement, no such thing exists. Electoral campaigns conducted against the crime control industry are an indispensable tool in extending a movement’s outreach.

Still, we must not allow ourselves to become confused about the differences between a mass movement to change America's policy of selective policing and racist incarceration, and an electoral campaign, even ones that succeed in putting the issue of mass imprisonment at its center. Unlike a mass movement, a political campaign is a decorous, time-limited legal exercise. We must know that political campaigns have often heralded the demobilization of a mass movement, even when that movement’s objectives have not been met. Being able to use electoral campaigns to advance the agenda of a mass movement demands prior preparation and steadfast resolve, lest the candidate before or after election stray from within the bright lines of opposing the incarceration of juveniles as adults, or demanding racial and ethnic impact statements and evaluation for sentencing legislation, to use two of several possible examples.

The culture of campaigns and officialdom as practiced in America today makes officeholders unaccountable to anyone except corporate cash and corporate media. Hence it is suicidal for the leaders of local movements to wait for candidates to emerge and then decide which if any to support. Candidates that surface without the help of a movement against mass incarceration will have intended all along to run whether such a movement existed or not, and should hence be shunned. Local “movement leaders,” forced to choose among such a crop, will inevitably choose the “least worst” candidate, who will offer only tepid support to a movement’s “bright line” issues and will not advance the cause of de-legitimizing our nation’s racially skewed crime control industry at all.

To guarantee that political campaigns endorsed by the movement do indeed advance the cause, over the individual fortunes and pressures to which candidates are prey, we must set up local, statewide and even regional screening committees to recruit and interview suitable candidates for office, and to facilitate the channeling of funds and campaign expertise to those who pledge to stay within the bright lines and place the issue of mass incarceration squarely at the center of their campaigns. A national PAC whose sole purpose is funding movement-vetted candidates running against mass imprisonment – and other “bright line issues – should be one of the outcomes of our next national dialogue, now commonly referred to as “going back to Gary.” The gathering will occur in the first quarter of next year.

Candidates who run against the crime control industry and racist mass imprisonment will certainly need all the help they can get. Although they are likely to receive surprising support and attract tons of youthful talent and enthusiasm in our base communities, they will face formidable odds getting their message out through an indifferent or hostile media. Time-tested best practices like accountable voter registration drives, accurate phone and door to door canvasses in base areas, and competent Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) practices will have to be combined with newer innovations to circumvent the monopoly that corporate media have on access to the American public, including the black public. BC will explore the impact of some of these new media tactics and tools in an upcoming article.

Targeting local prosecutors and sheriffs

Federal prosecutors are presidential appointees. But the state level gatekeepers for the prison industry’s stream of human raw material are local prosecutors – elected officials who must run for office at the level of counties, cities and judicial circuits. A number of these jurisdictions have black majorities. The local politicians with responsibility for housing pre-trial inmates are usually elected county officials too: sheriffs.

The table below, which arranges the list of US counties to show those with the top 130 black populations, shows a target-rich environment, with fully 37 jurisdictions having African American population percentages of 30% or greater. Every major city in the state of Georgia, for instance, is on the list, including 3 of the 4 largest counties in metro Atlanta. And you don’t need a black majority to run against mass imprisonment and win. A black prosecutor ran against the Rockefeller drug laws in Albany NY, where African Americans are a distinct minority – and won.

See below for chart of Counties by Black Population

Unpacking the myths around the crime control industry

Crime control policies on every level in the U.S. are based upon racist myths. Myths are powerful because they are never questioned, never examined, never unpacked. Nobody disputes that Justice Department data going back decades shows rates of drug use among blacks and whites to be about the same. A combination of white racism and a willingness to ignore unpleasant facts largely account for white indifference at the disparity between white and black rates of arrest and prosecution for offenses created with equal frequency by both groups. But black support for an industry and for public policies that criminalize a third of all young black men, which disrupt and retard the formation of strong families, and cripple workforce and educational opportunities for such a broad cross section of us, is at best ambivalent and at worst paper-thin, even among African Americans working in the industry, based as it is upon a tenuous mass acceptance that this is all somehow part of the normal balance of society.

“It’s hot in the summer,” we tell ourselves, “it’s cold in the winter, and a third of all young black men are in and out of jail.” Or we say “It’s a trap! It was out there waitin’ for them and they fell in it!” Both these positions are understandable as mental adjustments much like those that some of our forbears thought they had to make to get along in the world of triumphant Jim Crow and white terror eighty or a hundred years ago. Such views are uncomfortable for the black people that hold them, and unstable. We must engage them by depicting mass incarceration not as the way normal societies behave, but as a failed experiment that punishes our entire community, a malevolent social policy that can be challenged and must be changed.

Our language must be carefully constructed to aid in the process of demythologizing crime and crime control policies. We need new terminology, new language that better enables people to grasp the issues around mass imprisonment and the criminal justice industry as malevolent social policies which can be changed, rather than unalterable facts like cold in the winter and heat in the summer. For example, the terms “criminal justice system” and “corrections” ought to be replaced in all our dialogue with terms like “crime control industry”, or “imprisonment industry.” A “system” is a very generalized term that does not tell us much, while an “industry” is a very specific kind of system. To call it an “industry” instead raises powerful questions of profit and accountability which are obscured when we call it anything else.

White establishment pundits and politicians of a generation ago warned us. They predicted the coming of what they called a “white backlash.” This was their name for a predicted white racist response to the just demands of African America for equality of opportunity and economic justice advanced by the movement of the 1960s, a response some feared would entrench racial inequality and privilege deeper than ever before. They were right. Beginning in the 1970s the selective mass imprisonment of African Americans helped to swell the six or sevenfold expansion of the prison population. And while the rhetoric and official policies that enabled this were ostensibly race-neutral, the results were an open secret. Around the same time, Dr. King was saying that the movement which would save the nation’s soul would have to emerge from black America. He was right too.

The struggle to de-legitimize the racist crime control and prison industries are at the heart of this generation's struggle to de-legitimize racism itself. America’s policies of racially selective policing, prosecution and imprisonment are the first target for a mass movement which must emerge from our communities, but which must not be confined to them. Laying the intelligent groundwork for such a movement remains the task before us, when we go back to Gary.

CHART OF COUNTIES BY BLACK POPULATION

* Yellow highlight indicates counties with incarcerated populations between 33.4% and 67.3%

County 		      Total County    Total Black 
Name		State Population      Population	Percent
Cook		IL    5,376,741       1,405,361 	26.1
Los Angeles  	CA    9,519,338 	930,957 	9.8
Kings  		NY    2,465,326 	898,350 	36.4
Wayne  		MI    2,061,162 	868,992 	42.2
Philadelphia  	PA    1,517,550 	655,824 	43.2
Harris  	TX    3,400,578 	628,619 	18.5
Prince George's MD 	801,515 	502,550 	62.7
Bronx  		NY    1,332,650 	475,007 	35.6
Miami-Dade	FL    2,253,362 	457,214 	20.3
Dallas		TX    2,218,899 	450,557 	20.3
Queens  	NY    2,229,379 	446,189 	20.0
Shelby  	TN 	897,472 	435,824 	48.6
Baltimore city 	MD 	651,154 	418,951 	64.3
Cuyahoga  	OH    1,393,978 	382,634 	27.4
Fulton  	GA 	816,006 	363,656 	44.6
DeKalb  	GA 	665,865 	361,111 	54.2
D.C.		DC 	572,059 	343,312 	60.0
Broward  	FL    1,623,018 	333,304 	20.5
Essex  		NJ 	793,633 	327,324 	41.2
Orleans Parish 	LA 	484,674 	325,947 	67.3
New York  	NY    1,537,195 	267,302 	17.4
Jefferson  	AL 	662,047 	260,608 	39.4
Milwaukee  	WI 	940,164 	231,157 	24.6
Duval  		FL 	778,879 	216,780 	27.8
Alameda  	CA    1,443,741 	215,598 	14.9
Marion  	IN 	860,454		207,964 	24.2
Hamilton  	OH 	845,303 	198,061 	23.4
Mecklenburg  	NC 	695,454 	193,838 	27.9
St. Louis  	MO    1,016,315 	193,306 	19.0
Franklin  	OH    1,068,978 	191,196 	17.9
Tarrant  	TX    1,446,219 	185,143 	12.8
St. Louis city 	MO 	348,189 	178,266 	51.2
E. Baton Rouge
 Parish 	LA 	412,852 	165,526 	40.1
Orange  	FL 	896,344 	162,899 	18.2
San Diego  	CA    2,813,833 	161,480 	 5.7
Allegheny  	PA    1,281,666 	159,058 	12.4
Palm Beach  	FL    1,131,184 	156,055 	13.8
San Bernardino  CA    1,709,434 	155,348 	 9.1
Suffolk  	MA 	689,807 	153,418 	22.2
Hinds  		MS 	250,800 	153,297 	61.1
Jackson  	MO 	654,880 	152,391 	23.3
Baltimore  	MD 	754,292 	151,600 	20.1
Hillsborough  	FL 	998,948 	149,423 	15.0
Davidson  	TN 	569,891 	147,696 	25.9
Richland  	SC 	320,677 	144,809 	45.2
Nassau  	NY    1,334,544 	134,673 	10.1
Mobile  	AL 	399,843 	133,465 	33.4
Montgomery  	MD 	873,341 	132,256 	15.1
Westchester  	NY 	923,459 	131,132 	14.2
Jefferson  	KY 	693,604 	130,928 	18.9
Clark  		NV    1,375,765 	124,885 	 9.1
Wake  		NC 	627,846 	123,820 	19.7
Erie  		NY 	950,265 	123,529 	13.0
Guilford  	NC 	421,048 	123,253 	29.3
Lake  		IN 	484,564 	122,723 	25.3
Clayton  	GA 	236,517 	121,927 	51.6
Sacramento  	CA    1,223,499 	121,804 	10.0
Oakland  	MI    1,194,156 	120,720 	10.1
Pulaski  	AR 	361,474 	115,197 	31.9
Maricopa  	AZ    3,072,149 	114,551 	 3.7
Cobb  		GA 	607,751 	114,233 	18.8
Richmond city 	VA 	197,790 	113,108 	57.2
Caddo Parish 	LA 	252,161 	112,483 	44.6
Montgomery  	OH 	559,062 	111,030 	19.9
Union  		NJ 	522,541 	108,593 	20.8
Montgomery  	AL 	223,510 	108,583 	48.6
Charleston  	SC 	309,969 	106,918 	34.5
Cumberland  	NC 	302,963 	105,731 	34.9
Jefferson 
  Parish 	LA 	455,466 	104,121 	22.9
Norfolk city 	VA 	234,403 	103,387 	44.1
New Castle  	DE 	500,265		101,167 	20.2
Monroe  	NY 	735,343 	101,078 	13.7
Bexar  		TX    1,392,931		100,025 	 7.2
Hennepin 	MN    1,116,200 	 99,943 	 9.0
Hartford  	CT 	857,183 	 99,936 	11.7
Richmond  	GA 	199,775 	 99,391 	49.8
Oklahoma  	OK 	660,448 	 99,241 	15.0
Suffolk  	NY    1,419,369 	 98,553 	 6.9
Riverside  	CA    1,545,387 	 96,421 	 6.2
Chatham  	GA 	232,048 	 93,971 	40.5
King  		WA    1,737,034 	 93,875 	 5.4
New Haven  	CT 	824,008 	 93,239 	11.3
Camden  	NJ 	508,932 	 92,059 	18.1
Genesee  	MI 	436,141 	 88,843 	20.4
Contra Costa  	CA 	948,816 	 88,813 	 9.4
Fairfield  	CT 	882,567 	 88,362 	10.0
Durham  	NC 	223,314 	 88,109 	39.5
Jefferson  	TX 	252,051 	 85,046 	33.7
Fairfax  	VA 	969,749 	 83,098 	 8.6
Pinellas  	FL 	921,482 	 82,556 	 9.0
Hudson  	NJ 	608,975 	 82,098 	13.5
Muscogee  	GA 	186,291 	 81,488 	43.7
Virginia 
  Beach city 	VA 	425,257 	 80,593 	19.0
Delaware  	PA 	550,864 	 79,981 	14.5
Forsyth  	NC 	306,067 	 78,388 	25.6
Gwinnett  	GA 	588,448 	 78,224 	13.3
Lucas  		OH 	455,054 	 77,268 	17.0
Travis  	TX 	812,280 	 75,247 	 9.3
St. Clair  	IL 	256,082 	 73,666 	28.8
Bibb 	 	GA 	153,887 	 72,818 	47.3
Summit  	OH 	542,899 	 71,608 	13.2
Newport 
  News city 	VA	180,150 	 70,388 	39.1
Fort Bend  	TX 	354,452 	 70,356 	19.8
Leon  		FL 	239,452 	 69,704 	29.1
Mercer  	NJ 	350,761 	 69,502 	19.8
Greenville  	SC 	379,616 	 69,455 	18.3
Middlesex  	NJ 	750,162 	 68,467		 9.1
Anne Arundel  	MD 	489,656 	 66,428 	13.6
Polk  		FL 	483,924 	 65,545 	13.5
Hampton city 	VA 	146,437 	 65,428 	44.7
Henrico  	VA 	262,300 	 64,805 	24.7
Passaic  	NJ 	489,049 	 64,647 	13.2
Burlington  	NJ 	423,394 	 64,071 	15.1
Madison  	AL 	276,700 	 63,025 	22.8
Escambia  	FL 	294,410 	 63,010 	21.4
Hamilton  	TN 	307,896 	 62,005 	20.1
Tulsa  		OK 	563,299 	 61,656 	10.9
Denver  	CO	554,636 	 61,649 	11.1
San Francisco  	CA 	776,733 	 60,515		 7.8
Solano  	CA 	394,542 	 58,827 	14.9
Dougherty  	GA 	 96,065 	 57,762 	60.1
Chesapeake city VA 	199,184 	 56,823 	28.5
Montgomery  	PA 	750,097 	 55,969		 7.5
Orangeburg  	SC 	 91,582 	 55,736 	60.9
Douglas  	NE 	463,585 	 53,330 	11.5
Spartanburg  	SC 	253,791 	 52,775 	20.8
Prince William  VA 	280,813 	 52,691 	18.8
Will  		IL 	502,266 	 52,509 	10.5
Kent 		MI 	574,335 	 51,287		 8.9
Portsmouth city VA 	100,565 	 50,899 	50.6

source: http://www.blackcommentator.com/147/147_cover_incarceration.html 20jul2005
chart: http://www.blackcommentator.com/147/147_cover_dixon_chart_reg.html