Debt To Society: The Real Price of Prisons, Part 6 of 8

LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME

Mass Incarceration Comes At A Moral Cost To Every American

We must hold on to the spirit of America, the ideals upon which this nation
was built. What is that spirit? Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses who yearn to breathe free. You will not be limited because of race,
sex, religion, blood line, SAT scores, or previous conditions of servitude.
Here, we will provide you an even playing field and equal opportunity. And
to the extent that we have evened the playing field, we have indeed
experienced some amazing results.

America, known the world over as the land of the free, was founded on the
principle of liberty and justice for all. Our freedoms are to be envied in
many respects. We have a free press and are protected by the First
Amendment, which allows us to openly criticize our government. We are able
to move about the country and the world at will. We have certain
inalienable rights that arguably exceed those of any other modernized
country. Yet, at the same time, some 2 million of our citizens are denied
their freedom. They are caught up in the tangle of webs known collectively
as the prison industrial-complex. We incarcerate more of our citizens than
any other nation.

At some point we must ask ourselves: What is the moral price we pay as a
nation for locking up our youth rather than lifting them up? Until
something is done about this staggering practice we can no longer claim to
be "the land of the free."

Although our criminal justice system is predicated on a promise of
equality, it often fails to deliver. In fact, now more than ever it appears
structured to affirmatively exploit race and class inequality. If left
unchecked, the American dream will no longer be within every person's reach.

What is the American dream? It is a "one big tent" dream, where all of us
fit inside and no one is left in the margins. Under this tent there are
five basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity,
equal access, fair share, and a concern for the least of us. Our national
character must be measured by our commitment to these principles. We must
leave no American behind.

Yet, through the prison-industrial complex and the "War on Drugs," access
to justice for many is denied. A large proportion of the growth in US
incarceration is not the result of increasing crime rates, which have been
falling since 1992, but instead the "War on Drugs," whose arsenal includes
policies such as mandatory-minimum sentencing and "three strikes" laws.

Sixty-five percent of all prisoners are high school dropouts, 70 percent
are functionally illiterate, and 63 percent recidivate. We are often
tempted to think of China as an oppressive country, but we incarcerate
500,000 more people in this country -- despite the fact that we have less
than one-fourth the population of China. We lock up our poor, our
uneducated, our unruly, our unstable and our addicted, where other
countries provide treatment, mental hospitals and care.

The financial costs of maintaining such a system are staggering. Operating
prisons this year will cost about $46 billion. States spending on prisons
has grown far faster than that on universities.

We are increasingly becoming a nation of first-class jails and second-class
schools. The United States is spending an average of $7,000 per year to
educate a youth, and over $35,000 to lock up a youth.

These costs come at the expense of minorities especially, and young African
American men in particular. African Americans represent 15 percent of
regular drug users, compared to 67 percent for whites and 13 percent for
Hispanics. Yet African Americans make up 35 percent of those arrested for
drug possession, 55 percent of drug convictions, and 74 percent of those
sentenced to prison for drug possession.

Similar disparities are found throughout the court system, from arrest on
through death penalty sentencing and the plea bargaining process at the
federal level. And racial disparities in the criminal justice system do not
stop at adult incarceration, but increasingly impact African-American
youths as well. Although overall juvenile violent crime declined by 30
percent between 1994 and 1998, juvenile incarceration has continued to
rise, particularly among African American youth. Most devastatingly, all 50
states now have laws that allow juveniles to be tried as adults. The
movement toward youth involvement in adult courts is similar to "get tough"
schemes in the education system. And, as is the case for school discipline
policies, the rise in juvenile incarceration has disproportionately
impacted minority youth. Consequently, although minority youth are
one-third of the youth population nationwide, they represent two-thirds of
all youth confined in local detention and state correctional systems.

As a result of all this, minority, particularly African American,
communities are losing tremendous human capital as their members are
warehoused in prisons. The loss of young able-bodied members of the
community is as consequential as losses suffered on the continent of Africa
as a result of the slave trade. High rates of incarceration among
minorities further erode communities that are already depressed, when
members must support increasing numbers of economically, socially, and
politically impaired men, women, and children.

For far too many African American youth, our schools fall short of their
mission to help, and in fact sometimes act as a slippery slope toward
incarceration. Limited resources in urban public schools have conspired to
limit students' preparation to meet the challenges of the job market in the
new millennium.

Another devastating impact of rising incarceration rates among African
Americans is disenfranchisement from the voting process. Dozens of states
bar current and former convicts from voting. As a result, 3.9 million US
citizens are disenfranchised, including 1.4 million who have completed
their prison and jail terms. While African Americans represent
approximately 13 percent of the US population, they represent 36 percent of
the total number of US citizens who have lost their right to vote. The
gains of the civil-rights movement are thus being rolled back by the march
of the prison-industrial complex.

Challenging these trends requires concerted action from all elements of our
society. If we are to advance as a nation, we must ensure that all people
have adequate opportunities to become self-sufficient and productive
members of our society. We will either flourish or perish together. The
choice is ours to make.

Next Article: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1276/a03.html