JAIL AS A GROWTH INDUSTRY SHOULD CONCERN EVERYONE

I'm going to talk about responsibility today.

I thought I'd delve into the topic this week for the people who
believe that simply embracing the idea of personal responsibility is
all it takes to counteract the epidemic of black males who are winding
up in the nation's prisons instead of on its college campuses.

It ought to be.

Black males, who are bound to be treated more harshly by the criminal
justice system once they're caught up in it and even harsher by
society once they're out of it, would do themselves a big favor by
shunning criminal activity.

For that matter anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, should
embrace the simpler route of not committing crimes if they don't want
to get swept into a system that will chew them up and spit them out. I
never say so in columns, because I see it as such a given that it
doesn't bear repeating.

But now that I've cleared that up, I'll also say this: For far too
many people, that simple responsibility of avoiding crime is becoming
tougher to live up to. We know this is true because if it wasn't, then
the United States wouldn't be the world's top jailer. If it wasn't
true, then there would be no markets for private prison profiteers.

The fact that incarceration has become a growth industry in this
country should concern everyone. It points to more far-reaching
failures in our society -- failures that most of us ought to feel a
collective responsibility to at least try and combat. And when it
comes to the dismal situation with black males who disproportionately
fill the nation's jails and prisons -- many of whom come from
environments in which personal responsibility is defined as doing
whatever it takes to survive day-to-day -- sanctimony and slogans ring
hollow.

What is needed is understanding.

We can begin by trying to understand what happens in communities where
the drug trade has usurped legitimate opportunities. We can also begin
to try and understand how unfair drug sentencing laws have not only
sent more black males to prison longer for minor drug crimes, but have
also made it tougher for them to start over once they are released.

For several years now, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has been
fighting for more fairness when it comes to drug sentences. The
average crack cocaine sentence is, for example, 120 months. That's
greater than the average 103-month sentence for robbery or the
31-month average sentence for manslaughter. Sentences for crack
offenders are roughly two to three times as great as sentences for
powder cocaine offenders -- most of whom tend to be white -- who
distribute equivalent quantities of drugs.

And yeah, I know that black men should just say no to anything having
to do with drugs. Many of them do. But if those who succumb to the
temptations of the drug culture get caught, that doesn't mean that
they don't deserve to have justice applied equally.

Right now that's not happening.

One high-profile example: When authorities in Palm Beach County were
closing in on conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh for allegedly
trying to buy illegal quantities of OxyContin and other painkillers
from a black-market ring, the furor died down after he admitted his
drug use and announced that he was checking himself into a rehab
program. That was that.

Contrast that to former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry who,
after being caught smoking crack in an FBI sting operation in 1990,
was treated as a criminal rather than as a sick man. He was convicted
on a misdemeanor possession charge and served six months in jail.

And crack is just as addictive, if not more addictive, as prescription
pain killers.

True, everyone has a personal responsibility to be law-abiding
citizens. But people -- even people like Limbaugh -- do make mistakes.
And when black males -- many of whom may be vulnerable to making bad
choices through being influenced by the cultures that are spawned in
neighborhoods struggling with unemployment and poor education -- face
harsher punishments for the same crimes committed by those who may
have had an easier time of it, then that's wrong.

It is also the thing that has caused too many black males to view
incarceration as a certainty, rather than an aberration, in their lives.

I hope that all changes one day. Soon.