THE HIGH COSTS OF BAD POLICY

MOBERLY, Mo. - African-Americans must do more to create a better future for
themselves and their children.

Several speakers delivered that self-help message last week at the 29th
Annual Freedom Fund Banquet of NAACP Branch 4071 in the Moberly Correctional
Center. Willie Henderson, head of prison evangelistic outreach at the
Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ in Kansas City, told the men they were
behind bars, and "it's nobody's fault but your own."

It's actually more complicated than that. A new report explains that states
for years have reduced funding for education to balance budgets but
increased financing for prisons.

The shift has made prisons a national solution to social problems and
disproportionately hurt African-American men, the study said.

The Justice Policy Institute report released last month is titled
"Cellblocks or Classrooms? The Funding of Higher Education and Corrections
and its Impact on African American Men." Among its findings: More black men
are in prisons and jails than institutions of higher education.

"America's burgeoning prison system has been fueled by the incarceration of
nonwhites, particularly African-American men," said the study by the
Washington-based research and advocacy group promoting alternatives to
incarceration. A black man born in the 1990s has a one-in-four chance of
spending some time in prison during his lifetime, the study said.

Between 1980 and 2000 the U.S. population behind bars jumped from 500,000 to
2 million. In 2000, 791,600 of them were African-American men compared with
603,032 black men in higher education.

But that's not always been the case. The study said in 1980 there were
143,000 African-American men in state and federal prisons and 463,700 black
men in colleges and universities.

Missouri was among the top offenders, with more black men under the
jurisdiction of state prison systems in 1999-2000 than in college, the study
said. In Missouri, 11,600 black men were behind bars compared with 11,216 in
higher education. In Kansas, 3,000 black men were behind bars compared with
4,230 in higher education.

The study said states' investments in the future of African-American men
also shifted from education to prisons. Higher-education funding cuts have
increased the burden on students and families of paying for college.

The study said state spending on colleges and universities doubled from 1950
to 1980 while corrections budgets then were mostly unchanged. But from 1985
to 2000, state spending on corrections grew 166 percent, rising to $32
billion compared with state higher education funding, which went up 24
percent to $55.5 billion.

The study showed that Kansas' higher education spending from 1985 to 2000
grew 30 percent to $638 million. But corrections funding jumped 192 percent
to $263 million.

In that period, higher education spending in Missouri rose 52 percent to
$927 million in 2000. But corrections funding jumped 236 percent to $423
million.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's summer
issue of The New Crisis magazine notes that the rise in felony convictions
has caused 4 million people, 1.4 million of them black, to currently or
permanently lose their right to vote.

That hurts the black community's voting power to change the awful trend of
cellblocks over classrooms.

The Justice Policy Institute study urged reforms in parole practices, drug
laws and the repeal of mandatory sentencing to get more people to be
productive members of society and "unlock resources (states) need to stave
off cuts to higher education."

Byron X Britton, president of the NAACP branch in the Moberly prison, said
the trend meant black men must eliminate hatred, envy, distrust and fear in
themselves to end violence, crime and incarceration.

African-Americans need that self-help answer now more than ever.