The U.S. Gulag Prison System
The shame of a nation and a
crime against humanity
By Stephen Lendman
03/16/06 "ICH"
-- - No, not the one you think, outrageous as it is.? I'm
referring to the US prison system that's with no exaggeration
about as shockingly abusive as the gulag abroad.? It qualifies
for that label by its size alone - more than 2.1 million as of
June, 2004 and growing larger by about 900 new inmates every
week.? Blacks (mostly poor and disadvantaged) especially are
affected.? While they make up just 12.3% of the population, they
account for half the prison population, and their numbers there
have grown fivefold in the last 25 years.? Hispanics (also poor)
account for another 15%.
About half of those incarcerated are there for non-violent
offenses, and half of those (500,000) are drug related.? But
while blacks make up 15% of ilicit drug users, they account for
37% of drug arrests, 42% of drug offenders in federal prison and
62% in state prisons.? And Human Rights Watch reported in 2000
that in one third of the states 75% of all prisoners for
drug-related offenses are black.? In my home state of Illinois
they reported the number to be an astonishing 89%, a total
exceed by only one other state. Further, in a so-called free
society, below the radar are hundreds of political prisoners,
mostly people of color, there only because they represent a
threat to the state from their pursuit of justice for their
people if they were free.
Today the US shamelessly has more people behind bars than any
other nation including China with over 4 times our population.?
And things have become especially repressive against those in
society least able to defend themselves including immigrants of
color and our newest head of the queue demon - Muslims.? The
Bush administration has made a bad situation far worse taking
full advantage of their fear-induced "permanent state of war"
and sham "global war on terrorism" to target all those seen as a
potential threat to their plan for global dominance and full
control at home.
Taken as a whole, this is a national disgrace and outrage, but
the effect on those targeted is pretty much below the radar,
unreported and undiscussed in the mainstream.? Who cares about a
couple of million mostly poor, mostly people of color (including
immigrants, many of whom are undocumented and have no legal
rights at all) languishing behind bars out of sight and out of
mind.? When any of this is discussed, it's to let the (voter
eligible) public know our political leaders are "tough on crime"
and working to keep us safe.? Safe from whom or what? In the
words of a great world class journalist, that kind of talk is
"what comes out of the rear end of a bull."? What's really going
on has little to do with public safety but lots to do with
controlling a justifiably restive population of poor and
desperate people, the inability of those people to afford a
proper defense in our so-called criminal justice system stacked
against them, and a growing opportunity for big business to
profit on human misery.? It's a kind of modern day slavery - a
growing state and privately run criminal injustice and prison
industry using human beings as their product.? In this land of
opportunity and the "free market", all things (and people) are
commodities to be exploited for profit.
A
GROWTH MARKET OF POOR AND DESPERATE PEOPLE, MOSTLY BLACK AND
HISPANIC - A READY RESOURCE FOR THE PRISON GROWTH INDUSTRY
The way this country has always treated its least advantaged
throughout its history is shameful.? British historian Arnold J.
Toynbee perceptively understood this in his quote made 46 years
ago when he said:? "America is today the leader of a world-wide
anti-revolutionary movement in the defence of vested interests.?
She now stands for what Rome stood for:? Rome consistently
supported the rich against the poor.........and since the poor,
so far, have always and everywhere been far more numerous than
the rich, Rome's policy made for inequality, for injustice, and
for the least happiness of the greatest number."? Imagine what
Toynbee might say today if he were still living.
Toynbee didn't say it but he might have added that none in
America have fared worse than people of color - American
Indians, Hispanics, Asians and especially Blacks first brought
here as chattel and who remained that way for over 300 years.?
Even when they were freed by the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution and guaranteed the right of life, liberty and
property, due process and equal protection under the law by the
Fourteenth Amendment they still seldom got it. Throughout the
100 years of Jim Crow justice and even after the civil rights
gains in the 1960s, most blacks and other people of color have
always been on the bottom rung of society (along with our native
people) and denied most of its benefits including equal justice
under the law.
There are those today in the US, even from the progressive
community, who like to say this country has come a long way from
its racist past, and while there are still far too many
inequities we're making progress.? Are these people living in
the same country and on the same planet as I am?? In the US the
statistics on blacks alone in the criminal justice system make a
mockery of any notion of a nation no longer racist.? When it
comes to the issue of justice, we've never been more racist
since the days of legal slavery.? The numbers are truly shocking
and in a country claiming to be a democracy and a model for the
rest of the world.? I hope that world makes another choice.?
There are far better ones than ours, and our imperial adventures
abroad and policies at? home toward our least advantaged prove
it.
THE SHAMEFUL FACTS PAINT AN UGLY PICTURE OF ANOTHER (LOCKED UP)
AMERICA, OUT OF SIGHT AND OUT OF MIND
Here are some key facts.? Nationwide black males over 18 are
incarcerated at 9 times the rate of comparable white males, and
in 11 states those rates range from 12 to 26 times the rate for
whites.? In my home state of Illinois the rate is 15 times, and
in the nation's capital the rate is an astonishing 49 times.?
The most current data on incarceration for blacks in the US was
1,815 per 100,000 vs. 609 per 100,000 for Latinos, 235 for
whites and 99 for Asians.? For adult black males the rate was
4,630 per 100,000, 1,668 for Latinos and 482 for whites.? In
1999, 11% of black males in their 20s and early 30s were in
prison including one third of black male high school dropouts. ?
Even worse, the statistical model used by the Bureau of Justice
Statistics at the turn of the century to determine racial and
ethnic differences in their chances for incarceration at
sometime in their lifetime predicts a 29% chance of serving
prison time for a black male aged 16 in 1996.? The comparable
chance for a white male in the same age group was 4%.? In 2002
the Justice Policy Institute reported there were more black men
behind bars than in colleges or universities.? It also reported
that 30% of black males between 20 and 29 are either in prison
or on probation or parole.
From the numbers above we know that one in every 20 black men
over 18 is now in a state or federal prison compared to one in
every 180 whites.? And in some states like Oklahoma, Iowa, Rhode
Island, Texas and Wisconsin, the black male incarceration rate
incredibly is between 13 -14% of all black men in those states -
a devastating blow to the black families and communities there.?
It's also true that the best predictor of a state's
incarceration rate and its total prison population is the size
of its black population.
By
almost all measure the state of what can only be called the US
criminal injustice system is shocking and outrageous.? In the
last 35 years the total number incarcerated has exploded from
less than 300,000 in 1970 to more than 7 times that number now.?
Today the US is number one not only in its total prison
population but in the highest number per 100,000 population
imprisoned - 690. Only Russia is a close second with 675 while
in South Africa it's 400, England - 125, France - 90, Sweden -
60 and Italy - 40.? Would anyone suggest the US is 17 times more
non-law-abiding than Italy, or is there a simpler explanation?
It's also true that race is the most prominent reason why states
deny voting rights to convicted felons and ex-felons.? The
greater the percentage of blacks in a state, the more likely it
is for that state to disenfranchise its residents who've served
time in jail.? A prison record in those states means a loss of a
citizen's most fundamental democratic right.? The laws vary by
state, but The Sentencing Project estimates 4.7 million
Americans, or 1 in 43 adults, have currently or permanently lost
their right to vote because of a felony conviction.? And 1.4
million black men, or 13% of all black men, are so
disenfranchised, a rate 7 times the national average.? Even more
shocking, the same report estimates that given the current rates
of incarceration, 30% of the next generation of black men will
be disenfranchised at some time in their life.? And in states
that disenfranchise ex-offenders, as many as 40% of black men
may permanently lose their right to vote.
Let's be very clear.? Based on the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution it can, and I believe should, be argued that all
state disenfranchisement laws are unconstitutional.? Section 1
of that amendment reads: "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous
servitude."? It remains for a future Congress and/or the courts
to address this issue and decide whether we're to be a democracy
for all our citizens or just for those we decide are eligible
and for the reasons we choose.? And? this doesn't address the
more basic question of whether our right to vote really
matters.? The public has virtually no voice in choosing the 2
major parties' candidates, and when we cast our votes the new
electronic voting machines can easily be programmed or
manipulated to ignore our choice and count it for another
candidate and even do it multiple times.? This is why half the
eligible voting public opt out.? They don't believe the system
is free and fair so why bother.? That thought never leaves my
mind, and I wonder why I bother.? But that consideration awaits
another commentary and analysis, a pretty fundamental and
important one.
THE BIG AND GROWING BUCKS SPENT ON LOCKING PEOPLE UP IN CAGES
Since the 1970s the prison-industrial complex has exploded in
size and continues to grow exponentially.? It now exceeds $40
billion annually and rising.? On average states now spend 60
cents on prisons for every dollar spent on higher education, up
from 28 cents in 1980.? And several large states are so
hell-bent to lock people up their annual budget for prisons
exceed that for education.? Also, the overall rate of prison
spending growth has greatly exceeded that for education for the
past 25 years.? It's shocking that the annual per prisoner cost
today almost equals a year's tuition at Harvard.? And what's all
this spending buying us.? Not a damn thing except a nation
growing more repressive, more racist and more likely to target
anyone if they ever run short of their current favorites.? But
since 9/11 they've tapped a new vein of 1.5 million Muslims.?
And if they throw in Hindus, Buddhists and a few other easy to
demonize miscellaneous sects out of the mainstream they can
easily triple that number. Now that's a "strike" that may be too
"rich" to ignore.? Think of all the new prisons they'll need to
lock up a load of them, get them off the streets and help keep a
new growth industry growing and prosperous.
Contrary to the "law and order" baloney from our politicians,
there's no evidence of a rising trend of criminality, including
the violent kinds.? Since 1980, the data on the national crime
rate has trended slightly up, then down, without any significant
change.? Still the incarceration rate has skyrocketed reflecting
a crime wave that doesn't exist.? In the 1990s, thanks to a good
economy, crime rates actually fell, but incarceration rates rose
dramatically nonetheless.? Smell fishy?? It sure does to me.?
And my own view, shared by others, is that this is all part of a
sinister effort to control dissent by a combination of a
state-induced climate of fear and hard line national security
police state tactics to keep a restive population in line.?
Those most likely to be restive are the ones most deprived, the
ones left out over the last 25 years when the wealth gap widened
exponentially between rich and poor and continues to unabated.?
At the same time the social safety net has been and continues to
be shredded making conditions intolerable for the poor and also
impacting lower and middle income earners and families.? Of
course, the ones always hurt most are people of color and that
means mostly black people.? But Hispanics are gaining ground in
this race to the bottom as that segment of our population
(including undocumented immigrants) is growing the fastest along
with those from Asia.
THE SO-CALLED "WAR ON DRUGS" -? IT'S A HOAX AND A NATIONAL
DISGRACE
We
should have caught on by now.? When our political leaders want
to scare hell out of us about something, real or imagined (you
can bet it's the latter), they declare war on it.? It gets the
juices flowing and the flags waving.? We had the phony "cold
war", and now, with "the evil empire" gone and desperate to find
new imagined and contrived enemies, we have a "war on terrorism"
and a "war on drugs."? We also have an unmentioned "war on the
climate" as witnessed by the alarming rate of melting of the
polar and Greenland ice caps.? Maybe one day they'll declare
dandruff public enemy number one and declare war on it.? Might
as well.? It would make as much sense as all the others, except
for the one real one they never mention caused by global
warming.
And, oh yes, there's one other war never mentioned, and it's the
most important and dangerous one of all - it's the ongoing and
growing war on the Constitution and our sacred Bill of Rights.?
They're being taken from us right before our eyes, and in our
blindness and mental fog we don't even see it happening.? Most
of us know the Ben Franklin quote about those who would
sacrifice their freedom for security deserve neither and will
lose both.? He also said that "distrust and caution are the
parents of security" and reportedly said at the signing of the
Declaration of Independence "we must all hang together, or
assuredly we shall all hang separately."? Franklin's
contemporary, the great German philosopher and writer Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, just as wisely said that "None are more
hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are
free." Franklin, Goethe and many others aren't considered iconic
and venerable historic figures for nothing.? And if we take the
trouble to read them, we have the benefit of their great
wisdom.? They've warned us with it, and we damn well better be
listening and heeding them.? If not, we'll awaken one day, find
our precious freedoms gone, finally understand what happened,
and it'll be too late.
Except for the 2 unmentioned real wars, the others are surreal
ones.? They're contrived and concocted by devious politicians
for their own interests like trying to get reelected or needing
a reason to raise defense or homeland security spending.?
They're also to benefit their corporate allies who profit from
them.? The more they can scare us the greater the amount of our
tax dollars they can divert from vital societal needs to put in
the pockets of their corporate friends and fight wars of
imperial conquest for their benefit.? And the more repressive
laws they can pass to destroy our civil liberties, and as
discussed above, lock up in cages those most in need and most
likely to be restive about it.
The current catchy phrase in the "drug war" was first used
during the supposed crack epidemic in the 80s, but we can pin
one more rap on Richard Nixon who first declared a "war on
drugs" over 30 years ago.? But the idea of making some "drugs"
illegal goes back much further than that, to the 1930s (and
earlier) when prohibition ended and alcohol producing companies
may have decided to eliminate the threat of a competing "drug."?
You'd think we might have learned something from 13 years of
violence and corruption under Prohibition that made criminals
out of otherwise law-abiding people who may have just wanted a
cold beer and also created a new revenue source for organized
crime.
But all that was chicken feed compared to today as the UN now
estimates the annual take from trafficking elicit drugs is
around $400-500 billion.? That's double the sales revenue from
US legal prescription drugs Big Pharma reported in 2005.? Those
profiting big time from the illegal ones include more than the
"kingpins" and organized crime.? The market is so big everyone
wants in on it.? For many banks, including the major
international money center ones, "laundering" drug money is one
of their important profit centers.? And it's well-known that the
CIA was been involved in drug-trafficking (directly or
indirectly) throughout its half century existence and then began
to profit from it in earnest during the Contra wars of the 1980s
to fund their operations.? Today the CIA is part of the elicit
drug trade in places like Afghanistan working with major
criminal syndicates in the huge business of trafficking heroin.?
The take from this one operation alone is so lucrative it's hard
to imagine they'd ever give it up or not want in on all other
major parts of the drug trade worldwide.? Who'll stop or
prosecute them?? And what criminal enterprise wouldn't want them
as a partner to guarantee them ease of access to the US and
other major markets.? That's a marriage joined together none of
the parties would ever want to put asunder.
And now in this modern Age of (contrived) Anxiety,? we have 2
new "super-spook" agencies established to take full surveillance
advantage of the Bush administration's unjustifiable "wartime"
powers and fear-induced concocted "war on terror" to last for
"generations" - The Office of Homeland Security and Office of
the Director of National Intelligence.? Wanna bet they're also
in the elicit drug biz big time.? How could they resist it.?
They both need every buck they can get to watch all of us,
everywhere, all the time - which is what they're now doing.? And
it's an indisputable fact that all the spy agencies are above
the law and can do whatever they please - spy legally and
illegally, traffic elicit drugs, torture detainees they control
and murder anyone they target including heads of state.
But it's the purpose of this essay to focus on how the so-called
drug war has led to a burgeoning prison-industrial complex that
adversely affects the lives of millions of society's most
disadvantaged who happen to be mostly people of color and most
of them black.? Just like during Prohibition, otherwise
law-abiding people have become criminals and are being locked
away for long sentences.? The repressive "mandatory minimum"
sentences are especially harsh and outrageous.? Supposedly
established to target "kingpins" and big time dealers, it hasn't
turned out that way and likely was never intended to.? The US
Sentencing Commission reports that only 5.5% of all federal
crack cocaine defendants and 11% of all federal drug defendants
are "high-level" dealers.? The rest are low-level operatives and
those caught "possessing."? In most cases they're from society's
least advantaged and poor, and most of them are black.? These
convenient targets create a ready supply of bodies to fill
prison cells as part of the plan to remove the unwanted from the
streets and create a new growth industry at the same time.
SOME QUICK FACTS ABOUT COCAINE AND ITS DERIVATIVE "CRACK" AND
HOW ITS USE TARGETS BLACKS
First off, coca leaf cultivation in South America has been the
cornerstone of the Andean region for 4 thousand years, and its
consumption has been part of the culture since before the
Incas.? It's commonly used by millions of people there including
the cocaleros, or coca farmers, as we in this country use
coffee, tea, a glass of wine or just a cold beer.? Besides
drinking coca tea, the leaf is chewed to relieve fatigue,
suppress appetite, as a communal activity and to offset altitude
sickness. The US Embassy in Peru even recommends it for the
latter purpose.
Use of cocaine in the US didn't first begin in the 60s.? It's
been around recreationally for nearly 150 years for "whatever
ailed you" tonics, in cigarettes, ointments and nasal sprays.?
Its use was perfectly legal until the federal government
classified it as a narcotic (which it is not) in 1914.? After
that it could only be gotten legally by prescription or
illegally from a "street dealer."?
Cocaine is a powder which in "cooked" form is called "crack."?
The law treats each very differently.? The racist "mandatory
minimum" sentencing laws established by Congress in 1986
penalize crack users especially harshly.? Defendants convicted
of selling 500 grams of powder cocaine vs. 5 grams of crack each
receive 5 year sentences.? For 5 kilos of powder and 50 grams of
crack it's a 10 year sentence.? That's a 100:1 ratio.? Why??
Hold on, there's more.?
Simple possession of any amount of powder by a first-time
offender is a misdemeanor punishable by a max 1 year sentence.?
For crack, simple possession is a felony carrying a 5 year
sentence.? Now to the why.? Blacks accounted for 84% of
convicted crack offenders in 2000, Hispanics 9% and whites 6%.?
For powder it was Hispanics - 50%, blacks - 30% and whites -
18%.? Now you know.? The federal crack laws established 20 years
ago were part of the "Reagan revolution" and its racist war
against the poor, mainly blacks.? It was also intended as a
defense against those least advantaged poor and mainly blacks as
the "Reagan revolution" began dismantling the social safety net
and transferring wealth to the rich and well-off.? That transfer
has now been ongoing for 25 years with no end in sight. The "war
on drugs" and its harsh laws, mainly targeting blacks, were
intended to defuse the inevitable pressure that would build
among the poor and black community and likely explode again in
the streets as it did in the 60s.? 2.1+ million people locked in
cages is how this nation's leaders address the gross social
inequity problem it deliberately created.? It's their solution,
and it's a national disgrace and outrage.
TORTURE IN US PRISONS - IT'S NOT JUST AT GUANTANAMO AND ABU
GHRAIB - IT'S RIGHT HERE IN THE USA
Surprised?? The few who even think about this may be, but even
many of them shamefully believe all those locked up deserve the
harsh treatment they get.? Aren't they sent there to be punished
for committing crimes?? Did they expect a "country club?"
Punishment is what they get big time because prisons everywhere
are brutal places, and those sent to them have no rights and it
shows in how they're treated - routinely.? And let's be
perfectly clear about the way it is at all US domestic and
foreign based prisons (and most all other countries' as well):
No, it doesn't just happen at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram
near Kandahar, Afghanistan; and no, it's not just by a few
"rogue elements" or "bad apples."? What goes on is policy, and
it comes right from the top sanctioned and approved.? And let's
be very clear about one other thing. The real criminals sit in
corporate suites and boardrooms or in capitol hill offices while
their victims are locked in cages and subjected to unspeakable
abuse and brutal torture with no chance to stop it or receive
redress.
Prisons, with few exceptions, are not intended for
rehabilitation.? They are institutions societies use for
vengeance and punishment.? There are the most gruesome hellholes
around the world the US takes full advantage of just in the
prisoners it "renditions" for attempted information extraction
by some of the worst physical and psychological tortures the
human mind can conceive.? But this essay is about what goes on
in US prisons within our borders, and what you'll read below
will sound like reports about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.? Get
ready to feel your skin crawl.
Everything we saw on TV months ago about prisoner torture at Abu
Ghraib (and heard goes on at Guantanamo) happens in our state
and federal prison system right here at home and lots more we
didn't see or hear about.? These are the lessons and techniques
first devised and used in US based torture-prisons and then
exported for use in our comparable torture-prisons around the
world. That's the way things are in all our prisons, and in the
language of author Gertrude Stein when she referred to roses: a
prison is a prison is a prison.? The main difference between San
Quentin and Abu Ghraib is their location. What goes on at both
and all others includes savage beatings by prison guards;
attacks by fierce dogs that inflict real bites; severe shocking
with cattle prods and 50,000 volt emitting Taser electro-shock
guns often used multiple times that make the victim shake for
hours after being struck and can also kill and often do;
assaults by toxic chemicals like pepper spray strong enough to
inflict severe pain, second degree burns, temporary blindness,
and even death in a vulnerable victim; and all this happening at
times with prisoners stripped naked including brutal rapes by
guards, other prisoners and much more.?
A
courageous woman activist imprisoned for several months for her
actions told me the case of a woman she saw stripped naked in
her cell and then bound suspended in spread-eagle form on her
prison bars and left there for hours to suffer.? The experience
devastated her and nearly killed her.? And she was another
activist being punished for her courageous acts.? Hard to
believe? You'd better believe it because it goes on every day in
all prisons routinely throughout the country -? acts of
deliberate barbarity and sadism, so severe they can and do kill
and often leave their victims an emotional shell when they
don't.? Whenever you hear reports about prisoners committing
suicide, you'd better think hard about it.? It's most likely
they were murdered by prison guards and reported as suicide.? It
may be from repeated Taser shocks, from being beaten to death so
savagely every rib in their body was broken or just from a body
giving out from repeated and brutal maltreatment over a long
period with nothing more to look forward to but more of the
same.? How many can endure the worst of that?? No one in a
civilized country should ever have to.? And no civilized person
should believe they had it coming.
HOW INTERNATIONAL LAW TREATS TORTURE
International law is explicit and long-standing forbidding the
use of any form of torture and inhumane or degrading treatment
under any circumstances.? The? Universal Declaration of Human
Rights outlawed it in 1948.? The Fourth Geneva Convention then
did it in 1949 banning any form of "physical or mental coercion"
and affirming detainees must at all time be treated humanely.?
The European Convention followed in 1950.? Then in 1984 the UN
Convention Against Torture became the first binding
international instrument dealing exclusively with the issue of
banning torture in any form for any reason.? And let's be clear
on what's meant by torture and inhumane treatment.? It includes
punching a prisoner or detainee in the mouth or kicking him or
her in the stomach or butt.
Except for the non-binding "Universal Declaration", all the
others are binding international law, and the US is a signatory
to the Fourth Geneva Convention and the UN Convention.? And hold
on, there's more.? The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a
criminal offense for US military personnel and US nationals to
commit war crimes to include cruel treatment and torture covered
under the Fourth Geneva Convention.? And virtually every human
rights organization is on the record? banning all kinds of
torture anywhere for any reason.
?A
BRIEF DIVERSION ON TORTURE OVERSEAS
I
must include some important information about one type of
torture that may be only going on overseas - for now.? Although
the US is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions and the UN
Convention Against Torture, it's routinely ignored and violated
them with impunity in US prisons and abroad.? Further, the CIA's
use of psychological torture was exempted in the UN Convention.
?
With cover from that exemption, Professor Alfred McCoy's new
book - A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From the Cold
War to the War of Terror - exposes the CIA's secret efforts to
develop new forms of torture over that period. He explained how
they conducted intensive research to crack the code of human
consciousness and through much trial and error came up with
human devastating psychological and self-inflicting torture
techniques - from sensory disorientation or the severe pain from
tortures like forced continuous standing for 24 - 48 hours.?
The CIA experiments continue now at Guantanamo and other
overseas hellhole torture-prisons.? But 2 new techniques have
been added - cultural sensitivity and individual fears and
phobias.? This four-fold assault on the human psyche is now
being used against prisoners held in overseas prisons, and the
detainees affected (most picked up randomly and guilty of no
offense) are being used as human "lab rats" in a gruesome, vile
and clearly illegal and immoral experiment to devise the most
effective psychological techniques to break down a human subject
- to break a human being so totally it's near impossible to
recover. ?
I
could find no information on if these experiments are now being
conducted in US domestic prisons.? But that doesn't mean they're
not.? They may be happening here, but we don't know about them.?
But the key point is this.? Once the use of torture in all forms
gains currency, it's inevitable it will spread everywhere.? And
let's be very clear on one other point.? The Detainee Treatment
Act of 2005 (the so-called McCain Anti-Torture amendment) passed
in December last year is so full of loopholes and offsets by
other legislation that it's worthless and will do nothing to
stop the tortures explained above.
THE DEATH PENALTY - THE "HEART OF DARKNESS" OF OUR
CRIMINAL-INJUSTICE SYSTEM
Life in prison is a living hell for all those in one as all the
victims know who've been there or those of us who've read about
it in detail as I have.? Being there is like being in one of the
5 levels of Dante's hell where those consigned to spend eternity
are doomed to eternal punishment. ?
All prisons are hellholes.? But for those prisoners with any
hope of release one day, the second lowest level of Dante's hell
is any of the so-called "supermax" prisons.? They're supposedly
intended to house society's most dangerous, incorrigibly violent
inmates, but many sent there aren't that at all like the many
political prisoners consigned that fate because the state wishes
to bury them alive and keep them isolated.? The number in these
"special" hellholes are a small but growing percent of the total
prison population, and those in them spend their waking and
sleeping hours locked in small, often windowless, cells for long
sentences of many years. They're deprived of all contact with
other inmates and only allowed out for brief periods a few times
a week for showers and some solitary exercise in a small,
enclosed space.? They're deprived of all mental stimulation from
human contact, recreation or education, and are nearly always
shackled hands and feet and escorted by armed guards whenever
they leave their cells.? Prisoners who've endured this torture,
come out, and spoken publicly about it have described it to be
like living in a tomb.? And the state inflicted misery they've
been subjected to often results in a host of severe emotional
problems including insanity.? Try locking yourself in your
bathroom with a little plain food and water for 24 hours (if you
can stand it) and see how you feel.? Then multiply that by 20 or
more years.
The state and federally sponsored murder factories known as
"death rows" are, without a doubt, the lowest and worst level of
Dante's hell.? Dante might have written his words "Abandon every
hope, all ye who enter" for the abandoned souls sent to these
barbaric death factories.? They only look different than
Auschwitz. Those entering never come out (except the few lucky
ones DNA evidence exonerate).? As of April, 2005 there were 3452
on "death row" in the 37 states with the death penalty including
36 in federal prisons and 7 held by the US military.? The vast
majority of them are poor or disadvantaged and their racial
breakdown is as follows: 45.5% white, 41.7% black, 10.4%
Hispanic, 1.2% Asian, 1.2% American Indian and .5% unknown.?
Nearly all of them, 98.5%, are male.
Most civilized countries have no death penalty, and in the
Global North only the US and Japan still do.? Japan is very
selective in who it executes, unlike the US with its assembly
line-like killing operations.? The Japanese have executed about
50 inmates in the last dozen years and about an equal number now
await execution.? Many opponents of the death penalty call these
"final solution" acts institutionalized, state-sponsored,
ritualistic acts of torture-murder.? They say "torture" because
often the prisoner is so hated that their executioners
"deliberately" try to inflict pain during the process of killing
them.? And while that alone is inhumane and barbaric enough, all
too often the accused is innocent, often the state knows it, and
they're still put to death.? Most often these are people of
color, most likely black, poor and unable to afford a proper
defense.? They become victims of a system not based on justice
but on vengeance along with the belief by elected officials that
being "tough on crime" is a good vote getter.
The case of Stan "Tookie" Williams, as much as anyone, stands
out for its barbarity and gross injustice.? Stan was a
co-founder of the Crips street gang as a teenager in South
Central Los Angeles in 1969.? He was convicted and sentenced to
death for multiple murders he said he never committed (I believe
him), but never got a proper defense to prove it.? Even later
when? evidence became known that might have exonerated him, he
was never given a chance to prove his innocence. ?
Over a dozen years before his execution in California, Stan
changed his life, became an anti-gang activist while on death
row, and renounced his former gang affiliation.? He co-wrote
children's books, worked to convince youths not to join gangs
and wrote one of the most compelling books on prison life I ever
read called Life in Prison.? He did it to show readers what
prison life is really like in plain, stark language.? He pulled
no punches.? Anyone reading it will know that prison is no place
any human being wants to be.
For his work in prison, Stan received multiple Nobel Peace Prize
nominations, in 2004 a feature film called Redemption: The Stan
Tookie Williams Story was made about his life, and as his
execution date approached, a mass effort I was part of was
launched to urge an uncaring and hostile Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger to grant clemency.? Fat chance. Thousands joined
the effort including celebrities, politicians, Nobel laureates
and Pacifica Radio, especially on its very special bold and
courageous KPFA weekday news and information program Flashpoints
Radio (the best program of its kind anywhere).? It was all in
vein, clemency was denied and Stan was put to death by lethal
injection on December 13, 2005 as thousands protested outside
the infamous San Quentin State Prison.? Stan's death was not
easy or painless.? It took repeated needle insertions in a
process that took nearly 30 minutes of great inflicted pain to
complete.? Stan's suffering at the end was not an exception.?
It's common practice, and as mentioned above, is deliberately
inflicted by a sadistic staff.? As such, even for a prisoner
being executed, this is a flagrant violation of the Eighth
Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits "cruel and unusual
punishment."? But who cares and who will act to prevent it when
it's inflicted on a condemned black man and on the day the state
murders him.
THE PROFITABLE BUSINESS OF RUNNING A GULAG
The for-profit side of running a gulag began to explode during
the Reagan years when incarceration rates began increasing
dramatically.? Along with a growing private prisons industry (a
small slice of the prison pie still largely a public
enterprise), a vast array of private businesses wanted a piece
of the action and got it.? These include architectural and
construction companies; food service contractors; all sorts of
equipment, hardware and other suppliers of steel doors, razor
wire, communications systems, and health care and medical
supplies.? There's also a big need for uniforms and assorted
weapons including dangerous products to restrain like clemical
sprays that can injure, cause severe pain, second degree burns,
temporary blindness or worse and taser electro-shock guns that
emit 50,000 volts of electricity (enough to flatten an all-pro
NFL lineman in peak form) that can and have killed as many as
167 victims from it's use through January, 2006.? And there's
loads more.? The (mal) care and feeding of a couple of million
humans takes a lot of supplying to keep the system going.? Add
it all up and it's big business, and it gets bigger with every
new prison and the inmates to fill them.? Not to worry.? Unlike
oil, there's no chance of running out bodies.
The big players in this growing industry are the private
companies that run the hellholes.? And the ones they run are
even more hellish than the public ones.? Private, publicly owned
corporations with shareholders and Wall Street to please always
need a growing revenue and profit stream and strict cost control
to maximize the bottom line part of it.? That means
understaffing, low pay for poorly trained staff, poor and unsafe
conditions, little or no life-enhancing or self-help programs
like educational opportunities or counseling services to
rehabilitate those in need like ilicit drug users, and even
worse medical care than the third world kind in the publicly run
system.? Why bother, they all cost money, reduce profits and
constrain shareholder equity.? Private contractors can also
exploit prisoners as de facto chattel.? They're not obliged to
pay wages or benefits and can take full advantage of all those
bodies free of charge.? Why would they ever pass that up.? It's
one more revenue and profit stream.
The private side of running prisons is still a small part of the
total.? But it's growing, and as it does, it's darker side may
just get darker.? Unlike most businesses, quality control is not
one of their concerns.? If humans suffer to enhance the bottom
line, who will care.? In running a gulag, you just gotta keep
'em under control locked in cages, and if you use, abuse and
lose some along the way, there's plenty more supply to fill the
available beds.? That's how it works in a nation that
commodifies its masses and exploits them.? It's what happens in
this modern era when social conditions deteriorate enough to
produce what Franklin Roosevelt spoke about in the Great
Depression years of the 1930s when he said "I see one-third of a
nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."? It's not that bad
yet, but we're heading in that direction.? As discussed above,
it produces a restive population the state chooses to lock up in
lieu of providing vital social services to satisfy essential
needs.? The result is the US gulag, the shame of the nation.?
Future historians and others will judge us by the character of
our social conscience, especially how we treat our least
advantaged and most needy. They'll also judge us by our system
of justice and the prisons within it which reflect that
conscience. The honest ones won't be kind. The great Russian
19th century novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, once remarked that he
measured the quality of a society by the quality of its
prisons.? He might have added by its quantity as well.
THE EVIDENCE SHOWS A NATION MOVING FROM A REPUBLIC TO TYRANNY
?
The evidence on our criminal injustice system and prisons within
it alone shows a nation moving from a republic to tyranny.? It's
not much different from what happened in ancient Rome when it
passed from a republic to an empire under the rule of its
emperor Augustus Caesar after Julius ignored his "Ides of March"
warning and ended his reign the hard way in the Roman Senate. ?
Our prison system alone is a stark symbol and reminder of a
society based on militarism and imperial conquest abroad, the
shredding of our civil liberties at home, and the dismantling of
our social contract obligation along with the transfer of wealth
to the privileged and powerful.? It reflects a nation descending
into the hell of tyranny and despotism that threatens to become
worse and affect us all except those at the top.? We've created
the monster of a national security police state (run by the new
Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of
National Intelligence) to control a growing restive population
that will likely grow larger.? It will include many more of us
as those in need grow in numbers and new demons are easily
found, targeted and moved to prison cells to maintain absolute
control. ? That's how it works in all tyrannical states, even
ones claiming to be democracies like ours but which, in fact,
are not.?
It
happened in ancient Rome and in more modern times in Nazi
Germany after Hitler was appointed Chancellor and ended the
Weimar Republic.? He called his party the National Socialist
German Workers Party (the term Nazi is the short form for
National Socialist with a "zi" on the end), but his constituents
were the German industrialists and militarists and his ideology
was fascist and racist.? It wasn't long before he removed his
many enemies and tried to create a state for the privileged and
Aryian pure.? The immortal words of Pastor Martin Niemoller
explained it and warns us now when he said they first came for
the Jews, then the Communists, then the trade unionists and each
time he didn't speak out because he wasn't one of them - until
there was no one left and they came for him, and there was no
one to speak out to help him. ?
This essay only addresses the mass incarceration of the most
vulnerable among us.? I've discussed the other issues in other
writings and intend to write solely about our war on immigrants
in a future article.? But unless we heed Pastor Niemoller's
warning, one day, sooner than we think, they'll come for us and
who'll be left to help. ? Based on the evidence I've presented
we already have a society out of control with a reckless rogue
administration, a "go-along" Congress and "friendly" courts
leading us along the road to hell.?
The US prison system is its metaphor and clear warning and
reflects a repressive state based on harsh and unjust Patriot
Act laws that are close to being supplemented by a racist,
fascist-style immigration bill passed by the House (the
so-called Sensenbrenner anti-immigration bill) and now being
considered in the Senate.? Its provisions that criminalize
undocumented immigrants (targeted at those of color) and all
those compassionate enough who help them are right out of the
bowels of Nazi hell.? It may pass and likely be followed by even
more repressive laws that target you and me unless we're one of
the privileged.? So far, the targets are mostly those on the
bottom rungs of society - people of color including immigrants
and Muslims.? But also in the line of fire is anyone of
influence (including Muslim academics falsely labeled
terrorists) daring to speak out and oppose state policy.? How
long will it be before it gets even worse and no one is safe?
Few people know the president has now given himself the sole
power to designate anyone he chooses for any reason he decides a
"bad guy" - incredibly in that language.? Going even further, in
January, 2006, George Bush claimed the right to govern as a
"Unitary Executive" with the power to abrogate the separation of
powers doctrine, bypass the Congress and courts and act as he
chooses to "protect national security."? This simply means if he
decides to ignore the law he'll govern by presidential edict
usurping the right of dictatorial power with no constraint.? If
he's ever brazen enough to do it (and don't believe he won't be)
and isn't stopped, he'll have "crossed the Rubicon" and turned
the country into a full-blown totalitarian state and the ball
game is over for all of us.? We're already all in the queue as
potential prey, and we'd better understand we're moving up in it
fast.? Unless Bush-Cheney and those around them are stopped,
they'll come for us one day, and then it'll be too late.? It
makes a shameless mockery of any notion that all citizens, rich
and poor, are entitled to the sacred rights and protections
guaranteed us by the Constitution.? Only the privileged and
powerful get that right today, not the rest of us.? And if
you're black and poor, an undocumented immigrant or a Muslim of
color (our latest public enemy No. 1), you have no rights at
all.? Step right up, they've assigned you a number too, and
you'd better keep a bag packed.
We've come a long way in our 230 year history but, except for
brief periods of relief and redress, it's been pretty much
downhill.? If that's "the American way", it's? time we retool
and find a new path to follow, one based on social, political
and economic justice, of caring about all others instead of
using and abusing them for the benefit of a privileged few.? We
may not have much time left, so we better wake up and move
fast.? If we keep watching Fox News, read the New York Times,
listen to NPR and then run to the mall, we're doomed to meet the
same fate as all other nations who followed the road we now
travel.? It's the road to hell, and ours isn't even paved with
good intentions.
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