From 1920 to around 1980, the American prison population
held steady, even as our population grew rapidly. One could easily argue that
racism was much more virulent during this period, especially in the Jim Crow
South, from the hundreds of lynchings in the 1920s to violent repression of
civil rights activists in the 1950s and '60s. So unless you believe that racism
changed for the worse since 1980, then it alone can not possibly account for
the explosive rise of the prison population. Even during the turbulent 1960s
with its many demonstrations, and violent inner-city upheavals, the prison
population hardly budged. Similarly, Nixon's infamous war on drugs, launched in
June 1971, also did not boost the prison population during the 1970s. Then
something major changed to send the prison population soaring. What happened?
Judges were compelled by harsh new sentencing laws to jail
even those convicted of minor crimes, and to hand out sentences much longer
than appropriate to the infraction. Because of urban housing segregation by
race and income, lower income neighborhoods experienced higher crime rates,
made even higher by the futile enforcement of drug prohibition. As the police
enforcement increased, a disproportionate number of people of color were sent to
prison. Although non-Hispanic blacks form only 13.6 of the U.S. population,
they are 39.4 percent of the prison population. In 2011, for the first time
Wisconsin spent more on its prisons than on its fabled university system.
In the late 1970s with the advent of the Better Business
Climate model which was to cut taxes on the rich and deregulate business,
especially Wall Street. That combination was supposed to put money in the hands
of the few, who would then heavily invest it in our economy, thereby creating
an enormous economic boom. Good jobs and rising incomes for all those willing
to work would soon follow. It didn't happen. Instead these Better Business
Climate policies led to runaway inequality, the destruction of middle-income
jobs, and wage-stagnation for the vast majority of working people. The goal of
nearly every company soon became the extraction of as much wealth as possible
in behalf of investors, banks and CEOs. The workforce was downsized, plants
shipped overseas, full-time workers replaced with temps, and unions busted.
Americans of color who had only recently found their way
into the better paying industrial jobs in the 1950s and 1960s, suffered
enormous job losses and were forced to find work in the low paying jobs, often
in the service sector. Urban decay accelerated as inner city incomes declined
and industrial tax revenues plummeted. To make ends meet a new generation of
workers found work in the underground economy —some of it legal, some not. Drug
dealing, like rum running in the 1920s, became an alternative path toward the
American Dream.
Urban areas became a microcosm for the interplay between
runaway inequality and runaway incarceration. As lower-income areas
deteriorated, cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles also
became magnets for the wealthy. Marginal neighborhoods were transformed by
developers who bought and fixed up apartment buildings with an eye to squeezing
out low-income tenants. Often, the first new wave of occupiers were young
professionals, the children of the well-to-do. The "broken windows"
theory of police enforcement took hold. It argued that by cracking down on
minor offenses, like graffiti drawing and drinking booze on the street, a sense
of law and order would develop in the neighborhood, which in turn would reduce
the occurrence of more serious crimes. It was a short jump from efforts to stop
quality of life crimes, to "stop and frisk."
Take the case of Eric Garner killed by police because was
selling single cigarettes (tobacco, not joints. Garner's only crime was trying
to scratch out a living in the underground economy. Eric Garner is just one of
the 22.2 million surplus workers who now struggle to make ends meet.But to the
police, he was committing a crime (not paying tobacco tax) that according to
the theory should be addressed to prevent more serious crimes.
The growing prison population also creates growing business
opportunities in the privatized prison-industrial complex. With Wall Street
money, the larger prison firms lobby hard for the government to fund new
prisons, create more prisoners, and employ more prison guards.
At the core of all our problems lies economic inequity and
disproportionate power of corporations and financial institutions. Capitalism is
the problem, and it continues to concentrate wealth in the hands of those that
are wealthy. The very few poor who do become wealthy, those who rise up from
the dregs of society are held as models but the odds are not in our favor. t
would be very nice to see the monetary system abolished. Completely. For money
to become useless as containers of value. Preferably value should be beneficial
for all, rather than measured by the quantity of money, those illusory
abstractions, units of so-called value, known as dollars, pounds, euros, yen,
etc.
The police are there to protect the wealthy. To protect the
property of the wealthy and to punish any who are audacious enough to challenge
the status quo. The new prisons are being built to house Blacks, Latinos,
Native Americans, Asians, poor whites, and poor people in general. This is a class
war, first and foremost, of the wealthy against everyone else.
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