Dillard lecturer sees parallels between mass incarceration and Jim Crow: Jarvis DeBerry

[Blue_Tires]

There were 1,300 people in my college freshman class, 45 of us black. I've lived in some mixed and mostly black neighborhoods since then, but it was there in college, surrounded by wealth and privilege, power and whiteness, that I witnessed the most people using drugs.

I don't remember any police raids. I don't remember flashing blue lights, people being led away in handcuffs, let alone anybody being sent to prison. We were in a no-arrest zone. Not so the weed smokers a few blocks away. It was open season on them because, as we all know, drugs are bad.

Drugs aren't as bad as the war the United States has declared on them. Most developed countries recognize drug abuse as a public health issue and emphasize treatment. But our country treats mere possession of drugs as a moral failing worthy of imprisonment. Consequently, the U.S. has imprisoned "a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid," law professor Michelle Alexander writes. Those who return from prison are essentially second class citizens.

This is the point of Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." The war on drugs has greatly multiplied the number of black men sent to prison and then released them into a society that deprives them of meaningful opportunities to stay out. Those who've been convicted, sometimes for crimes that go ignored when committed by others, are often no better off than their grandfathers who couldn't vote or get decent jobs or housing, she says. Alexander, who teaches law at Ohio State University, will be giving Dillard University's Revius Ortique Lecture on Law and Society Wednesday at 7.

If you believe that sentences for drug offenders are too long, Alexander will say you don't fully appreciate the problem. Sentences are too long, she argues, but even those sentenced to probation for felonies wear a scarlet F the rest of their days.

http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/11/dillard_lecturer_sees_parallel.html

[pipewrench]

1. Great read Blue_Tires

"Once you're labeled a felon...the old forms of discrimination... are suddenly legal," Michelle Alexander in 'The New Jim Crow.'"

[jade3000]

2. Agreed, definitely a good read

Basically the U.S. prison is a terrible solution to a large scale job & skills problem. Instead of training and employing a broad working class, we send millions to prisons & jails and then employ hundreds of thousands to watch them.

[bgraham]

7. ReallY?

We send a majority of blacks to prison because they have broken the law.

[jade3000]

8. Average person commits a felony every day, 700% increase in the prison population since 1940.

The average person in the U.S. breaks 3 federal criminal laws every day. I'm willing to bet 99% of the people in the U.S. break a law at least once a month. Should we lock all these people up?

http://mises.org/daily/5759/Decriminalize-the-Average-Man

Who goes to jail/prison and who doesn't isn't based strictly on who breaks the law or not. We who are not in prison should be thankful that the laws we break aren't targeted by police and prosecutors. And we should work toward focusing law enforcement efforts on violent crimes.

[NOLALady]

3. Mass Incarceration=Job security.

[randykearse]

4. Simple truths about Mass Incarceration

You cannot commit a crime and then cry foul because someone else didn't get caught and prosecuted for the same crime.

What's being lost in this discussion about Mass Incarceration is the fact that people are exposing themselves to the criminal justice machine by making the poor choices. I can speak to this from personal experience. I was sentenced to 15 years in Federal Prison for drug related crimes under the mandatory drug sentences.

Since the book, The New Jim Crow, the buzz word in the criminal justice world had has been "Mass Incarceration", which has morphed into the Stop Mass Incarceration movement. Granted the 2.3 million people languishing in United States Penal System is startling number but 95% are not there because they were innocently rounded up and mass incarcerated. I find that black intellectuals are using race a s way to explain why so many black men and women are in prison, when more often then not, it all boils down to poor choices. There's a segment of the black populace who have bought in the self-destructive mindset that accepts prison as a norm. What is sending the majority of blacks to prison is a mindset. Once a person buys in this mindset and finds themselves caught up in the system he/she cannot urn around and cry foul because his/white counter parts are not being punished in the same way he/she has been. The simple truth is a large amount of black are mentally incarcerated, which makes it much more easier for them to find themselves physically incarcerated.

If a black person and a white person take a test and both cheat, and the test administrator who is white catches the black person cheating and turns a blind eye to the white person, can the black person turn around and say, oh it's not fair because the white person got away with cheating? No!! He should have never been cheating in the first place.

Citing "Jim Crow" as the reason so many blacks are in prison should not be a rallying cry to exempt people from the fact they did something wrong. And once you leave yourself open and exposed to the disparities in which exists within the criminal justice system between blacks and white you cannot cry foul.

In this instance the Stop Mass Incarceration movement that has taken shape has only done one thing and that's spark conversation about criminal justice in this country, but it should used to exonerate those who commuted offenses.

Randy Kearse, author of Changin' Your Game Plan: How I used incarceration as a stepping stone for SUCCESS [link:http://www.randykearse.net |www.randykearse.net
]

[NOLALady]

5. "a large amount of black are mentally incarcerated"

Please define?

Do you think that "a large amount of white are mentally incarcerated" also?

"the U.S. has imprisoned "a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid,"

Are you saying a large amount of black South Africans were/are mentally incarcerated?

[there_is_no_spoon]

6. What are the stats

on the number of suburban kids caught for crimes, but let go because they come from good families?
I used to have a link to a group who kept track. I'll have to see if I can find it again.

[jade3000]

9. Post link please

If you find it. Thanks,