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Subject: SNET: American Gulag: USA Prisons
Date: 7 Feb 2001 15:05:06 -0500
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          American Gulag

           Jerome G. Miller, YES! Magazine
           February 6, 2001

           Viewed on February 7, 2001

           
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           The figures are startling. In the last year of the Carter 
administration (1979), our
           nation's federal prisons held about 20,000 inmates. By contrast, 
as the Clinton
           administration draws to a close we will have 135,000 inmates in 
federal prisons;
           projecting an annual growth of 10 percent the number will reach a 
quarter million in five
           years. In 1979, there were 268,000 inmates in the prisons of all 
50 states. Today, they
           hold almost 1.3 million. In 1979, there were 150,000 in local 
jails and lockups. Today,
           local jail facilities hold nearly 700,000. This year, we will 
exceed 2 million inmates in
           our prisons and jails. As we enter the millennium, the nation has 
about 6.5 million of its
           citizens under some form of correctional supervision. 

           And a new twist has been added: the "supermax" prison composed 
exclusively of cells
           used for solitary confinement. A place of studied sensual 
deprivation and
           psychological torture, it was designed by correctional managers to 
control their
           populations as privileges in routine prisons were diminished and 
sentences were
           lengthened. A product less of management necessity than of a 
twisted psyche, these
           temples to sado-masochism now dot the American landscape, 
presently containing
           20,000 mostly minority inmates. 

           Spurred on by a "drug war" that focuses inordinately upon the poor 
and minorities, we
           have seen astonishing patterns of incarceration among young black 
men vis à vis
           similarly accused white men. Although the rates of drug 
consumption are roughly equal
           among white and black populations, blacks are imprisoned for drug 
offenses at 14
           times the rate of whites. 

           The patterns in some states are truly astonishing. Between 1986 
and 1996 for
           example, the rate of incarceration for drug offenses among African 
Americans
           increased by 10,102 percent in Louisiana; in Georgia, by 5,499 
percent; in Arkansas
           5,033 percent; in Iowa 4,284 percent; and in Tennessee 1,473 
percent. 

           There are currently more than 50 million criminal records on file 
in the US, with at least
           4 to 5 million "new" adults acquiring such a record annually. This 
record sticks with a
           person, whether or not charges are dropped or there is a 
subsequent conviction. A
           notorious example occurred in the recent police killing of Patrick 
Dorismond, an
           unarmed young Haitian immigrant. In an attempt to rationalize the 
police behavior,
           Mayor Rudolph Giuliani characterized the deceased as "no altar 
boy" and released a
           "criminal record" that included two past convictions for 
"disorderly conduct" and a
           juvenile charge that had been dismissed over two decades earlier 
when Dorismond
           was 13 years old. 

           For certain racial and ethnic groups, being arrested and locked up 
is a given.
           Beginning in adolescence, we have established a warped "rite of 
passage" for young
           African Americans and Hispanics; only by a fluke will they avoid 
acquiring a "criminal
           record" -- the result of an arrest. 

           In 1990, the nonprofit Washington, DC–based Sentencing Project 
found that on an
           average day, one in every four African-American men ages 20–29 was 
either in
           prison, in jail, or on probation/parole. Ten years later, the 
ratio had shrunk to one in
           three. 

           Research conducted by the National Center on Institutions and 
Alternatives revealed
           that more than half of young black males living in Washington, DC, 
and Baltimore are
           caught up in the criminal justice system on an average day -- 
either in prison, jail, on
           probation or parole, out on bond, or being sought on a warrant. 

           Three of every four (76 percent) 18-year-old African-American 
males living in urban
           areas can now anticipate being arrested and jailed before age 36. 
In the process,
           each young man will acquire a "criminal record." By the late 
1990s, federal
           statisticians were predicting that nearly one of every three adult 
black men in the nation
           could anticipate being sentenced to a federal or state prison at 
some time during his
           life. 

           The most telling numbers of all are contained in a US Justice 
Department historical
           breakdown of admissions to state and federal prisons over the past 
century. Although
           African Americans were always over-represented (often for reasons 
unrelated to crime
           rates), the racial gap grew exponentially as we approached the 
millennium. In 1926,
           whites made up 79 percent of the inmates entering our state and 
federal prisons.
           Blacks made up 21 percent. By 1999 however, African Americans were 
making up
           between 55 percent and 60 percent of all new admissions to state 
and federal prisons.
           If Latino inmates are included, slightly over three out of four 
Americans sentenced to
           federal or state prisons were minorities. 

           This fact has brought a sea of change in public attitudes 
regarding crime and criminals
           and ushered in the era of the what Lani Guinier has called the 
"rhetorical wink,"
           wherein a white politician talks about getting tough on 
"criminals" and, with a wink,
           conveys to the audience "black criminals." Race need never be 
mentioned. 

           The uncomfortable truth is that the national attitude toward crime 
is more firmly
           grounded in race than in putative crime rates. The surge in crime 
rates occurred
           between 1965 and 1973. The general trend since that time, with 
"blips" in 1989 and
           1991, has been for crime to either remain stable or to decline. 

           While most people assume jail overcrowding results from rising 
crime rates, increased
           violence, or general population growth, that is seldom the case. 
Here, in order of
           importance, are the major contributors to jail overcrowding: 

           1. The number of police officers 

           2. The number of judges 

           3. The number of courtrooms 

           4. The size of the district attorney's staff 

           5. Policies of the state's attorney's office concerning which 
crimes deserve the most
           attention 

           6. The size of the staff of the entire court system 

           7. The number of beds available in the local jail 

           8. The willingness of victims to report crimes 

           9. Police department policies concerning arrest 

           10. The arrest rate within the police department 

           11. The actual amount of crime committed 

           It is common for a "trickle-up effect" to set in. Although there 
may be little or no change
           in the ways serious crimes are handled, those who engage in minor 
infractions of the
           law end up receiving harsh penalties as well, thereby "casting the 
net" of social control
           ever wider. Such matters should give the nation pause as we move 
aggressively to
           build more prisons and camps, but there is little to suggest any 
respite. 

           The distinguished British criminologist Andrew Rutherford 
summarized the trend well:
           "All natural tendencies toward stability appear to have 
evaporated. Not only has there
           been a quantum leap of unprecedented proportions in prison 
populations, but there
           appear also to be no indications of any counter forces which might 
impose limits." 

           Carnegie-Mellon criminologist Alfred Blumstein put it another way: 
"Once criminal
           policy in the United States fell into the political arena, little 
could be done to recapture
           concern for limiting prison populations. ... Our political system 
learned an overly
           simplistic trick: when it responds to such pressures by sternly 
demanding increased
           punishments, that approach has been found to be strikingly 
effective, not in solving the
           problem, but in alleviating the political pressure to 'do 
something'." 

           To many, the "tough on crime" attitude seems a good thing -- a 
return to basic values,
           a focus on the rights of victims, an adieu to the "bleeding heart" 
policies of the past.
           Overall, the prevailing public mood on crime is vicious. 

           I recently watched a video of a "focus group" on crime conducted 
by a Republican
           pollster and consultant. In discussing a recent shooting of a 
teacher by a 13-year-old
           African-American middle-school honor student, the consultant asked 
the group what
           they would do in such a case. Their response seemed even to 
embarrass him as he
           tried to smile away the comments of this scientifically chosen 
"average" group of local
           citizens. "Fry him!" came the insistent shouts from the group as 
the 13-year-old's
           situation was being presented. Only one older African-American man 
remained silent. 

           I wanted to avert my eyes from the TV. It brought to mind another 
mood observed by
           the Danish sociologist Svend Ranulf when he looked across the 
border into the
           Germany of the early 1930s to see how that country proposed 
dealing with criminals
           and crime. "Everywhere" he saw a "disinterested disposition to 
punish." He called it
           "disinterested" because "no direct personal advantage seemed to be 
achieved by
           calling for the harsh punishment of another person who had injured 
a third party."
           Noting that this punitive inclination was not equally strong in 
all human societies and
           was entirely lacking in some, Ranulf concluded that it did not 
arise out of concern for
           deterrence. Rather, it was a kind of "disguised envy," less a 
response to an increased
           crime rate than tied to the economic insecurities of the middle 
class. 

           Indeed, the anti-crime program undertaken in accordance with the 
principles of
           National Socialism and proposed by the Prussian minister of 
justice in 1933 seems
           oddly resonant today. Aggravated penalties were added to criminal 
acts already
           subject to punishment; mitigation was to be allowed in only the 
rarest and most
           exceptional cases; attempts at crime were to be dealt with as 
severely as
           accomplished crimes; drunkenness was to be considered an 
aggravating, rather than
           extenuating, circumstance; there was to be more liberal recourse 
to capital
           punishment; and prisons were to be made harsher, with disciplinary 
measures to be
           applied at the discretion of prison wardens. Criticizing the 
alleged permissiveness of
           the Weimar Republic toward criminals, the minister ended his white 
paper with a
           familiar slogan. "It seemed," he wrote, "that the welfare of the 
criminal, and not the
           welfare of the people, was the main purpose of the law." 

           Indeed, prisons and jails are an "early warning system" of sorts 
for a society. They
           constitute the canary in the coal mine, providing an omen of 
mortal danger that often
           lies beyond our capacity to perceive. 

           The experience of the past two decades suggests that we are 
ignoring this warning.
           We are in a curious position in which a surfeit of prisons filled 
with a million minority
           young men is seen not as an embarrassment, but as indispensable to 
the smooth
           running of our democracy and integral to its economy. In effect, 
the attitude that
           suffused Southern jails and prisons during post–Civil War 
reconstruction has been
           replicated nationally. 

           For more than 20 years, our politicians have played the dangerous 
game of
           one-upping each other over who can demand the harshest 
punishments. In this pursuit,
           the definition of what is criminal, the relaxing of limits on the 
police to enforce laws, and
           the mandatory use of prison over non-institutional means of 
control or correction have
           been distilled to carefully crafted marketing slogans like "three 
strikes and you're out." 

           Offenders emerge from prison afraid to trust, fearful of the 
unknown, and with a vision
           of the world shaped by the meaning that behaviors had in the 
prison context. For a
           recently released prisoner, experiences like being jostled on the 
subway, having
           someone reach across him in the bathroom to take a paper towel, or 
making eye
           contact can be taken as a precursor to a physical attack. In 
relationships with loved
           ones, this warped kind of socialization means that problems will 
not easily be talked
           through. In a sense, the system we have designed to deal with 
offenders is among the
           most iatrogenic in history, nurturing those very qualities it 
claims to deter. During the
           question period following a lecture to a college audience, the 
social critic and linguist
           Noam Chomsky was recently asked why he was so rarely seen on TV or 
on the
           "op-ed" pages of our major news-papers and why he wasn't among 
those asked to
           testify on policy matters before Congress. There seemed to be no 
dearth of
           commentary from the mavens of the Right, yet he was mostly absent 
from these
           forums. 

           Chomsky responded by describing a conversation he had with ABC/CNN
           commentator Jeff Greenfield. Greenfield told him that he was 
unlikely to be booked on
           a national program like "Nightline," for example, because he was 
"from Neptune."
           Chomsky's views were too far "outsidethe box" to merit discussion 
on a popular TV
           program. It had nothing to do with whether or not his ideas might 
be valid. It was
           because he couldn't be afforded the time needed to lay out the 
context within which his
           views might be understood. For him to express his views absent 
their context put him
           in the company of those who are from Neptune -- out of touch, if 
not a bit loony. 

           Chomsky's predicament has a personal resonance. The "context" of 
my professional
           life over the past 35 years has been shaped by attempts to create 
alternative
           programs for the inmates of detention centers, jails, and prisons. 
At the beginning,
           there was some general acceptance of the ideas I tried haltingly 
to express through my
           work. However, hope for "consensual validation" of such efforts 
from peers and policy
           makers in the criminal justice community has pretty much faded 
with the years, as a
           sense of alienation pulls me ever closer to Neptune. 

           I vividly remember the case of Doug, a stocky 16-year-old addicted 
to heroin. Late one
           evening, returning home from a meeting near the state reform 
school over which I'd
           recently assumed control, I decided to take a quick side trip to 
the so-called
           disciplinary cottage. I asked the "master" on duty whether anyone 
was upstairs in the
           "tombs," (the strip cells that I'd ordered closed a few weeks 
earlier). No. I guess he
           thought I wouldn't bother to go upstairs and look. 

           There, in a far corner of one of the dim cells, was Doug, lying 
stripped on the bare
           cement floor. I stood in the doorway trying to talk though the 
mesh security screen that
           separated us. 

           "How long have you been here?" 

           The muffled reply: "A few days." 

           "Why are you here?" 

           His voice grew more agitated: "I tried to make it over the fence 
out back." I told him I
           wanted him to come out and go back downstairs. "We aren't using 
the tombs
           anymore." 

           Doug let go a torrent of obscenities -- "You naïve asshole! You 
dumb motherfucker!
           Don't you know kids like me need to be in here?" 

           Doug had learned his lessons well. He had become the 
well-socialized product of our
           reform school -- a "disciplinary cottage success" who believed 
what it taught. The way
           to handle unacceptable impulses is to be grabbed, beaten, 
handcuffed, dragged
           screaming up cement steps, stripped, and thrown into a "tomb." 

           It's not that we don't know that our present medieval tapestry of 
crime and punishment
           will at some point unravel. It isn't that there aren't alternative 
ways presently available
           for dealing with those who threaten us or break our laws. However, 
at times they seem
           largely futile, if not actually counter-productive. In the present 
poisoned atmosphere,
           even the most well- intentioned alternatives run the danger of 
being pummeled to serve
           the very same warped conception of humanity they would challenge. 

           Somewhere in my youth I learned that the only unforgivable sin is 
the sin of despair.
           For that reason if no other, I choose to continue what has become 
a somewhat
           melancholy battle. It is a great comfort to know that so many 
others continue to
           exercise their hope for a better way with equanimity and crazy 
joy. 

           Jerome G. Miller is the president and co-founder of the National 
Center on
           Institutions and Alternatives, which develops innovative criminal 
justice programs
           and services. Miller has a doctorate in psychiatric social work 
and is recognized as
           one of the nation's leading authorities on corrections and 
clinical work with violent
           juvenile and adult sex offenders. 

           Miller is best known for closing the state reform schools in 
Massachusetts and
           replacing them with community-based programs while serving as 
commissioner of
           the state Department of Youth Services. He has since headed 
criminal justice
           programs in four other states. 

           This article originally appeared in Yes! Magazine, a journal of 
positive futures. 

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