Law Enforcement, Race and the Gun Culture – Part VII

This is the eighth post in this series, if you count the Discussion post. I recommend that you read or re-read the earlier posts.

Part I is here, Part II is here, Part III is here, the Discussion is here, Part IV is here, Part V is here and Part VI is here.

In the third part of this series I wrote:

I will come back to this in another context, but for now allow me to express my disappointment that our President, in his sixth State of the Union address did not speak about this subject. It is one of the few areas where he might be able to find common ground with Republicans.

I urge the reader to return to Part III and read the relevant portion.

I cannot resist noting that in raising this issue, I did so well before the New York Times picked it up. But since they finally did, allow me to refer my readers to the Times article entitled “Unlikely Cause Unites the Left and the Right: Justice Reform” and their editorial entitled “A Judge’s Idea for Grand Jury Reform.”

Even the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which has been the frequent target of liberal ire has joined in calling for reform.

I quote from their website: 

The United States currently incarcerates 1 in nearly 100 American adults. America’s incarceration addiction grew during the late 1980s and early 1990s as state and local governments passed “tough-on-crime” legislation. For example, California’s “three strikes” law called for mandatory sentencing of repeat offenders, and New York adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small.

I do need to interject at this point that the “Broken Windows” strategy, which is a cornerstone of the NYC policing strategy of Police Commissioner William Bratton, is one that I support, even though that was a factor in the untimely death of Eric Garner, but a minor violation should not bring about an arrest. A citation, like a traffic ticket, is the proper approach, and certainly, even in the absence of proper identification, the violence by the police can never be justified, particularly in dealing with what should be no more than a misdemeanor.

ALEC sets forth as its solution:

Research and practice over the past two decades by stakeholders across various jurisdictions shows that there are better ways to protect our communities than mass incarceration. States still need to be tough on crime, but in ways that emphasize personal responsibility, promote rehabilitation and treatment, and allow for the provision of victim restitution where applicable. Community supervision programs and strategies that serve as alternatives to incarceration can effectively hold offenders accountable while providing them with an opportunity to get back on their feet. These policies are proven to reduce the rate at which offenders return behind bars, in turn cutting the crime rate, protecting our communities, and achieving the best public safety return per taxpayer dollar.

ALEC members have approved model policies that help maintain public safety and reduce criminal justice spending:

▪                Recidivism Reduction Act

▪                Swift and Certain Sanctions Act

▪                Community Corrections Performance Incentive Act

▪                Community Corrections Performance Measurement Act

▪                Earned Compliance Credit Act

▪                Justice Safety Valve

We tend to assume that overcrowding and abuse of inmates in our prisons is likely to be most prevalent in jurisdictions that are illiberal. But, regretfully that is not the case.

The Bloomberg Administration managed to get a consistently favorable press. But now that it has been replaced, its atrocities are coming to light. The New York Times reports that at Riker’s Island under the Bloomberg Administration:

...brutality spiked … An influx of inmates with mental illnesses, a breakdown in discipline and a lack of interest by top officials in the Bloomberg administration all culminated in the crisis facing Rikers today. The rise in brutality by guards has been particularly stark. During Mr. Bloomberg’s last term in office, use of force by officers against inmates jumped by 90 percent.

ALEC reports that:

California’s prison population is one of the largest in the country.

leading to:

...a three-judge court rul(ing) that California must reduce its prison population by approximately 40,000 in two years

and at a cost of $9.3 billion and a cost per inmate: of $45,006

According to the Huffington Post: 

Since 1980, higher education spending has decreased by 13 percent in inflation adjusted dollars, whereas spending on California's prisons and associated correctional programs has skyrocketed by 436 percent. The state now shells out more money from its general fund for the prison system than the higher education system... 

Fifty-five percent of the growth of corrections spending is the result of the state simply putting more people in jail. Over the past three decades, the number of inmates in California facilities has increased eight times faster than the size of the overall population. 

The report notes that, while the average salaries for employees of the state's world-renowned higher education system have stagnated or even dropped with regard to inflation, prison guards have seen sustained salary increases. Correctional officers in California typically make somewhere between 50 and 90 percent more than comparable jobs in the rest of the country.

In Colorado:

Twelve of Colorado’s 21 facilities had inmate population above design capacity in 2011.

In Massachusetts:

The total custody overcrowding rate for DOC facilities as of June 25, 2012 was 146%. The overcrowding rate for medium security facilities was 155%.  

In my home state of New Jersey the Dept. of Corrections has an:

Annual budget: $1,000,000,000. 

Average annual cost per inmate: $34,600

And this is while our bridges are falling down and our roads are crumbling.

But the human costs are even greater, not only for the incarcerated but for their families and particularly their children. According to the Urban Institute: 

More than half of the 1.4 million adults incarcerated in state and federal prisons are parents of minor children. The vast majority of incarcerated parents are male (93%) and are held in state prisons (89%). Among the men held in state prison, 55 percent report having minor children. Among the women, who account for 6 percent of the state prison population, 65 percent report having minor children. Over half (58%) of the minor children of incarcerated parents are less than 10 years old.

Great distances typically separate children from their incarcerated parents. Women are housed in prisons an average of 160 miles from their children, while men are an average distance of 100 miles away. These distances serve as a barrier to prison visits by family members. More than half of incarcerated parents report never receiving a personal visit from their children  Contact in the form of phone calls and letters often proves problematic as well. The number of calls or letters per prisoner is typically limited by corrections policy. The high cost of collect phone calls, reflecting surcharges imposed by telephone companies or the departments themselves, can make this form of contact quite expensive. Despite these barriers, nearly 60 percent of mothers and
 40 percent of fathers report having weekly contact with their children while incarcerated. 

See here. 

For which credit goes to the inmates and their families, not to our policies.

As pointed out above, keeping in touch by phone is made almost impossible. The New York Times reports: 

For most people, talking on the phone is cheap. But for many families with a loved one behind bars, astronomical phone bills mean they have to choose between covering their living expenses and staying in touch.

The problem is that prisons and jails give companies like the industry leader, Global Tel Link, monopoly contracts in exchange for a share of the proceeds...

Global Tel Link, for example, charges $9.50 to make a $50 deposit, and $5 to issue a refund when someone is released from prison or jail. It’s hard to understand why Global Tel Link’s fees are so high, given that the company has 57 percent of the state prison market and its smaller competitors charge far lower fees.

The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has new rules that will cap the cost of interstate calls at 21 to 25 cents a minute starting on Feb. 11. The F.C.C. also proposed to limit the account fees, but a federal court suspended that proposal after the phone companies sued.

So we can see that there is money to be made from the families of those incarcerated. Of course they want more in prisons.

But even beyond that we have had a trend toward privatizing prisons. The ACLU reports: 

Private prison companies, however, essentially admit that their business model depends on locking up more and more people... ” As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits. 

And while supporters of private prisons tout the idea that governments can save money through privatization, the evidence that private prisons save taxpayer money is mixed at best – in fact, private prisons may in some instances cost more than governmental ones. Private prisons have also been linked to numerous cases of violence and atrocious conditions. 

Isn't it time we did something about it? And what better time than when the Right is for reform.

Why are we not seeing action at least on this front?

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