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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Economics of Police Militarism
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/economics-police-militarismTwo crucial battles broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, this week. The first began with the public airing of sorrow and rage after the death of the eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot by a police officer, on Canfield Court, in the St. Louis suburb, at 2:15 P.M. last Saturday. Then came the local law enforcements rejoinder to the early round of protests. Officers rolled in with a fleet of armored vehicles, sniper rifles, and tear-gas cannisters, reinserting the phrase the militarization of policing into the collective conscience. The tactical missteps by the towns police leadership have been a thing to behold. (Theyre also to be expected; anyone doubting as much should pick up Radley Balkos The Rise of the Warrior Cop.)
One moment, we see a young man with a welt from a rubber bullet between his eyes; the next, three officers with big guns are charging at another black man who has his hands up. On Thursday, Jelani Cobb filed a powerful account from the sidewalks and homes of Ferguson. Cobb asks about the intertwined economic and law-enforcement issues underlying the protests, including, for instance, the court fees that many people in Ferguson face, which often begin with minor infractions and eventually become their own, escalating, violations. We have people who have warrants because of traffic tickets and are effectively imprisoned in their homes, Malik Ahmed, the C.E.O. of an organization called Better Family Life, told Cobb. They cant go outside because theyll be arrested. In some cases, people actually have jobs but decide that the threat of arrest makes it not worth trying to commute outside their neighborhood.
The crisis of criminal-justice debt is just one of the many tributaries feeding the river of deep rage in Ferguson. But its an important oneboth because its so ubiquitous and because its easily overlooked in the spectacular shadow of tanks and turrets. Earlier this year, I spent six months reporting on the rise of profiteering in American courts, which happens by way of the proliferation of fees and fines for very minor offensespart of a growing movement toward whats known as offender-funded justice. Private companies play an aggressive role in collecting these fees in certain states. (Often, this tactic is aimed at the poor with unpaid traffic tickets.) The reports from Ferguson raise questions about how militarization and economic coercion feed a shared anger.
Missouri was one of the first states to allow private probation companies, in the late nineteen-eighties, and it has since followed the national trend of allowing court fees and fines to mount rapidly. Now, across much of America, what starts as a simple speeding ticket can, if youre too poor to pay, mushroom into an insurmountable debt, padded by probation fees and, if you dont appear in court, by warrant fees. (Often, poverty means transiencenot everyone who is sent a court summons receives it.) Across the country, impoverished people are routinely jailed for court costs theyre unable to pay, Alec Karakatsanis, a cofounder of Equal Justice Under Law, a nonprofit civil-rights organization that has begun challenging this practice in municipal courts, said. These kinds of fines snowball when defendants cases are turned over to for-profit probation companies for collection, since the companies charge their own supervision fees. What happens when people fall behind on their payments? Often, police show up at their doorsteps and take them to jail.
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The Economics of Police Militarism (Original Post)
xchrom
Aug 2014
OP
Octafish
(55,745 posts)1. Like peace, money trumps justice.
From the OP article:
Several years ago, I embedded with U.S. troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and spent time with a unit that was tasked with implementing the directives from a set of trainings known as Commanders Guide to Money as a Weapons System. The trainings instruct troops in how to use economic tools to further military objectives, and there is a warning printed in the opening pages of one such field manual:[font color="green"] Warfighters and their leaders must ensure their actions will stand up to a Congressional inquiry and must not cause embarrassment to the Department of Defense. [/font color]Here, real militarism has one advantage over its domestic counterpart, at least doctrinallythe principle is genuine investment in communities where the military hopes to earn trust and influence. Unsurprisingly, it has proved complicated to implement (and has often failed wildly), but, at least in theory, it is far more graceful than police officers or the military blasting their way across human terrain. Here at home, SWAT teams continue to tear down the proverbial power lines.
Gosh. Things have gotten so we can't afford peace or justice.
Faryn Balyncd
(5,125 posts)3. fascism
CrispyQ
(36,460 posts)4. I cannot believe how difficult we make it for poor people to get out of that situation,
and then we blame them for it! I remember well, the late fees & the reinstatement fees & how all the fees piled up into what could have been a rent payment or two. This was back in the 80s & it's gotten so much worse. Shame on our elected leaders for not implementing laws to stop predatory practices like this.
arlier this year, I spent six months reporting on the rise of profiteering in American courts, which happens by way of the proliferation of fees and fines for very minor offensespart of a growing movement toward whats known as offender-funded justice. P
Offender-funded justice? What the fuck do my taxes pay for? My bad. They pay for the tanks, ammo & tear gas our police departments are using against We the People. This country is seriously fucked up.