Gulag of racial incarceration

[flashl]

Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America

THE miscarriage of justice at Jena, La. — where five black high school students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted murder — and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations. However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.

What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.

America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.

How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?

Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.

Read More ...

[Maq]

1. Incarcerated Folk can't VOTE

and released Felons are also denied the "Right to Vote".
So they are also denied the political means to fight back.

Blacks in America are relegated to the back of the political bus. Even Illegal Mexicans are courted by the political parties.

[flashl]

2. It is worst. Prisoners become phantom constituents in the state where they are incarcerated. n/t

[the other one]

3. Drug-free school zones and crack.

By making a 1000 foot radius around a school into a "drug-free" zone and making penalties harsher for crimes within that zone, it has been assured that virtually every crime in an urban area is prosecuted more harshly than it would be in a suburban area. Almost every square inch of a city is within 1000 feet of a school zone. Increase the policing of these areas creates more arrests and longer sentences in urban areas.

[flashl]

4. Then the students are pipelined to prison with zero tolerance school policies. n/t

[Maq]

5. Recruiting numbers are down WHY WHY WHY

It should be no wonder why the military has a difficult time recruiting. Not all students are eligible for a criminal Waiver. Least of all, the military wonders why they can't get more Minorities. They are ineligiblr for enlistment by the actions of the established Political System.

SOURCE:http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1221-04.htm

Published on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 by Knight Ridder Newspapers
Fewer African-Americans Enlisting in the Military
by Drew Brown

WASHINGTON - Fewer African-Americans are joining the Army, a trend likely to make it harder to keep the all-volunteer military at full strength.
The percentage of African-Americans among all those who signed up for active-duty Army service fell from 24 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2005, according to Army statistics. That's the lowest percentage since 1973, when the draft ended and the all-volunteer military began, say David R. Segal and Mady Wechsler Segal, sociologists with the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization.

In the past, African-Americans have enlisted at higher rates than their overall percentage of the U.S. population, which was 12.9 percent in the 2000 census.

"These trends may spell trouble for the Army, which has depended on blacks to meet its recruiting goals and re-enlistment targets," the Segals wrote in a November study.

In 1974, blacks made up 27 percent of new Army recruits and 21 percent of new Marine recruits, 16 percent of Air Force enlistees and 10 percent of Navy enlistees, according to the study...


see URL for the full story. And don't blame the minority mothers for supposedly talking their male sons out of joining/enlisting.

[flashl]

7. Military recruiters have made adjustments ...

Lower standards help Army meet recruiting goal

The U.S. Army recruited more than 2,600 soldiers under new lower aptitude standards this year, helping the service beat its goal of 80,000 recruits in the throes of an unpopular war and mounting casualties.

The recruiting mark comes a year after the Army missed its recruitment target by the widest margin since 1979, which had triggered a boost in the number of recruiters, increased bonuses, and changes in standards.

---

U.S. is recruiting misfits for army Felons, racists, gang members fill in the ranks

After falling short of its goals last year, military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, and a spate of recent press reports touting the military's achievement of its woman- and manpower goals.

But the armed forces have met with success only through a fundamental transformation, and not the transformation of the military -- that "co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" that Rumsfeld is always talking about either.

While the secretary of defense's longstanding goal of transforming the planet's most powerful military into its highest-tech, most agile, most futuristic fighting force has, in the words of the Washington Post's David VonDrehle, "melted away," the very makeup of the armed forces has been mutating before our collective eyes under the pressure of the war in Iraq. This actual transformation has been reported, but only in scattered articles on the new recruitment landscape in America.

[Maq]

8. Enlist them and then KICK them out

RamboLiberal (1000+ posts) Mon Oct-01-07 11:16 AM
Original message
Many soldiers get boot for 'pre-existing' mental illness (Denied Coverage)
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq — as many as 10 a day — are
being discharged by the military for mental health reasons. But the Pentagon
isn't blaming the war. It says the soldiers had "pre-existing" conditions that
disqualify them for treatment by the government.


NOTE: don't know how to link to another related DU thread. SORRY

[flashl]

9. This is the disgusting trend by military to deny PTSD claims

Soldiers and their families are left to fend for themselves after there have been hundreds of news stories about brain damage. This is no way to treat those who have sacrificed so much.

[Maq]

10. I agree

Maq USAF retired 1981

[Romulox]

6. I was recently castigated for suggesting most Dems support the Drug War...

I'll be very interested to see if the poster who took issue with me contributes to this thread.

Silence = condonation.

[flashl]

11. Life sentence: How prison is reshaping the U.S.

WHAT if America launched a new New Deal and no one noticed? And what if, instead of lifting the unemployed out of poverty, this multibillion-dollar project steadily drove poor communities further and further out of the American mainstream?

That's how America should think about its growing prison system, some leading social scientists are saying, in research that suggests prisons have a far deeper impact on the nation than simply punishing criminals.

Fueled by the war on drugs, "three-strike" laws, and mandatory minimum sentences, America's prisons and jails now house some 2.2 million inmates - roughly seven times the figure of the early 1970s. And Americans are investing vast resources to keep the system running: The cost to maintain American correctional institutions is some $60 billion a year.

For years sociologists saw prisons - with their disproportionately poor, black, and uneducated populations - partly as mirrors of the social and economic disparities that cleave American life. Now, however, a new crop of books and articles are looking at the penal system not just as a reflection of society, but a force that shapes it.

In this view, the system takes men with limited education and job skills and stigmatizes them in a way that makes it hard for them to find jobs, slashes their wages when they do find them, and brands them as bad future spouses. The effects of imprisonment ripple out from prisoners, breaking up families and further impoverishing neighborhoods, creating the conditions for more crime down the road. Prisons have grown into potent "engines of inequality," in the words of sociologist Bruce Western; the penal system, he and other scholars suggest, actively widens the gap between the poor - especially poor black men - and everyone else.

Read More ...

[Maq]

12. flashl you ought to post this in this thread

http://feministing.com/archives/007831.html

General Discussion thread;

BurtWorm (1000+ posts) Mon Oct-01-07 04:35 PM
Original message

Teenage girl beaten, expelled and arrested...for dropping cake

[flashl]

15. Done. n/t

[malaise]

14. Bookmarking this

Thanks.

[eridani]

18. Some blog somewhere called the prison-industrial complex--

--the G.I. Bill in reverse, spending huge sums of money to deskill our population. Struck me as very apt.

[malaise]

13. The new plantations

America is terrified of black men.

[kineneb]

16. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and war on drugs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

both were designed to disenfranchise two groups who would vote for the Dems: blacks and "hippies"

somewhere in the Watergate Tapes there is a conversation between Nixon and one of his staff about this (I don't remember the exact quote)

[Swamp Rat]

17. k&r

[Heidi]

19. Kick.

:kick: