Crime rates fall, yet imprisonment rates high? Can't figure that one out? Are you really as dumb as you sound? (let me spell it out for you then - imprison rates high, therefore crime rate falls cause all the criminals are in jail)

Are we keeping these people in jail because we want another burden on our tax dollar? What do you propose, a mass pardoning of all murderers, rapists, psychopaths, terrorists, thieves?

Let me take a wild guess, I doubt you want the president of Enron freed. No? Didn't think so. I highly doubt he's very dangerous and I highly doubt he'll be hired in the future by any company to abscond with millions again. According to your logic, he should be freed. But of course, only mass murderers should be freed. All the republican corporate fat cats and corporate criminals should rot in jail, right?

Frick -

You're obviously not a social scientist. Because you incarcerate people doesn't mean that crime goes down. It may seem intuitive to you, but they are actually non-related events that seem to be related, but are not so. According to Loury, crime rates started falling in 1992. We didn't begin the major prison boom until 1996. So if crime started falling before we started building prisons like Starbucks builds coffee shops, how do you explain the drop that occurred at least four year before that construction boom?

There is actually other data that shows, despite the hype, that crime had been falling since the 1980s.

So, before you start taking pot shots and talking about wild left-wing conspiracies, learn a thing or two about social science. If you need the Cliff Notes Version of myths about violent crime and prisons, please visit http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/Myths-About-Juvenile-Justice.topicArticleId-10065,articleId-10062.html

I am stunned at the incivility of these two responses, which also ignore the article's major critique--that institutional corrections are extremely harsh and punitive. Correctional facilities operate with almost no real oversight, except that imposed by finances and budgets. Loury identifies some very grave realities about corrections that need to be addressed openly and without hostility, and far more frequently.

I cannot say how refreshing it feels to read this article. I am personally a member of state government and in it I sit on the Criminal Justice committee. One would have never guessed the amount of hostility that overtook our committee room when I brought up the issue of racial inequality in our criminal justice system and the incumbency upon us as legislators to develop sound socially conscious policy. Surely I didn't. I must have taken for granted living in a northeastern state, naively thinking we were precluded from ignorance.

One of the principal obstacles I see in reforming our criminal justice system is the absence of those who work within it to actually acknowledge there is a problem. Former police officers on my committee falsely assumed that there were a disproportionate amount of minority inmates primarily because minorities commit more crime, even when a quick glance at statistics on drug usage and incarceration do not demonstrate this to be the case.

It seems to me that we will not see any real reform until we can change the attitudes of those around us. I appreciate the author's efforts in writing this article. It's refreshing to see that I'm not alone and there are others who "get it."

Al Frick's angry reductive reasoning, here on cue (like a Willie Horton ad) is exactly the kind of culpability the article references. In Al's world crime and punishment is easy and obvious. No need to think about the disproportionate demographics in the prison system or it's relationship to the economy. In fact, if you do think you're probably an effete elite traitor. Al says bad guys are in jail; crime rate is down. God's in his heaven. The order of events is of no consequence. Why confuse the man with facts? You must admit that it's touching someone would even bother to explain that causality is not implied by the relationship. Al might have learned that in college. But he could hardly be expected to listen to a bunch of pinko professors. Don't talk to Al about halting the growth of the prison system. Al's worried it might not be big enough to hold all those scary Muslims. You know, triple Guantanamo. Otherwise, psychopathic baby-raping suicide-bombing murders will takeover our streets with fistfuls of his hard-earned tax dollars. Course Al doesn't mind if those white collar criminals help themselves to both his tax dollars and pension fund. They're his kind of people. But all the people in jail for small-time nonviolent drug offenses of the kind that LAPD will decline to charge Linsey Lohan with can rot. They're not like his boy Rush, a fine upstanding citizen who simply made a mistake. Can you follow all this, Al, or do you need a picture?

Thanks for this excellent, thoughtful essay. I am stuck, however, on how -- as a practical matter -- we can change course on incarceration policies. It seems to me that a vast prison-industrial complex is harnessed to preserve the status quo and opposing it may prove difficult.

The somewhat uncivil debate between Al Frick and Kenyon Farrow underscores how entrenched peoples' ideas about criminal justice and prison are.

Daniel's point is an excellent one. The criminal justice system, as it currently stands, is deeply at odds with our sense of justice. I think I could probably convince most people I know of this. But so what? What can we do?

The prison complex is a deeply entrenched one. It is entrenched financially. It is entrenched in people's minds as the only feasible way of dealing with crime ( a fallacious connection, as Kenyon demonstrates). And it is even physically entrenched!

What can we do?

So in other words, anyone who disagrees with your revolving door justice system doesn't "get it?" Why don't you so-called social "scientists" have a look at our cousins in the UK and the problem they have with crime because of their low incarceration rates. Yobs are running wild and free in the streets with knives because they're turned back out onto the streets as soon as they're caught.

Social "Science" and all the rest of these soft sciences amaze me in that they use no empirical data to confirm or deny their theories. It's just, "I feel that it's right. " All I know is, incarceration rates are at an all time high and crime is at almost an all time low. That's good enough proof for me.

Al: You think that incarceration is responsible for the sharp decline in crime rates. You may be right. But you should take notice of the fact that you disagree with people who have studied precisely this question. Here is what Loury's article said about precisely your point:

"One argument is that the massive increase in incarceration reflects the success of a rational public policy: faced with a compelling social problem, we responded by imprisoning people and succeeded in lowering crime rates. This argument is not entirely misguided. Increased incarceration does appear to have reduced crime somewhat. But by how much? Estimates of the share of the 1990s reduction in violent crime that can be attributed to the prison boom range from five percent to 25 percent. Whatever the number, analysts of all political stripes now agree that we have long ago entered the zone of diminishing returns. The conservative scholar John DiIulio, who coined the term “super-predator” in the early 1990s, was by the end of that decade declaring in The Wall Street Journal that “Two Million Prisoners Are Enough.” But there was no political movement for getting America out of the mass-incarceration business. The throttle was stuck."

We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country,

I question this statistic. We have two million prisoners, and more than one million people working in corrections? The report he cites is not online at http://www.prisonstudies.org/ .

The law of diminishing returns does not apply here. This is not some sort of a macroeconomic problem. Imprison the people that deserve to be imprisoned. We can't issue blanket statements about freeing wide swaths of prisoners. Giuliani was right in that if you don't stop the ne'er-do-wells when they spray paint a house, they'll progress to much worse crimes. Almost no criminal starts out killing people. It's always a degeneration from simple crimes with progressively more violent and henious crimes to follow. The key is to arrest them when they start to let them know that the rule of law applies and that there are consequences to evil deeds. Slapping someone on the wrist is the surest way of sending them along the path of crime forever. If you actually cared about these people, you'd want to punish them good the first time to send them on the straight and narrow.

Where are the victim advocacy groups? Who cries for Alan Senitt?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/tobyharnden/aug07/dc-killers.htm

That incarceration disproportionately tears at the fabric of minority communities is beyond dispute. The impact erodes families, stigmatizes offenders, and disenfranchises millions of citizens.

We spend about $27,000 per year on average to incarcerate a person. Most communities spend a small fraction of that large sum on educating children or preparing disadvantaged young adults to lead productive,law-abiding lives.

Incarceration has other profound fiscal and social costs. When a person is incarcerated, how can the victim hope to receive restitution? When a "bread-winner" is incarcerated, government is called upon to subsidize living expenses of the financially devestated family. When the primary care-giver is incarcerated, children often lack the love and care that provide a foundation for a well-adjusted life as a contributing citizen.

None of this is to say that criminals should not be held accountable for the violation of just and rational laws (which excludes most drug laws, petty property crimes, and the like). But accountability is not necessarily synonymous with incarceration. Quite the contrary. As most working people can attest, it's much more difficult to hold down a job, meet familial responsibilities, and cope with the daily pressures of life. And doing so is far more useful than the wasted time millions spend behind bars.

A sound criminal justice policy must be based upon rational policies that serve societal interests, rather than draining much needed resources to produce failure at 60% recidivist rates (an abject failure by any measure).

Certainly, there are people who must be separated from free society because they have inflicted or pose serious harm. But violent criminals constitute less than 30% of the 7.5 million Americans under some form of governmentally imposed constraints on their liberty. (Among even violent offenders, most acted negligently or "in the heat of passion" on a single occasion and present little or no risk of commiting violent acts in the future.)

All this means that well above two-thirds of the people in prison are non-violent and can be held accountable more effectively and at lower public expense through the imposition of penalties that hold offenders accountable through community service. Mandatory participation in educational or therapeutic regimens and other alternatives to incarceration are dramatically less costly, less destructive of family and neighborhoods, and more productively punitive than incarceration.

Prisoners are not the enemy. Some of them are the guys you used to ride with to buy beer when you were underage. Some of them were your teammates; others, classmates. They're the people the police nabbed when you "snowballed" passing cars until someone suddenly yelled "SCATTER!" The overwhelming majority of prisoners are people just like you and me, though few have been as fortunate as we.

In summary, our criminal justice policy produces results that none of us endorse, impacting people who are already marginalized and have little invested in the social order that successful people so highly value. These policies are obscenely expensive, counter-productive, and inconsistent with fundamental American values. The more you learn about the system, the greater the sense of shame and anger you will feel.

What can we do? We can punish irresponsible political leaders who call for ever-longer prison terms for increasingly intrusive invasions of personal liberties. When the newspapers lead with outrageous and sensationalized crime reports, we can write our representatives and ask that they restrain themselves from passing new criminal penalties for the crime de jour ("Insert victim's name here" Law). We can remember that the criminal justice system exists primarily to serve societal interests, and not to satisfy the insatiable desire of victims for vengence. We can become active in our communities to help incarcerated people remain connected to family and friends, or we can help to establish re-connections. In short, we can support and demonstrate care for our wayward brothers and sisters. But all of this has been said much more eloquently than I ever could:

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.

But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,

So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, On Crime and Punishment, p.40 (© 1923, Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 87th printing 1971).

In other words, them's us. - Michael

Without directly engaging the value or efficacy of the different social and racial philosophies articulated here by readers from both the right and left, I think there are two principle themes worth repeating from Loury's commentary.

First is his argument that our society's escalated focus on a punitive system overly focused on minorities and, particularly, people of color, may represent a modern means of holding onto the long denied option of lynching for the purpose of racial control. While every black who was lynched may not have been free of all criminal behavior, themselves, absolutely none of these persons deserved lynching and lynching as a practice was an abomination. Those using the rope became instant criminals and killers whose crimes far exceeded any of those by their victims thereby voiding any claims to ethical rights. One may not agree with this comparison but it is, I think, worth consideration.

The other principle theme Loury considers - and one I believe of particular value - is his construct of the "criminogenic conditions in our sprawling urban ghettos" which then increasingly predict the incarceration and demonization along with the political and economic minimization of black males in particular and the poor overall. These criminogenic conditions, therefore, specifically sustain the very behaviors our rush to incarcerate and punish claim to reduce.

In behavioral theory this is akin to the existence of 'establishing operations'(EO) which creates the conditions for subsequent and highly predictable human behaviors. And inasmuch as EOs are strictly an environmental and transactional construct, they can be deconstructed and neutralized so as to greatly reduce the predicted behavior at the end of the response chain.

But, and in a quick return to Loury's first theme which I identified, such a deconstruction may be obviated by alternating societal motivations. So, this focuses us back to the premise that the problem with our use of incarceration is less the result of individual behavior and more reflective of a need for societal and cultural change.

When the Messiah returns, all prisons will be closed, all criminals will be released, all police, prison guards, and prosecutors will be fired. The focus will be shifted to pro-active prevention! not after the fact punsihments.

People will then see how easily this can be done, could always have been done, and will belatedly realize that they had been deliberately scammed by the evil people known as politicians who had set up the police-prosecutors-prison system.

A brave description of a serious and complex problem that we all should engage in fixing. Violence begets violence and our children and grand-children, regardless of race, color or creed, will only be on the receiving end of it all.

I found the article and the post article debate extremely interesting. While I find little value in Al F's first post (it lacks sensitivity, appropriateness, a focus on the issue, relevant backup and experience from a close proximity to where these problems are occurring) his third was more worthy of consideration. He mentions that we "..should imprison those that deserve to be imprisoned..". Or that we punish those that deserve punishment.

Al - do you believe the contrary "...that we should free those that deserve to be free"? If you do perhaps its is not much of a stretch to suggest that we should invest more in programs that keep our youth out of the system than in keeping them in after the fact(let's not imprison those that don't deserve it). Would you agree or disagree that once a youth enters the prison system their life (post their time served) is no longer their own? It seems this way to me - and at a great cost to society as a result.

Al, have you ever talked with someone who suffered the indignities that one suffers while incarcerated? Have you talked with someone who had to pick a group/gang in prison just to stay alive while trying to serve their time? Perhaps no, but certainly you must comprehend that such an experience leaves a lifelong imprint that is not easily shaken post prison. The punitive nature of our prison system does not condone criminal behaviour, but it does not do much to encourage/support a change of behaviour. Additionally, Al you must know the financial future for lower level criminals post serving their time is bleak at best and their job prospects after serving their time condems them to a lifelong sentance in most cases. Can you suggest some fix here?

I work with kids in some of the toughest neighborhoods in the Bay Area in CA. I can say nearly all are well intentioned/have the potential to be productive members of society if you catch them BEFORE they enter the prison system. Some would believe there is a criminal mindset in the inner cities - I have not found this to be true. I have found a survival instinct exists that at times diminishes moral judgement. Once this wire it tripped, the ripple effect on the individual and their families persists well beyond their time served and contributes greatly to future offenses/behaviour.

Knowing the cost of imprisoning these young people - we clearly underspend on providing them with the tools to be productive in other ways. By not spending to keep them out of prison we statistically know that many will be in the system at some point in the near future.

As I travel in the neighborhoods none of us want to see - there are many of our youth who want a way out, yet find few resources to provide a roadmap. Our money is better spent in providing resources to prevent the mindset/situation that leads to criminal behaviour.

Al - next time you you drive over the speed limit, have one too many drinks and get behind the wheel, fail to put enough money in the parking meter - you just drive right over to the police station and turn yourself in - after all you should be punished for these acts - right? Also, the next time you become aware that your child or family member is illegally downloading tunes from the internet, drinking underage, using drugs - you make sure you turn them in. After all, this is illegal activity and is punishable by law.

I found the article and the post article debate extremely interesting. While I find little value in Al F's first post (it lacks sensitivity, appropriateness, a focus on the issue, relevant backup and experience from a close proximity to where these problems are occurring) his third was more worthy of consideration. He mentions that we "..should imprison those that deserve to be imprisoned..". Or that we punish those that deserve punishment.

Al - do you believe the contrary "...that we should free those that deserve to be free"? If you do perhaps its is not much of a stretch to suggest that we should invest more in programs that keep our youth out of the system than in keeping them in after the fact(let's not imprison those that don't deserve it). Would you agree or disagree that once a youth enters the prison system their life (post their time served) is no longer their own? It seems this way to me - and at a great cost to society as a result.

Al, have you ever talked with someone who suffered the indignities that one suffers while incarcerated? Have you talked with someone who had to pick a group/gang in prison just to stay alive while trying to serve their time? Perhaps no, but certainly you must comprehend that such an experience leaves a lifelong imprint that is not easily shaken post prison. The punitive nature of our prison system does not condone criminal behaviour, but it does not do much to encourage/support a change of behaviour. Additionally, Al you must know the financial future for lower level criminals post serving their time is bleak at best and their job prospects after serving their time condems them to a lifelong sentance in most cases. Can you suggest some fix here?

I work with kids in some of the toughest neighborhoods in the Bay Area in CA. I can say nearly all are well intentioned/have the potential to be productive members of society if you catch them BEFORE they enter the prison system. Some would believe there is a criminal mindset in the inner cities - I have not found this to be true. I have found a survival instinct exists that at times diminishes moral judgement. Once this wire it tripped, the ripple effect on the individual and their families persists well beyond their time served and contributes greatly to future offenses/behaviour.

Knowing the cost of imprisoning these young people - we clearly underspend on providing them with the tools to be productive in other ways. By not spending to keep them out of prison we statistically know that many will be in the system at some point in the near future.

As I travel in the neighborhoods none of us want to see - there are many of our youth who want a way out, yet find few resources to provide a roadmap. Our money is better spent in providing resources to prevent the mindset/situation that leads to criminal behaviour.

Al - next time you you drive over the speed limit, have one too many drinks and get behind the wheel, fail to put enough money in the parking meter - you just drive right over to the police station and turn yourself in - after all you should be punished for these acts - right? Also, the next time you become aware that your child or family member is illegally downloading tunes from the internet, drinking underage, using drugs - you make sure you turn them in. After all, this is illegal activity and is punishable by law.

As the grandmother of a precious and precocious 2-year-old grandson, I fear that no matter how firm a foundation in spirituality, literacy, numeracy and the "social graces" I conscientiously build for an incarcerated "mixed race" man's son, he was literally born "at-risk" of joining what Dr. Loury calls "a new generation of untouchables."

Little Dominic is mercifully too young to remember when he and my daughter waited to visit his father in the county jail last Sunday. only to told that a visit was verboten because this inmate had just been "locked down".

Today, Dom's dad, jailed for "probation violation" told my daughter that he was locked down for "passing a cookie" to another inmate.

If true, how criminal!

To be sure, no love is lost between Dom's dad and me since he relies on my daughter for support. Uncle Sam and I must augment her wages to keep this fragile family afloat. In jail, the state supports "pimp Daddy" as I meanly call him, knowing he's probably got unprintable names for this old gal with whom he is in hostile-dependent relationship.

After breathing a sigh of relief when Dom's dad is thrown in the slammer again, I begin to note innumerable mean-spirited indignities that reinforce this young man's aggrieved and hostil attitude toward the law.

I tell my daughter that my father's Jewish ancestors cooperated with God Almighty to give us The Law and that Dom needs to come up loving the Law. But it ain't easy to "do good" when you're far, far from doing well yourself. Jews in the Warsaw ghetto relied on street kids to sneak out of the ghetto and bring back whatever food they could steal to augment starvation rations meted out by their Nazi jailers.

I deeply regret reference to Warsaw ghetto in "Nether Caste Blues." I have more than once referenced Elie Wiesel's words that NOTHING can be compared to the Holocaust, particularly when this analogy is made with legalized abortion, as it often is. Since Mr. Wiesel will be speaking here next week and this hearing-impaired woman will be in the front-row, I don't want to feel guilty because I transgressed in this matter. (Wiesel's appearance here in the Texas Panhandle comes a year after the KuKluxKlan chose Amarillo to hold an anti-immigration rally.)

Apologies to Boston Review readers for gonzoing into this interchange. I have but little time and tranquility to carefully weigh my words. Please carry on this dialogue about a "problem from hell" that should deeply concern us all. A.Warnecke

No one should ever be in jail over marijuana. But yet there are hundreds of thousands who are. No one should be in jail for prostitution, but they are. There are dozens of "crimes" that no human should have to face jail for. It is from that pool of people that we find out jails crowded and overflowing.

The others deserve to be where they are. If you hurt people, steal, threaten people or destroy their belongings you deserve to be in jail.

It is an inconvenient truth that black people are more prone to violence. They are just not able to cope with modern society as a people. Since they cannot succeed within the framework that society has made they turn to crime. That is why 12% of the population is the overwhelming majority in prison. No other reason stands up to the cold, mean, unfeeling facts. Yeah, it's cruel to say such things. But the problem can't be solved when you ignore the largest cause of prison overcrowding.

And that is that people with an average IQ of 80 are trying to compete in a society made up of people with average IQ's of 100. They can't do it . They turn to crime.

You can't solve it with education. It won't take and they don't want it. You can't solve it with welfare and social programs. That has shown to be a complete failure. The only way to solve it is to test every individual and those who can't compete are turned to the easier pastures of Africa.

Feelings are not what's needed. Compassion is killing us. Cold, hard facts and unfeeling logic is the only answer. Use it and you will see that the problems and solutions are obvious.

What a wheepy bunch of crap! This is as idiotic as some of the webpages by gangmembers who complain about how the police treatment them on copwatchla.org.

But these thugs don't worry about anyone else's rights or what damage they are doing to neighborhoods and families! If we need more prisons, open up those FEMA camps and put even more of them to work in private prisons! I for one have no sympathy for these thugs. And if a judge gives these punks 20 or more years, let every day of it be at brutally hard labor! Enough of this weepy, worry about the criminal fluffy feelings. Do the crime, do the time and pay!

The simple answer people, Vice is not a crime, period.

Another aspect of punnishment that is a crime, is to house non violent "offenders" (oxymoronic term if ever there was one), with killers and rapists. To place people that are no threat into the same confines as people that are never getting out, is the recipie for your societal ills. I repeat, Vice is not a crime, until organized crime gets control of your governments, THEN it is now some imagined crime.

I find it really funny how the collective will give the few the power over their own pain treatments, just freaking amazing to me how stupid that idea is.

Is justice meant to be retributive or restorative?

No one wants "a mass pardoning of all murderers, rapists, psychopaths, terrorists, thieves?" all the murderers. That is not what this article is talking about.

It appears that our corrections system is in fact become a criminal training system.

I agree with ookie regarding the distinction between crimes against persons and/or property. The question,Who/what is harmed? must be central.

I disagree with ookie's description of the plight of black people as being something to do with inferiority of intelligence.

The idea of mentoring young men and women presupposes that society has an interest in developing the potential of each of it's members. What is whiny about that?

Someone needs to do a study on how many inmates have been collecting welfare or phony disability before getting incarcerated. A rough estimate seems to be in the order of 30%.
All welfare and phony disability (disability not earned through an on-the-job injury versus becoming "disabled" by taking drugs or having "attention deficit disorder") should be terminated for those who are convicted. The prisons need to be geared to train the inmates to do jobs "Americans won't do".
Also, the average inmate costs the taxpayers over $30,000 per person per year and can range as high as $80,000 per person per year for those in maximum security in California.
The author needs to get over the "injustices" to the poor black males. Why not focus more on productive individuals such as middle class black males who want to make something of themselves?
The welfare system has created the problem with the "poor" black male (who cost taxpayers an average of $25,000 per person per year) over the last forty years and now the same effect is being seen in the whites and latinos.

I have read through half of this article and nowhere did I see the link between rate of incarceration and privatization of the prison system.
This is serious problem, those corporations dealing in repression have enough clout to lobby lawmakers into consolidating the arsenal of laws to grow each and every petty felony into a full-blown crime deserving jail-time, thus buiding profit for those companies.
Prison running shouldn't be a private business, if let to become so, at the end of the day we will all become probationary inmates because some influential person have a vested interest in our utter criminalization.

This is democracy in action, right here in all of these posts. Mob rule. By the end of the 'discussion' all we have is a hanging.
Now I will tell you what is at the bottom of every problem America has: Americans do not know the difference between a republic and a democracy. If you personally think, "Well, they are different words for the same thing," go back and re-read the Federalist Papers, the Constitutional Debates, etc. Like Plato says in his REPUBLIC, "Democracy always appears just before tyranny."
Now it is understood why Bush and his coven are out there trying to "make the world safe for democracy"--just like the one here; with it's insane penal system, militarism, and common fear and loathing.
If we don't get to the ROOT of a problem we can spin in cercles forever chopping at leaves and branches.

I have read through half of this article and nowhere did I see the link between rate of incarceration and privatization of the prison system.
This is serious problem, those corporations dealing in repression have enough clout to lobby lawmakers into consolidating the arsenal of laws to grow each and every petty felony into a full-blown crime deserving jail-time, thus buiding profit for those companies.
Prison running shouldn't be a private business, if let to become so, at the end of the day we will all become probationary inmates because some influential person have a vested interest in our utter criminalization.

Who's fault is it that they are selling crack or raping and killing? Is it society's fault for somehow "failing" them? This is to remove any semblance of responsibility from their conscience. You speak of turning oneself in. I grew up in a piss-poor neighborhood and stayed in school, went to college, never took drugs, never stole, and now am a productive citizen earning over $200k/year. I'm not a special case. If I can do it, why the hell can they not? I never had the urge (seriously) to murder someone or to attack a girl walking alone on the street. I demand the same level or responsibility of everyone else.

This soft garbage about "misguided" youth is a ridiculous joke. Why don't you read about what's going on in Katrina these days?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110010532

Dude, you're talking about prison as if it's a lottery system and that any one of us can end up in there. NO, that's not correct. I can't end up in there quite simply because "I COMMITTED NO CRIMES. " It's not that hard not to mug or attack or kill. The people who are in there deserve to be in there. With today's juries and pro bono defense lawyers, each defendant gets more than his fair share of defense. When there's any form of doubt, it errs in favor of the criminal. Just this week, a taxi cab driver was acquited of rape in NY. The jury thought they had consensual sex. Never mind that he was a total stranger and her 2 year old was crying in the back seat.

Is our system perfect? No system is. But it's utter retardedness to say that we need to free all prisoners because one of them may be innocent. Because when you do this, you're dooming 10,000 future innocent victims to death.

I don't know about Marijuana (I'm leaning towards fines) but prostitution is a much thornier issue. The johns and pimps should be tossed in jail for exploiting young women and forcing them toward evil. The women themselves are victims and should face rehabilitation.

It is an inconvenient truth that a larger proportion of blacks commit crimes than whites. Every year, activist groups claim police stop and frisk more blacks than whites. But that does not take into account
the victim's descriptions of the criminal. If a mugging victim is saying that it's a black man, far be it for a cop to stop and frisk a white man for "political correctness. "

Society cannot correct and make up for improper upbringing. I see kids in the ghetto being brought up by teenage dropout mothers who curse and yell at them as if they were worthless. What are they supposed to learn from this? To stay in school because that's what mommy did?

The U.S. now arrests about a MILLION people a year for marijuana. And by all intents, intends to turn tobacco into marijuana so it can arrest a million more. Can alcohol be far behind? Not if the goal is to arrest as many people as possible. And it seems so when legislatures pass more laws to arrest more people for offenses great and small.
And those who are arrested -and their families and friends- will they just laugh it off and go gently into that good night; or will they seek vengeance? If a logical overhaul of this crazy system does not come to pass, we the people are sure to be caught in the crossfire of these warring factions. Then what becomes of us when the diarrhea hits the fan? Surely, this can't be the Age of Aquarius that they spoke about.

prohibition: didn't work then, doesn't work now.


www.leap.cc

If you like this article, are you so open minded that you brains have fallen out? It is either, "crime is down but the prison population went up" or, "the prison population is up and crime went down". Incarcerate more people for longer periods of time and crime decreases. We spent the 50's -70's trying to reform people and found that was a waste (no matter the program, recividism rates remained high and the same). Get real. There are bad people in the world. Leave them in their cage until they are elderly.

You Americans just don't get it. As soon as a prison system is put in the hands of corporations, it becomes a business. It's prime objective is profit. They don't want rehabiltation. They want recidivists. Its their bread and butter. Great article though! At least there are some "thinking people" left in the USA. If I was Black or Hispanic, I would head out of the USA and try to make new life somewhere else. In order for your plight to change, it would take a monumental change in your countries economic thinking. Thats not about to happen soon. Prisons should be state run. Rehabilitation should be the prime objective. You don't go to prison to be punished. Going to prison is your punishment. Follow the money. Find out which corporate fat cats are getting filthy rich out of the status quo, and you will have a target on which to focus your struggle for change.

Either I missed it or it wasn't addressed, but there are also many wrongly accused and imprisoned as this mass imprisonment of non-white Americans continues. . . The way to advancement for those who work in the criminal injustice system is conviction and imprisonment.

My Brain hurt... That was one hell of a read

Al I am assuming is a conservative...

So in that conservative spirit, which is also my background, I think it is important to state: prisons cost money.

The less people we have in prison, the less money we have to spend. For both sides, we should be trying to figure out ways to get the number of people in prison down. Lets start there...

Any time I see or hear the "N" word spelled or pronounced with the "er" on the end I am reminded of its intention and use when I was a child. It is a means of control and disparagement it is designed to de-humanize and un-complete a person. The author's use of this word brings into sharp contrast the real message: that Glen needs racism because he is a racist.

A great portion of people are in jail for victimless crimes.

Your argument is a straw man. No one wants murderers or violent individuals to be walking the streets. And no one except you is suggesting that either.

What we're pointing out is that there are hundreds of thousands of people in jail for very minor crimes; that once you're in jail, your life is destroyed; that once you're in jail, it's almost impossible to stay out of jail; that the law puts black people in jail disproportionately for the very same crimes that white people commit; that jail is set up to be purely punitive and not in any way try to help the criminals become better citizens *even if that would be just for our own protection and not just because it's the right thing to do*.

The article doesn't mention, but I'd like to add, that the prison system is well-known to be the second-most corrupt and graft-ridden system in America, where billions of your tax dollars are skimmed off the top and put into people's pockets. (Of course, the most corrupt system is the military...)

"So put yourself in John Rawls’s original position and imagine that you could occupy any rank in the social hierarchy. Let me be more concrete: imagine that you could be born a black American male outcast shuffling between prison and the labor market on his way to an early death to the chorus of nigger or criminal or dummy."

This talks about racism; this is not racist.

Indeed this is writing at it most compassionate -- he urges the reader to put themselves in the place of the people who are being oppressed.

I'm sorry that word bothers you but sometimes you need to shock people to wake them up to the injustice in the world. You should not attack people who are passionately on your side just because you don't like their choice of phrase.

Easy, because they convince defendants to plead guilty, even if innocent, in order to avoid the chance of getting a much tougher sentence...

I am innocent...
If you plead guilty you will get only 5 years.
But I am innocent!
If you plead not guilty, you will get up to 20 years...
But! But!
You'd better take the 5 years offer...
Ok ok, I will plead guilty...

America is a racist, ugly nation and it is going to fall-thank GOD!

White Americans hate all minorities and their willingness to hire illegal slaves is a sign of this inherent racism. They have become like the racist, murdering Jews, who also happen to incarcerate too many people, in Apartheid Israel.

Yet another sign of AntiChrist's collapse.

Look what happened this week in NYC:

A scumbag convicted sex-offender arrested for murder of a 20 something white woman. Her body was found underneath the bed in a hotel in plastic garbage bags.

This piece of trash was wanted in Alabama and had previously been convicted of sex acts with an under 12 year old child. Also, he was wanted for multiple other crimes and had stolen a woman's bank account and car and fled to NYC.

This kind of garbage is what happens when you let the trash out. You talk about prisoner's rights. How about the right of this young woman to live her life and not be murdered and tossed into trash bags??? You want me to have sympathy for this piece of sh.it? Give me 10 minutes with this piece of garbage, that's all I ask.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/nyregion/01hotel.html?bl&ex=1188792000&en=82c98bad6f8bc553&ei=5087%0A
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gm6kPu0TXP7goj75N64FTFGZlwHA

Until the time I read the series of articles by Catherine Austin Fitts: Dillon Read&Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits, I naively believed there was a socio-psychological cause for the rate of incarcerations in the US. You know I went around like the title of the movie says EYES WIDE SHUT. Now I don't . Its by far 98% business this number of prisoners thing.

MS Fitts bangs the nail dead nuts!
THe scum-baggers that really did a job on us during the Clinton administration following hand in hand from the scum-baggers who defiled this country before ,namely Bush and Regan had at their helm one thought first and foremost :GREED
screw the people get as many youths, irrelevant of race behind bars, erode the Constitution under the guise of protecting our neighbourhoods from violence etc. etc.

THe present Bushtapo regime added its own fine tuning because GUESS WHAT PEOPLE? the next great influx of inmates will be the Dissenters, people like you and me who will be termed "terrorists", "grave security risks","anarchists" "militants".

All the while, we run around theorizing about the WHY when the outcome is already presprung because we keep giving away our power.

GANSTERS ARE GANGSTERS. THEY HAVE THEIR OWN SET OF LAWS THAT DISAVOW ANY ALLEGIANCE TO ANYTHING THAT DOES DO NOT SERVE THEIR OWN ENDS. aS IS SAID AGAIN & AGAIN, " IF YOU GOT THE JUICE, YOU GOT THE MEANS"

If you have had the patience to read this rant, thank you. At least once or twice this Labor Day Weekend let's toast to us THE PEOPLE because in the end no matter what shit comes down from wherever, it slides off our backs. We may stink a bit, but we can still raise our hands with the middle index finger pointing upwards !

Yours respectfully,
DOZT

Is it not possible that the crime rate is down because imprisonment is up? Not for the 5-25% reason stated in the article, that the criminals are in jail and not out committing crimes, but for the reason that less people are committing crimes because they are scared that they will end up going to jail? Its hard to rate a factor like that, because people generally don't admit, "Yeah, I would've stolen that, but then I thought, 'If I get caught, I might go to jail.'" That doesn't mean the factor isn't there.

It is a deterrent, like that part in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back where they talk about not wanting to get put in county jail since they make you toss the salad there. When I was growing up, people would be like, "Oh yeah, you might go to jail. You'll go to some nice place with books and cable and get your three square meals and get to work out with the weights, and you'll probably get out early for good behavior to boot." Now when people talk about prison, they're more like, "Man, haven't you seen Oz? I don't want to go there."

I think that's a good change. Some people are good people and won't commit crimes for the sake of not committing crimes or harming others, but some people will do whatever they feel they can get away with, and for those people the thought of hard time in jail and not getting let off light is a helpful deterrent.

It is a good idea to work on social reform and keep people from going to prison in the first place anyway, but the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Prison should be a place you don't want to go. Also, we should try to work to make it to where people don't feel forced into situations that will put them there. Putting money to the goal of social reform doesn't have to come out of the budgets of prisons though. We could just invade one less country this next presidential term and we would have more than enough money for both.

I would like to state that the majority of the posts to this article are largely unrelated to what the article is discussing. This is not uncommon and I can understand why it happens but it does make a meaningful and productive discussion difficult.

I implore everyone to please make the effort to listen to what another person actually says and react to that instead of what your own prejudices and history cause you to think or assume they said. There is very often a difference between the two and very often a person who tries can make the distinction. Although being human we all are prone to the occasional failure.

I presume to point out Al_Frick as the most vocal individual in this discussion who has apparently failed to examine the actual message of the article he appears to be trying to respond to.

I will further presume and attempt to interpret for the benefit of the discussion with Mr. Frick and others.

What I believe Mr. Loury is saying is that the criminal justice system has problems, you actually agree with this assessment as evidenced by one of your own posts. Mr. Loury then goes on to examine and demonstrate why one of the largest problems of our justice system is how it is a product and example of racial inequality within our society, and that it greatly contributes to the continuation of that inequality. He concludes that this inequality is unethical and we, as ethical beings, have an obligation to deal with and eliminate that inequality.

Mr. Frick, nowhere in this article or between its lines do I find Mr. Loury advocating that we indiscriminately free all prisoners as you seem to. Instead I hear him argue that we have an open, honest, discussion of the problems present in our justice system with the goal of reshaping it so that it is effective while maintaining a consistency with our beliefs and values, equality appearing to be of key importance to Mr. Loury.

I would be interested, Mr. Frick, if you would explain where in this article you find the argument that we indiscriminately free prisoners.

Talk about deja vu. It's the Willie Lynch mentality all over again. When does it end?

-WE NEED TO BRING BACK SLAVERY AND HAVE IT ENDORSED BY SOCIETY AS A WHOLE i.e. depict all black people as criminals in movies,sensationalized crimes they commit on the six o' clock news,fan the flames of racism to create further polarization.
-We need to create a free slave labour force privately run ,which starts as a experiment in the black communities. Once it's FINED-TUNED it can be spread across all racial groups in U.S.
-We need to perpetuate this so these people need to be paroled from time to time have quick sex make more babies, break stiff supervisional rules, re-offend then sent back in for increasingly longer and longer sentences.
These house-holds need to be sigle parent house-holds because kids from such according to statitics fare worse than double parents house-holds
-we also need to create a situation where the mother will be working 2 or 3 jobs so she'll need to put this child in a daycare,where he'll grow up in a daycare Again because children who grow up detached from their parents during their FORMATIVE years will ALMOST certainly grow up to be a social misfit with a penchant for deviant lifestyle.
-Once this mechanism is FINE-TUNED it can be broadened across all groups in society.
and those jobs we outsourced to China,Malaysia,Indonesia,India can be brought back home for this cheap CONTROLLED labour force.
"Those poor black guys" once we get this right your kids will join them soon HA,HA your kids will be joining them soon"

Long time incarceration should only be for people who pose a threat to body or property. Murderers, rapists, armed robbers, arsonists, kidnappers, extortionists and some others are kept in stir to prevent them from hurting others. Making arbitrary choices about which substances are or are not legal creates a justice system that can be manipulated to target specific groups with selective enforcement and punishment, which is how drug laws are used. Deliberately making crack possession a higher crime with mandated long term incarceration was a bias directed at poor urban African Americans. Some people have served longer sentences for marijuana possession than convicts of manslaughter or second degree murder. Drug prohibition laws are really political laws against human freedom and their victims are political prisoners.

Technology does not get any credit? DNA has put thousands of criminals in jail. These are people that would still be free and committing more crimes if DNA did not convict them.

Crime is down because todays criminals cannot out think todays technology.

Like a lot of the above postings say; crime goes down when you put the criminals in jail.

This is a good read, but you could have given technology some of the credit.

Professor Loury's dilemma and main concern, frankly stated, is not crime or incarceration or the nature of the prison system: it is the facts of reality itself which do not comport well with Loury's (and many other's) expectations and needs resulting from their radically egalitarian notion of "democracy" which--unlike all historic democracies--cannot abide sharp class/sect/race distinctions.

Men, relative to women, commit disproportionately more crimes by far, especially violent crimes. This does not offend anyone's democratic sensibilities or result in a cry for a kind of "affirmative action" quota system to be used to determine who is/is not arrested or incarcerated.

Among the total male population, African-American men relative to differently racially categorized men are far more often arrested and incarcerated if you look at certain (mostly urban) regions, locales, and national statistics.

This fact is widely felt as inherently wrong in the guts of many people, particularly those raised in privileged, secure, class and race-homogenous enclaves with a sense of guilt at their social superiority and also an affection for it. What better tonic then to retain the privilege but atone for it an achieve moral self-righteousness by condemning "evildoers" whose chief sin is to be purveyors of racism and any disagreement or obstacle to radical egalitarianism, otherwise known as anarchy?

Only in the most parochial, soft, white-bread minds does democracy=freedom=equality of all by every possible socioeconomic measure.

Only from such minds is it plausible that the prisons are full of a majority of faux-criminals who merely smoked a little dope or engaged in the "victimless crime" of performing sexual acts for pay, often on men of the middle class, while their children roam the streets or are left to drown in tubs or play with loaded guns--owned by the crack dealer/pimp/"father" who takes his cut of the profits, inducts children into a life of sexual abuse as "normal," and provide a fine male role model with his fists and other weapons.

I don't want these people in my vicinity, and neither do my neighbors, who are all middle-class but very diverse racially if that makes you feel better. We do not like hearing constant gunfire, occasionally followed by screams, or bullets in our houses.

It is unfortunate and a deep problem that arrest and incarceration correlates so strongly with being black and poor. But the proper response to this reality is not to support a foregone conclusion--or at least a deeply felt anxiety and suspicion--that this correlation and the resulting "racial disparity" is a condition of inequality brought about by malevolent forces, evil motives and ideas.

***A lot of you commenters need to read the article on Philip Rieff in this same issue.***


No one should ever be in jail over marijuana. But yet there are hundreds of thousands who are. No one should be in jail for prostitution, but they are. There are dozens of "crimes" that no human should have to face jail for. It is from that pool of people that we find out jails crowded and overflowing.

The others deserve to be where they are. If you hurt people, steal, threaten people or destroy their belongings you deserve to be in jail.

It is an inconvenient truth that black people are more prone to violence. They are just not able to cope with modern society as a people. Since they cannot succeed within the framework that society has made they turn to crime. That is why 12% of the population is the overwhelming majority in prison. No other reason stands up to the cold, mean, unfeeling facts. Yeah, it's cruel to say such things. But the problem can't be solved when you ignore the largest cause of prison overcrowding.

And that is that people with an average IQ of 80 are trying to compete in a society made up of people with average IQ's of 100. They can't do it . They turn to crime.

You can't solve it with education. It won't take and they don't want it. You can't solve it with welfare and social programs. That has shown to be a complete failure. The only way to solve it is to test every individual and those who can't compete are turned to the easier pastures of Africa.

Feelings are not what's needed. Compassion is killing us. Cold, hard facts and unfeeling logic is the only answer. Use it and you will see that the problems and solutions are obvious.

I am not the author of the paragraphs in my comment (above) that start with "No one should ever be in jail over marijuana."

I meant to respond to those comments and accidentally included them below my own.

I question the accuracy of the idea that prison populations would be evenly distributed by race if you removed all the "hundreds of thousands who are [in prison over marijuana]" even if we make no distinction between someone who possessed a relatively small amount, and a person involved in a massive growing or distributing operation. There is also the pragmatic reality that the dealer down the street who has concerned the neighborhood due to drive-by shootings and children living in poor conditions is often in prison on "minor" drug charges because that is all they could get him for--the chief motive being to get him out before something worse happens.

All this behavior tends to be associated with any kind of drug trade and prostitution:
"If you hurt people, steal, threaten people or destroy their belongings you deserve to be in jail."

If you want prostitution and drugs to be legalized, that is a different issue. Many, maybe most cops would agree with you.

This is flatly racist:
"It is an inconvenient truth that black people are more prone to violence. They are just not able to cope with modern society as a people. Since they cannot succeed within the framework that society has made they turn to crime. That is why 12% of the population is the overwhelming majority in prison. No other reason stands up to the cold, mean, unfeeling facts. Yeah, it's cruel to say such things. But the problem can't be solved when you ignore the largest cause of prison overcrowding."

None of this has anything to do with "being black." Blackness and race in general is a non-scientific, biologically meaningless designation. Being poor and male in urban America has always correlated with criminality, arrest, and incarceration. You can find many analogous situations around the world, past and present. American Indian reservations are no picnic. Being poor and of indigenous descent in the slums of Mexico City is no picnic. Men and women both are driven by pride and ambition to be someone who is not dependent, weak, despised. They will pursue whatever assets, power, and esteem their immediate economy offers.

I also wanted to note that it's hard to pin racism and prejudicial treatment of African-Americans in the criminal justice system on some kind of pure descent or legacy of slavery and segregation when a powerful, proximate cause must be the entertainment media since the 90s which has upheld a "ghetto" image of black Americans as typical, representative, and even desirable.

These representations and the "culture" they have spawned has been fully embraced on a broad, popular level, most notably by black Americans themselves. Optimistically I like to think there is a black silent majority of working, middle-class, professional, and affluent african-americans who rightly hate and reject this culture. Yet they have done little to stop it, and the result is disastrous.

It is not just a benign aspect of "my culture" or "lifestyle choice" to dress and talk like a thug. Acting like a thug is not far behind, and people who electively put themselves into this culture are going along with a major tenet of it, which is oppositional and crudely revolutionary in its open rejection of or despise for the "mainstream" values and behaviors it exists to defy.

This in itself is a performance of rejecting the social contract, and arguments like Loury's --in this context-- look very much like arguments for a double standard that lets criminals and criminal-enabling cultures off the hook by merely accepting them or excusing them. Black racism and antagonism toward blacks--and other groups--is, in my view, the most potent form of aggressive racialized discrimination at work in the US today, and no analysis of the problems Loury discusses is complete without attention to this fact.

"...a powerful, proximate cause must be the entertainment media since the 90s which has upheld a "ghetto" image of black Americans as typical, representative, and even desirable. " -dpk

Why?

"Men and women both are driven by pride and ambition to be someone who is not dependent, weak, despised. They will pursue whatever assets, power, and esteem their immediate economy offers." - dpk

For geographics and demographics associated with crime, we can ask: What does the immediate economy offer? What are the barriers to more productive choices?

This essay is standard boilerplate and doesn't delve beyond comforting and consoling "truths." Loury fails to understand that it is people in the poorest areas who are calling for more police - and rightfully so. They want the police to police FAIRLY and not to racially profile.

Working class people have a gut distrust of statistics, seeing how these have been manipulated so many times before. Why does Loury has this touching faith in the accuracy of statistics churned by those who have a special interest in seeing certain results? Why should we believe, esp. those of us who live in the inner city that the crime statistics are any more accurate than , let's say, Bush's claims for weapons of mass destruction?

Finally, I have been around thugs and street criminals for more than 30 years and in all my observations, I can only think of 2 cases in which anyone stole for survival, to eat or pay rent. Nearly all crime is done for access to consumer items, like drugs, brand-name this, brand-name that. To pretend that more jobs and better wages, etc as desireable as these may be,will magically stem these longings is naive at best. Human desire is infinitely elastic, especially when pumnped up by the Tee-Vee and as a sociologist, Loury should be the first to know this. . .

International Platform Against Isolation:



WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS PLATFORM?
The prisoners in Turkey started a period of action in the middle of 2000, in order to oppose the transition plan into isolation cells, which created a big sensibility in Turkey. In October 2000 the political prisoners in Turkey started a hunger strike. This resistance, which was later turned into a death fast, both created influence in the public and was supported by large sections of the people. For a certain period there was also support from Europe, the homeland of the isolation policy.

The isolation policy, which determined the agenda of Turkey and the Big Resistance (the ‘death fast’) created a certain consciousness about the effects of isolation on a person.

But in the same time this brought political instability for a Turkey, which was on its way to Europe.

The regime in Turkey also took support of European countries in the name of political stability and it started an attack against the political prisoners in 20 prisons, which ended in a massacre on 19th December 2000.

This military assault lasted exactly four days and happened before the eyes of the whole world. Finally, it ended on 22nd December with the ‘victory’ of the state.

The balance was frightening: 6 female prisoners at Bayrampasa prison were burned alive. There were killed in total 28 prisoners with bullets, in the fire, or by being beaten to death with truncheons.

Without exception, all political prisoners were tortured, hundreds of them were wounded and confronted with abuse or rape before their transfer to the new opened F-type isolation prisons.

This operation, that was realized in the name of prison reform of the EU, entered the history of prisons as an unforgetable massacre.

The families of thousands of political prisoners in Turkey faced this massacre attacks in the consciousness to get organized, under the danger to loose their children.

They had just a single force, which was their own force… The whole public was silenced for the sake of the EU plans. Even the press in Europe was silenced and also the limited solidarity movement began to return to their own area.

The isolation policy was practised in Europe for tens of years as a dimension of the annihilation policy against social and class movements. It almost came over the European left movements another time and the existing limited support was lost after a certain time.


WHAT WAS THE SITUATION OF THE LIFE AND RESISTANCE IN ‘MODERN CONCENTRATION CAMPS’ IN TURKE, NAMELY THE F-TYPES?
It was attempted to build a large screen of fog around the prisoner’s resistance, which were confronted with massacre, torture and rape. The whole press voluntary supported the policy of silence of the state. Neither the European states, who constantly speak about “democracy and human rights’, nor the European institutions, its press or the human rights organisations in Europe opposed the politics of massacres and the attempts to suffocate reality by censorship. They even attempted to silence those voices, who supported the resistance.

After the 19th-22nd December, the number of death fast resisters increased from around 100 before the massacre to around 1000.

The state spread around the propaganda that the resistance was over. It was propagized that the resistance was forced by the organisations and as the prisoners were now put into solitary confinement they were saved from the pressure of the organisations and as well the resistance was ended. In the same period, with the voluntary participation of doctors á la Mengele, there was started a force feeding torture on the resisters.

The families were excited, they tried to find out the situation of their children and relatives, and the friends and comrades of the prisoners tried to break the wall of censorship at risk of their lives. The uncertainties continued until 21st April, 2001. With the death of the first resister the silence was broken once again. Later on, the news of death cases from the prisons followed each other.
With the price of the death, the reality started to be reflected. In order to convince the public, that the resistance continued, tens of our people had to risk their life. They lost their lives, one after another.


A NEW DANGER…
The increase of the death cases became almost a matter of habit. The circles apart from the resisters, of those who died and their families, not only got used to it but they even started to ignore the resistance. The long-term of the resistance, the heavy price that had to be payed, created a psychology of defeat especially within European solidarity structures. And it was started to discuss on the senselessness of the resistance. Indeed, this psychology of defeat wasn’t valid for each circle.

For instance the support of Irish comrades, who own a honorable place within the history of resistance in the prisons and who continue with the tradition of resistance for more than 100 years, as well as the support of the revolutionaries from the Basque country and some groups, organisations and individual prisoners in the USA and Europe is a fact, that can’t be underestimated.

Despite of that, with its own pessimist view, the left in Europe and the USA, who wasn’t used to very long-term resistance started to believe, that the resistance won’t be able to succeed. It thought, that the isolation policy, that was successful in Europe and the USA, would also be able to break the resistance of hte revolutionary prisoners in Turkey.

The fact, that the resistance of the prisoners also handed over to their comrades, friends and their families, the agenda was filled with death news both from inside and outside the prisons. The state wasn’t able to break the resistance with massacres or censorship. It used one of its final weapons, the greatest corruption policy that can be used against a prisoner: The majority of prisoners in resistance was started to be released. The fact, that the released prisoners continued their resistance outside, together with their families, transported it practically outside the jails. Especially the supportive resistance in the Istanbul’s neighbourhood Kücükarmutlu, turned out to a center of attraction.

As a result of the death cases starting outside, the state carried out a massacre attack towards the neighbourhood in order to silence this resistance. Finally, the prisoners started to resist and sacrify themselves for those outside, just as those outside did for the prisoners. Half of the people, who lost their lives in the resistance against F-type prisons (122), were outside.


RESISTANCE IS BANNED, AS WELL AS SOLIDARITY …
The state released new laws in order to ban the resistance and the hunger strike in the prisons. Not enough, it even banned the support of the resistance. Additionally it has legalized the force feeding torture. And finally it even banned any news in relation to the resistance. These laws are still in practise today.


THERE’S NOT A BIG DIFFERENCE IN THE REST OF THE WORLD
The isolation and insensibility towards the resistance in Turkish prisons, is actually not different in the other parts of the world. In the past, the prisoner’s question was a point of sensibility in each country. The solidarity with political prisoners and their resistance has lost sensibility. This happened especially parallel with the leftist movements’ loss of influence within the political arena in Europe. In the past, the prisoner’s thematic was always part of the important questions within activities, organized by circles including the alternative left on national and international level. But, especially in the lsat years, the question of prisoners aren’t even handled at such activities. This situation even concerns activities of Communist parties, anarchists, trotskists and even circles like the anti-globalists.

Even during actitivities like the Social Forum, on which hundreds of plenaries, seminaries and workshops are held, the political prisoners’ question doesn’t fill the agenda. Finally, with the efforts of our platform there could be organized a single seminary on political prisoners on the 3rd ESF.

The most of the prisoners’ solidarity groups were organized on national level. But their activities as well became very rare with the time. This is also result of the reduced number of political prisoners in many countries. But what really was determining; is that the situation and the isolation of the prisoners has become matter of habit. Though, if there’s a single political prisoner in a country, it is even one too much. If there’s a single political prisoner, this means, that there exist rights violations, unlawfulness, rob of democratic rights. Above it, we live in a period, in which the probability of political captivity is growing in many countries, in which basic rights and freedoms are more extensive, in which there’s need for a bigger sensibility to this question.

The principle which says “A societal movement which doesn’t support its prisoners is condemned to loose”, is indicating more urgency than ever. Especially the attacks, which were developed worldwide against basic rights and freedoms after the 11th of September, have made political captivity to a more societal problem. While the people of all democractic organisations have become more or less potentially political prisoners, there’s no real sensibility on this question.

The extensive isolation practice towards the political prisoners in Turkey is not a single case. The successs of the isolation policy in Turkey is reflecting to the whole world. On one hand the same practises are multiplied in Russia, Chile, Israel, Peru and other countries, on the other hand isolation and annihilation take concrete forms with prisons like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and unknown secret prisons in several countries.

Nobody should believe, that the F-types are only directed against revolutionaries in Turkey, or that Guantanamos just target religious people in Afghanistan. That would be a historical error. Both the F-type prisons and Guantanamos have their roots. Isolation, which was systematically used with the Nazi-camps and the policy to break ideas under isolation have been the most important steps to break the resistance in many countries. The Control Units in the USA, the QHS in France the F.I.E.S. in Spain, Stammheim in Germany, the white torture cells in Italy, the H-Blocks in England, the tiger cages in Vietnam, the Island prisons in South Africa and the subsurface prisons in Peru, which are mainly used since the ’70s, aren’t independent from the isolation complexes today.


TODAY, THE ORGANISATION ON INTERNATIONAL LEVEL IS MORE NECESSARY THAN EVER
Today, the prison question is not a national but an international problem. And the isolation politics towards the prisons have turned to a global attack. Imperialism applies its isolation policy very conscious and planful, in order to destroy the worldwide resistance and the resistance ideal.

The attack is global, this is what the resistance should be. The problem concerns all countries, the need for organizing against this problem should also cover all countries. The need for organisation should not only include solidarity organisations, but also the prisoners and their family organisations.

IPAI wants to put steps towards an organisation, that gives an answer to this need. With this purpose, there was started an activity, which has become yearly tradition and goes on since December 2002.

The first International Symposium against Isolation, which was organized in Holland in December 2002 has proven, that the human, juridical, medical and political dimension of isolation, which is used against all political prisoners in the world, is more or less the same in every place. During that symposium, tens of political prisoners - from the USA to Germany- have followed an appeal of the platform and organized a common hunger strike.

During that first symposium, the days from 19th-22nd Decmeber, which are the dates of the prison massacre in Turkey, were announced as International Days of Struggle against Isolation and it was aimed to raise the struggle against isolation during these days, every year.

With the second symposium, which was organized in December 2003 in Florence, there were put some further steps towards an international organisation between international prisoners and prisoners’ families. Principally, it was decided, that family organisations from Turkey, the Basque country, from Palestine, Iraq and Ireland, where the prison question today is most burning, will act together.

In the frame of the second symposium, hundreds of prisoners in Turkey, the Cuban 5, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the prisoners of Maghaberry in Northern Ireland and anarchists, environmental, political prisoners from several countries joined the international hunger strike and put an important step towards the international prisoners’ organisation.

It was also decided during the symposium in Florence to create a communication line between the prisoners. With the aim to solve the problem of language among the prisoners by a project called ‘Ourselves behind the walls’, IPAI accepted the task to translate and forward letters of prisoner. In this frame, it was attempted to create a certain relation network by translating hundreds of letters from prisoners of Turkey, Germany, Italy, Basque country, USA and Ireland.
This work will be continued with more progressed aims. This project is also an initiative, that could be moblizing for prisoners’ organisations on international level.


THE 3rd SYMPOSIUM AND NEW AIMS
The third symposium, which took place from 15th-18th December in Berlin, also included former prisoners, prisoners’ families and organisations, solidarity movements and sensible jurists, medicals, journalists, individuals and institutions. But as it was mentioned already during the second symposium, the isolation problem is not just limited with the prisoners. Using solitary confinement against prisoners, black lists against organisations and occupation, war and embargo against countries, it is attempted to transform the world to a rose garden without thorns, without resistance in severe isolation conditions. It is not just aimed to break the prisoners, but to create a world, in which oppositional thoughts, alternative views do not exist any more, where even addiction to resistance is destroyed.

So, the third symposium was organized under the slogan “Isolation has got many faces”, and the intention was an international network to oppose this global practise of isolation. With the same aim we organized two other symposiums and put some steps forward.

Our close aims;
creating a Prisoners’ Family and Support Organisation and a Prisoner’s Organisation, which can act together on international level. With this aim, we want to put into life a common press organ in different languages.

Our first step was to create a website www.ipai-isolation.info in order to meet this needs. This website was created after the fifth symposium in Athens (December 2006), though there already existed another website before (http://www.freecaptive.org, www.ozgurtutsak.org).

This website should on one hand enable the communication of prisoners all over the world to each other and serve as a window to the world, and it should be as well a space to exhibite their publications and handworks. The website should announce and coordinate all international activities in relation with the prisoners, and thereby isolation should be removed practically. The isolation practise on prisoners, who are separated from the world and from each other will be ineffective.

Furthermore, the aim to destroy societal production by imprisonment will become ineffective by sharing the prisoners’ products with the world. As a means of production and against capitulation within the cells, the political prisoners, the prisoners create paintings, drawings, caricatures, poems, articles and different handworks. Our prisoners who produce such a wealth, still carry a tradition of resistance to the outside and create life and dynamic. We should share these products with the whole world. We believe that this is a way to overcome isolation and captivity at least partial.

LET’S KEEP IN MIND;
Though the reistance in Turkey could achieve a big victory after 7 years and death fast was interrupted on 22nd Januar 2007, the isolation policy and the resistance still continues…

In Europe and the USA the societal products of the prisoners are still prevented, it is attempted to isolate them from each other and the world.

Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib still continue to prey on the conscience of the world.

Organisations are isolated with demagogies on terror and blacklisted, the restriction of basic rights and freedoms still continues.

The politics of war and occupation towards Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq still continue.

National identity and the international law are still violated.

The embargo towards Cuba still goes on.

The construction of the wall in Palestine is still continuing.

The USA has started a war against the whole world, being supported by the EU.

The list above is a part of it and they try to prevent us from recognizing all that.

Further, they try to enlarge that list with the Big Middle East Project and thier politics towards Philippines and Colombia.

We do not ask any more, if there’s a need of an international organisation against this policy.

We support a structure, which all forces who oppose the politics listed above.

Our platform is not an ideological unity platform. Indeed we’ll have certain principles.


WHICH ARE OUR PRINCIPLES?
We are anti-fascists, anti-imperialists, we are against rascism, discrimination, against zionism and anti-semitism, we are against war, occupation and embargos, we are against isolation, torture, force feedings, we oppose the massacres against peoples, against attacks towards their national souvereignty, against the violations of the right on democratic organisation and basic rights and freedoms, we are against globalization and global slavery.

Interesting piece. I cant say I agree with it, but interesting nonetheless.

A few point of contention:

"Yet according to the National Survey on Drug Abuse, drug use among adults fell from 20 percent in 1979 to 11 percent in 2000. A similar trend occurred among adolescents. In the age groups 12–17 and 18–25, use of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin all peaked in the late 1970s and began a steady decline thereafter. Thus, a decline in drug use across the board had begun a decade before the draconian anti-drug efforts of the 1990s were initiated." While aggregate drug use may have fallen, isn't it entirely possible that drug use among certain segments of society actually rose?

"Arrests went up, but drug prices have fallen sharply over the past 20 years—suggesting that the ratcheting up of enforcement has not made drugs harder to get on the street." Fails to consider an alternate cause for the falling drug prices--higher supply!

"The police, with arrest quotas to meet..." Anecdotally, I was a police officer and we did not have "quotas". I know several people that are still in law enforcement and they do not have quotas...

"While three out of 200 young whites were incarcerated in 2000, the rate for young blacks was one in nine. A black male resident of the state of California is more likely to go to a state prison than a state college." Is it possible that blacks are committing more crime? This is just rhetoric. And what if there are more black men in prison then in college... Is that an indictment of the criminal justice system, or an indication of some other "cultural or social" barrier to achievement in the black community; i.e. it just isnt "cool" to be smart and go to college. Perhaps a preoccupation with the material culture that has exploded in the past 10 years or so; big rims, "bling", money, houses, MTV cribs...

Most importantly, where are his prescriptions? Do we open the doors and let everyone out? How do we help the poor/minority classes understand the importance of education? The importance of not having babies when you are still a baby. There are other cultural/societal factors at play that must be explored. Most critically, there has to be a concerted effort among the poor/minority communities to stop playing the blame game and some with the culture of "victim-hood". Might I suggest a few very good books:
Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America - John McWhorter
Beyond Blame: How We Can Succeed by Breaking the Dependency Barrier - Armstrong Williams

These are the types of books black youths need to be reading if there is any hope in breaking the cycles that are leading the problems we are experiencing.

Robert

I'd love to know where these Brahmin lefty sociologists want all these crackheads and thieves to go.

My guess is that they don't want 'em in their back yards. Or hanging around their kids' schools.

Guess what? Neither do the rest of us! I didn't move out of the hood so the feel-goodniks can release the hood into my neighborhood.

I've witnessed quite enough "petty property crimes" and "victimless drug use" to last a lifetime-- maybe drug dealers don't beat me over the head, but they do drive down the value of my home, make it impossible for me to let my kids play in the backyard, and have no sense of civic responsibility.

There are only so many times I can have my belongings stolen before I get entirely fed up with the shiftless low-lives whose "diversity" I am told is "worth celebrating."

pfft.

Anyway, yes, blacks have a substantially higher crime rate across categories, except for white-collar stuff like embezzlement. It should come as no surprise that they are also disproportionately represented in prisons. Not all blacks have low IQs and a chronic inability to delay gratification, but enough of them do for it to matter.

We've gotten more punitive because rehab doesn't do anything to stem the tide of urban destruction. There is only so much that decent people will take.

Anyway, I think the point about "racially homogenous urban ghettoes" necessarily creating dysfunctional disaster areas is false. What other ethnic group creates such ghettoes? Are we afraid to walk through Chinatown after dark?

Even the much-despised Irish didn't create a situation like Detroit or ESL! It's not like the "people who stand outside the boundaries" (just say it, dude, you mean 'white people') sold their homes at crushing losses just for racial spite; they were driven from their communities by thuggish black behavior, not some kind of nebulous "perception of blackness as subordinate."

On the positive side, at least lefties are now willing to admit that there ARE a host of self-defeating behaviors that lead to group poverty and social destruction, not just the wickedness of "white privilege."

That's more than I could have said ten years ago!

I think Rawl's little exercise is interesting, in a college ethics course sort of way, where everyone is insulated from the actual effect of our imaginings. Few are willing to tolerate the results on the ground, unless we gain something from it.

And as a working-class white who can neither afford to send my kids to cushy private schools nor afford to move to the latest "progressive" suburb, I'm just not terribly interested in having Loury's vision of social justice visited upon my town.

Loury's article together with the comments upon it illustrate the complexity of the problem. Almost all fair-minded people would, after all the evidence of the last years that our so called criminal justice system greatly discriminates in favor of whites. However, there is not only no consensus about how this problem should be solved, there is a paucity of even good suggestions about what might help except large abstract concepts like reduce racism, improve education, eliminate poverty, and the like.

Yet the proportion of minority males in the crininal justice system is so large, that justied in indivudal circumstances or not, norms are being created in minority communities where, prestige comes with the way individuals cope with and behave as criminals and convicts or parollees. The local heros in most poor neighborhoods are criminals as so many minorities are either in prison, on a clear road to prison, or recently out of prison,

Talking to many young minority men has persuaded me that there is higher status and respect obtained from being a gang member and being able to "handle" the incaceration than haveing a $30,000 dollar a year job as a a salesman, a clerk, or a civil servant. The only exceptions allowed are in sports and entertainment. If a large proportion of moinority males have these attitudes, then a similar percentage of minority women are in the unenviable of situation of having to choose among pairing with a criminal, selecting men of a different ethnicity or remaining single. Is it any wonder that so many children are born out of wedlock.

Perhaps there is no singular solution that will help much. However, in order to try and back off the tipping point that we are either rapidly appreaching or perhaps have passed, we can approach this problem around the edges. Reexamine the statutes and penalties and try to reduce sentence length somewhat for all but the most serious violent offenders, expand various alternatives to incarceration, try and have more minorities in law enforcement so the appearance is not whites, investigating, charging, prosecuting, judging, incarcerating, paroleing, and monitoring minorities.

But the edges will only provide some improvement at best. We need a lot of out of the box thinking and need to consider and think throught things that were unthinkable to us, becasue what we are becoming was unthinkable a generation ago. One wild idea I heard the other day was to bring back indentured servitude as an alternative to prison. That is how so many of the early Americans escaped England and came to a new life. If the "servitude" were reasonably selected to be sure that the indentured person would learn a trade or profession, at least we might break the cycle for many individuals.

Or equipping prisons with PC's and give inmates access and let them reduce their sentences if they can demonstrate that they have achieved on-line educational achievements.

Or allowing non volent criminals to train for and work in hosptials or other high labor shortage publicly needed areas and being under house arrest with electronic monitoring instead of jail.

Or let private companies or non profits (including faith based groups) "invest" in an inmate and train him for good (not dead end) jobs and in exchange get 25% of the taxes that the inmate will earn over the national average for the next 30 years--like a long term investment.

We need ideas that might be tried. There is one thing virtually all Americans will aggree upon--the present system is not working. There is little to lose from trying new things as we have lost so much already.