Some of you know I've been threatening to put together a substantial piece covering Philadelphia's incarceration problem for a while. This probably won't be it but Karen Heller's Inquirer piece today is such a strongly worded piece, I had to put this up just to echo the seriousness of the problem.
"If the United States leads the world in incarceration," says civil-rights lawyer David Rudovsky, "Philadelphia leads the United States."
We have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than anybody else, 3.5 times more than New York City.
We're No. 1!
Prisoners are a growth industry. "Booming," says prison commissioner Lou Giorla.
It's not hard to see why. When so many of the city's population are woefully uneducated - almost 30 percent lack high-school degrees - decent jobs are hard to come by.
The drug-dealing business, however, is always hiring.
The criminal division heard 15,000 felony cases last year, 80 percent of them related to drugs.
"We're not doing the things that would prevent the market from growing," says Judge Pamela P. Dembe, chief of the criminal trial division. "We operate a justice system that is based on a very old model, a punitive model."
Amazingly even though Philadelphia is almost 1 million smaller in population than it was 50 years ago, we have never incarcerated as many as we do now and the costs aren't cheap.
This spring, Philadelphia's prisons made history - by having more prisoners in jail than at any time in the last three centuries, 9,334 prisoners, at an annual cost of $30,000 each. The facilities were designed to hold 6,433.
Two-thirds of inmates are awaiting trial, half for minimum drug charges. Some wait as long as two years for their cases to be heard.
It's an expensive mess. Fifteen percent of prisoners are mentally ill. More than 2,000 are held three to a cell designed for two; one of them has to sleep in a plastic shell on the floor. Due to overcrowding, guard overtime will hit $35 million this month.
A quarter of Philadelphia's budget goes to criminal justice, almost $960 million on cops, courts and prisons. And 80 percent of the criminal justice system deals with the nasty tentacles of drugs. Do the math. That's $767 million to deal with problems at the end of the line, not the beginning, before they all clot the system.
Sorry for all the quotes, but the staggering facts of our local problem have to be addressed in order for people to understand how pressing this problem is, how much it steals from the budget that could be better applied to prevention for youth and reentry services for people coming out of the system so it stops functioning as a revolving door. Philadelphia is facing a crisis of incarceration - literally.
Heller's piece is addressed to civil libertarian David Rudovsky's suit over the fact that our local prison system is unconstitutionally overcrowded. Locally we are currenly triple celling putting 3 into cells designed for two. The majority of those we incarcerate locally are simply awaiting trial - mostly because they can't afford bail for non-violent offenses. The courts are backed up from the crushing load of drug cases and we are using our local jail system increasingly as an expensive and incredibly ineffective mental health holding facility, in turn putting other inmates and employees of the system at risk.
This is a system in dire need of reform. Luckily there are solutions we could be using and Everett Gillison is examining some them. Amazingly besides being more effective, they also can save us money.
More on that in a bit, but folks can get started looking at how Philadelphia could be saving money better invested in prevention and reentry while making the system better by looking at this article - on options Gillison is investigating including GPS ankle bracelets and day reporting.
I have more to add but let me just say that I've been collecting some information resources for this issue over on the Philly ADA forum so please check there as well.
Doing whats right is doing whats fiscally responsible
Thats one of the most mindboggling aspects of this problem - especially as it relates to pre-trial detention in the local prison system. Holding people for months on end who can't post bail due to lack of collateral, people who have not even been convicted of a crime yet, people who may in fact walk when their trial actually comes up - its tremendously expensive. It disrupts lives - causes people to lose jobs, apartments, miss childcare payments. And these are people who may not actually be convicted of anything - just destitute, sometimes mentally ill or dependent on drugs. If our aim is to save the taxpayers money and get the most bang for our buck, paying to incarcerate those accused of non-violent crimes pre-trial rather than day-reporting (for those deemed appropriate - possibly with drug tests and counceling)is ahuge misdirection of our city's resources.
From the article I meant to link to earlier (link fixed BTW):
Traditionally the argument against this kind of approach comes from a misplaced desire to protect the public. The problem is that since we are footing the bill to incarcerate so many, people often aren't getting the social services on the inside that we could better afford to pay for with them under supervised release on the outside - particularly amongst those who aren't convicted of anything yet. As a point of comparison NYC used drug courts, day reporting, etc. to reduce the number of people it incarcerated locally and at the same time actually saw their crime rates drop by historic amounts over the same period of time.
We wasting money to make us less safe, long term, in other words.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
This is one of those big, scary problems
that politicians, and hell even progressive bloggers, are reluctant to wade into because
1) there is no simple solution; rectifying it likely will require multiple changes in policy and practice that most people are unfamiliar with
2) on a local level, changing these policies is incredibly politically risky because you have to explain to the public (who are not all progressive bloggers) why you want to let out on the street thousands more people whom the police arrested on drugs charges. Don't get me wrong. Doing so and reducing the prison population is a good and necessary thing. But should the crime rate spike for some other reason when you do it (always a possibility), you face charges of unleashing a criminal horde on an innocent public, and all of a sudden Tom Knox and/or Bill Green are setting up exploratory committees
3) it means dealing w/ Lynne Abraham
4) it means bumping up against federal drug policy and minimum sentencing that most reasonable observers agree is at best not working and at worst is even self-defeating, but that, on a municipal level, you can't change
5) the problem, like crime itself, is rooted in other long-term big, scary problems, such as poverty and education that you can't fix quickly and that are tied to the national economy and to Government spending outside the local level
6) MOST OF ALL, it's a problem that is invisible to most of the public most of the time. Plus, it affects mostly people who have been arrested, never the first priority when Government, even Good Government, commences to problem-solving
Despite all that, this is also one of those big, scary problems we need to face because it could prevent us from moving forward as a city and as a community unless we fix it. Kudos to Sean for bringing attention to it here, and to David Rudovsky for bringing the suit that might help generate some heat and some interest on the overcrowding problem that is kind of the tip of the iceberg.
I'm interested in figuring out what we should do.
I'm glad that Everett Gillison is working on the anklet solution; I mean, Yay, employing useful new technology.
But while that solution seems hopeful for having a salutary effect, there still seems to be a need for even larger institutional changes to take place. Does anyone know if Gillyson, or some other City official is working on a more comprehensive solution?
I'll admit right away that I come to this problem only with questions, no answers.
My first big question is why do other cities, such as NYC, have such lower incarceration rates? How do they keep people moving through the criminal justice system faster? What are they doing right that we are doing wrong?
Can we legislate in such a way as to be more like them?
Are there police practices, and/or prosecutorial practices, and/or judicial practices that they follow and we don't but that would be useful if we did? If so, how do we implement such changes?
Like I said, huge problem. I wonder if anyone out there has some good answers for what we can do at the local level. What exactly are NYC's drug courts and day reporting?
I know that this kind of discussion can easily devolve into a Liberal bitch and moan session about the War on Drugs. That wuld be righteous in its own way. I don't like the War on Drugs, either, and I hope that that set of policies can be systematically dismantled and changed at the federal level as soon as possible. Good topic for an Obama discussion.
But I'm more interested in the local policies and practices that led to Philly's having worse incarceration problems than other, similar cities. Again, what Philly's doing wrong, and how best can we can fix it?
Some answers, some more questions
Thats a hell of a post, Sam and I will try to break it down a little bit at a time in order to at least point to areas we might look for better answers, real solutions.
Truer words were never typed. That said, there is a lot of work being done on this by very smart people and part of the process of finding real substantive solutions is bringing attention to the work already being done.
On the closely related subjects of reentry and recidivism, I would at least point to two major documents for folks looking for "serious" research. One is a 55 page study done in conjuction with the 2007 US Conference of Mayors titled "From Options to Action: A Roadmap for City Leaders To Formerly Incarcerated Individuals To Work" Nutter attended the conference and much of the thinking related to his own policies in terms of reentry services runs in parallel with the study's findings. Not exactly the same as Philly's local problem with overcrowding of those arrested and awaiting trial, but some of the social services folks coming out the system need are also needed by people at the front end as well - and of course they aren't necessarily getting them. Also the money we could be saving with drug courts, day reporting, GPS anklets, etc could be paying for those services - which most experts in the field feel are pennies on the dollar against the costs of increased incarceration they help to avoid. Short of jumping into the whole study here's a short opinion piece talking about policy implications of the study by one of its authors thats probably more geared towards those of us with shorter attention spans. A good very brief read.
The second is a recent study done specifically of recidivism in Philly's local prison system that shows the overcrowding comes from slower courts, longer pre-trial stays, an increase in the local Philly prison system being used to house the mentally ill, etc. The study "Reincarceration in the Philadelphia Prison System" by Paul Heroux had a good recent Daily News story about it.
Sorry to link and run but these two short articles, the short opinion piece about the US Mayors conference findings and the article on the Heroux study on Philly's local problem are a really good jumping off point. More substantive responses to the rest of your questions, Sam, later.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Sam, I agree with you
by and large, both in tone--how you identify the issues--and substance.
But I'd like to clarify a couple things quickly. A lot of the obstacles you point to are there, particularly the institutional ones (and that includes Lynn Abraham).
The right question to ask, as you do, is what plan is being developed, and whether it is sweeping enough to deal with the many valances of the problem. It could be Gillison, Pritchett, Nutter, any of them.
But I think that, while you are right that if you look at how our incarceration rate meshes with the big picture, there are lot of complicated questions...
...at the same time there are big pieces of the local problem that are not all that mystifying or complex.
1. People who can not afford bail should not be held in the city jail system. There is absolutely nothing aside from relative privilege (via access to a bondsman) that separates the people being held from those being released. They haven't been convicted. There is no public safety argument for separating them out and it is inconscionable that something hasn't been done about this yet.
And this is not an insignificant number of people. So that's one piece of Philly's problem.
2. While it's totally true that 'releasing prisoners' is a political minefield, and that the FOP and the DA are both not shy in going to the media when they see themselves being trampled on at all, a lot of those landmines would be avoided by forcing the various institutions into dialogue leading to a workable plan.
I have linked the Rudovsky/then-Acting Prison Commissioner Leon King interview on Radio Times like twelve times, and will again if anyone's interested. Listening to it you hear very clearly that there is just a giant circle of evasion of responsibility for the policy changes that have been clear and on the table (and to a certain extent, mandated by the federal court system) for a while. The prisons say that it must be the courts that change how things work, at the point of sentencing. Etc etc, on and on, circles and circles.
I personally think the DA (as she relates to the police department) is maybe the biggest piece of the puzzle. If you deliberately refine prosecution and arrest policies, you can avoid situations where people are in jail who "shouldn't" be. And I think when the arrests have never been made, or when a diversionary-type program (jobs, treatment) is used from the outset, you will circumvent the idea that we are putting "criminals" back in their homes.
These changes can happen locally. Mandatory minimums don't mean that the DA has to prosecute in the first place in every possession-type case.
3. I haven't addressed parole and reentry, they are huge topics of themselves. But there too, I think we are mostly only limited by our will and the depth of what we are up against in mending lives and communities struck by drug dealing and addiction, poor schools, and insufficient access to jobs. But sitting down and really looking at best practices: I don't think a lot stands in the way of that.
For good measure!
David Rudovsky and Prisons Commissioner Leon King talking about prison overcrowding after a historic ruling in a 30-odd-year litigation over conditions in the county prison system (in real audio format).
Good measure part 2
And here's an article from April of this year, re: the latest legal front in this mess.
Part 3
Here's a pdf link to last year's paper by the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, "City Budget Behind Bars: Increasing Prison Population Drives Rapidly Escalating Costs."
A huge piece is the interplay between the city and state in terms of both funding and who is housing which prisoners. This is due to the city's weird status as both city and county, I think. But someone with more depth of knowledge would be better to speak to the problem.
Here's hoping someone (hi, Seth!) shows up to drop that knowledge at some point.
Part 4
I am out of control.
Here's a link to the 2006 Temple study that was done for the City, "Confinement and the Justice Process in Philadelphia: Its Features and Implications for Planning." Appendixes are here and here. This document is really the necessary starting point for evaluating the problem and planning to ameliorate it.
Those links look great
And I am really going to check them out.
But some quick questions regarding policy:
When you say
What do other cities do with people who cannot afford bail? Is there a best practice that we can follow?
I mean, on a practical level, I imagine you probably can't have a policy of never holding people in the city jail system if they can't afford bail. It seems like there could be some cases when public safety might be at risk, such as with those who are accused of the most violent crimes.
But is the solution as simple as the DA's establishing a policy of not asking to jail those people who have been arrested but are not accused of violent crimes?
What's New York City's policy, I wonder? Surely some successful policies have been written about. Do you know of a good example of policy that has been proven to work somewhere?
I'm also curious about successful practices by other big city police departments. Do successful departments have written policies regarding what kind of arrests to pursue and what kinds to de-prioritize? Again, it seems like there would be literature on the topic.
Yeah, I wish I knew
specific best practices re: pre-trial detention, but that's brings us back to the simple part of this. The problem is clear, okay, now let's look at best practices. They are surely out there. I know that's what you said. It's not that hard.
I don't know about your point re: safety, though. I think the pre-trial incarcerees are the ones with whom I had heard in the past discussion about using electronic bracelets, etc. Again, there is surely some sort of solution for this group other than the economic and personal cost of locking them up.
But I just don't see the safety argument in distinguishing the two groups. With the same charges, someone who has $500 is free and someone who doesn't, isn't. If there is an immediate safety hazard, bail would typically not be granted in the first place. Certainly, bail ties the arrestee to the justice system and helps get them to court, so something will have to serve that function, but I don't see how a couple hundred dollars one way or another is the dividing line between the preservation of order and the lawless scoffing of the system.
A sad footnote to this is that I think this is exactly the type of situation that would be unconstitutional if the courts recognized some sort of protected interest in not being discriminated against based on one's economic class. That right doesn't exist, but this in my mind is exhibit one in the argument for some sort of legal protection; we are talking about freedom versus incarceration, for people who have not been convicted yet of any crime.
I don't know if I can but I'd like to clarify the bail thing
Because I think it is getting confused:
The issue is not whether we ask the courts to GRANT bail or not, in order to move people out of the jails and lessen the population.
I am talking only about people who have ALREADY BEEN GRANTED bail (that is, at a hearing a judge decided it would be fine if that defendent is out pending trial assuming they can post X amount of money), yet who can not afford the percentage required by the bondsman.
I think it maybe IS as simple as saying that with de minimus bail amounts (that is, categories of bail below those that are set extremely high for the PURPOSE of effectively keeping the person in jail or reallllly locked in until trial, with regards to certain categories of crime that are nonviolent), we deal with people who can't post bail and who we are currently locking up pending trial with some alternative monitoring system.
PS this is totally anecdotal but I rode in a police van once with a woman who was being held because she couldn't post the bail associated with charges stemming from her outstanding parking tickets. Granted, she owed the city a hell of a lot of money. But still.
You got it right as I read it
And as I usnderstand it those people - pre-trial, eligble for bail but unable to afford it are about 40% of the people the city of Philadelphia locks up currently - at the cost of $91 per person per day, as opposed to around $20-ish per person per day for electronic bracelets with day reporting.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Right, already you're suggesting guidelines
that sound reasonable--"with categories of bail below those that are set extremely high for the PURPOSE of effectively keeping the person in jail or reallllly locked in until trial, with regards to certain categories of crime that are nonviolent," you suggest
And that's not unlike when the PICA report, in its Suggestions section, says to
That sounds right. The report even touts a similar-sounding New York City success story:
From a political standpoint, the cost-lowering is good because most of the other programs PICA cites from California and Maricopa County (Phoenix) sound good too but involve upfront investments that might prove tricky to negotiate in an economically stagnant environment. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying: I think we should pursue reducing the prison population using lots of different methods, including those we need to pay for upfront. It's just that, as I said before, this is difficult area for politicians to sell to the general public.
Yep, right
I mean, there are entangled problems. But like you recognize the report(s) provide a wealth of insight as to productive starting points. There's a whole discussion that I don't want to reduce the complexity of regarding inefficiencies and backlog in the court system itself, some of that goes back to prosecution strategy, some of it to funding.
Re: funding one interesting way to look at/frame this is as another chapter in the city-state tug of war. This shouldn't all be to the city to cough up up front. The city has long been systematically screwed in this area, again, even against court order.
Sam, see argument builder's below
Also one part of empowering politicians to take on tricky subjects is getting the information out there - educating them and the public about the whole issue. Luckily with Gillison and Nutter there appears to be an interest in moving in right direction. I think part of what jennifer and I are both about here is to spur that dialog a little so that policy decisions are driven by rational planning not knee-jerk reaction to a crisis years in the making.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Check that. ATI is for the convicted.
But still sounds good. It also sounds like the way a program like that is implemented is by both creating (and funding) the thing and then legislating guidelines for judges.
One thing I will admit - on a humorous note
Far too often when you bring up this topic - people just glaze over what you are saying. Basically - very often - they assume you are talking about drug legalization and either a.) they conclude you are politically naive and stop listening at that point or b.) they are so anxious to agree with drug legalization that they won't shut up about it.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
On a similar note
I'll add that I agree with pretty much all that's been said above, particularly Jennifer's earlier assertion that the City a) has been screwed ridiculously by the State re: court costs and b) that framing discussion this way is a good strategy for getting local people to engage in these issues.
Personally, my favorite way of spurring discussion and good policy decisions is to 1) find a better policy that someone else is following and 2) to ask why we aren't following it.
I recognize that some problems we discuss are very, very specific to Philadelphia (like Harrisburg screwing us for their courts) and require unique local solutions (like seceding from the Commonwealth and merging with New Jersey, ha ha), but whenever it's possible I like when discussion can include both problems and solutions.
Luckily, when we bring up these issues (I think) Michael does not think that we're on drugs.
Other cities' practices
Tonight I'll try to get a hold of my dad, who worked for years at the Wayne County Jail in Detroit. Not that Detroit's government is or ever has been a model for anything, but if there's one thing they know, it's lots of people arrested with little to no ability to pay.
Another thing to look at would be historical practices. At least anecdotally, jail crowding and prisoner treatment improved markedly between the 70s and the 80s -- how did they solve that problem (admittedly with a different regime of drug/sentencing laws)?
Not to be all legally causal about it
But there was a pretty huge run of prisoners' rights/treatment suits in the 1970s.
And it wasn't just the drug/sentencing laws
that were different: it was a whole different legal regime regarding courts' receptivity to the legal strategies underlying those suits, all the way down to the absence of the currently-in-force Prison Litigation Reform Act.
Oh but I like the Detroit angle
even if I feel it's a little bit amusing, at their expense :(
Sort of the opposite of WWJD
WWKD - What Would Kwame (Kilpatrick) Do?
PS- I realize Detroit's problems long predate Kilpatrick but his recent legal problems are so ridiculously over the top, its like Monica jokes for late-night talk show hosts in the 90's -- hard to pass over.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Some of what they've done in Detroit
Detroit Offers Therapy, Not Jail
Although the big county project right now is -- you guessed it -- building a new jail (on top of the three they already have).
PS: I've lived in three cities in my life, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Chicago, despite its flaws, works so much better than Philadelphia; Detroit, despite its charms, so, so much worse.
Props to jennifer - more on the politics
Props to jennifer for jumping right into the political problem Sam raised and I avoided at first so as not to make a monster post. A couple of very brief thoughts.
Yes there are political costs/risks to talking about alternative approaches to just making those arrested "disappear" which to a certain extent is what at least some members of the public say they want. The problem as the PICA report points out - the cost of not doing anything is starting to seriously impact our ability to pay for anything else - especially programs that have been shown to actually work - like drug court mandated treatment programs, intervention for kids at the highest levels of risk, parole systems that are well-staffed and designed to stop prison from being a continuous revolving door.
The financial costs of housing so many are staggering. Just the cost of overtime in our local prison system should give a little political reward for officials willing to talk honestly about the problem we face. Some folks may have a hard time empathizing with those arrested - though its clearly unfair to have your ability to drum up collateral for bail be the determining factor of whether you rot in jail awaiting trial or not. I would however argue that even amongst the "lockem' up" crowd, the amount of their tax dollars wasted and the threat to the safety of people working in the prison system may "inspire" them to look at the issue a little more critically - if the issue is presented to them carefully.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_top_stories/19382799.html
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Another angle for the "lock 'em up" crowd
If we don't do anything and the courts take over the system due to unconstitutional overcrowding, the "tough on crime" crowd will probably not be happy with how it works out. Rather than getting ahead of the problem, cherry picking the non-violent offenders most eligible to benefit from day reporting and similar programs, etc. - under judicial supervision (as I understand it) basically it comes down to anybody with charges less than X just gets released bail or no. Basically as the problem gets worse, there comes a point where you get "dumb" automatic pre-trial release, as opposed to "smart" targeted pre-trial release with day-reporting.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Angle #3 (or 4, I've lost count)
Likewise, in advocating alternative treatment for nonviolent offenders, and alleviating overcrowding, you reduce the pressure to give parole or early release to violent offenders, career criminals, etc.
In general, I think the "officer safety" argument is underused and underappreciated, both with respect to jail/prison overcrowding and firearm restrictions. I favor restrictions on assault weapons, armor-piercing bullets, and the like in no small part because these weapons pose a particular danger to police in the line of duty.
Immigrant detention is the fastest growing sector
of the prison industry. A fascinating article in the New Yorker earlier this year detailed how immigrant detention has rapidly outstripped capacity. With efforts now in place to potentially detain people indefinitely (esp. if the host country refuses to accept the deportees back) there are more questions than ever about who we're detaining and why.
A couple of factors to note re: immigrant detention. First is the question of access to health care for immigrants. The Times last year detailed in a front page story how dozens of immigrants have died in U.S. custody due to horrific cases of denial of health care including cancer treatments and gangrene. Last summer three people alone died in U.S. custody with concerns about health care treatment.
Second, the New Yorker article above notes that in detaining immigrants, the government is also looking at detention of hundreds of children. In fact, just outside Philadelphia in Berks County is one of two prisons which houses children. The other prison in Texas, T. Don Hutto is the subject of the New Yorker piece and where offenses are so egregious that advocates have pressed to close down the facility. Although the Berks County facility is not as bad as Hutto, it is still a prison facility where people are deeply concerned about the welfare and education of the children there.
Finally, it's important to note that PA has York County prison, which is dramatically overcrowded, full of immigrant detainees (this is where dozens of Chinese immigrants from Golden Venture spent years waiting for their cases to be heard), and where the warden was quoted in the Times as saying that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency) makes it "difficulty if not impossible" to get quality medical care to immmigrants at York.
So it's not quite the criminal aspect of your post, Sean, but it just adds to the fact that the U.S. hostility toward immigrants is adding to the prison growth industry.
"Fear-based deportation" (CLE content!)
Its an interesting diversion
I heard a horrible radio story about Hatian-American author Edwidge Danticat's uncles death while in immigration detention.
The numbers in ICE detention are rising rapidly and there have been terrible problems, though as I understand it detetention facilities for immigration detention are federally operated (apparently quite poorly) with federal funding.
I'm focused on our local Philly prison system becasue 1.) its unconstitutionally overcrowded 2.) smarter policy is actually cheaper and could put millions back into youth prevention and adult reentry services - actually making us safer.
Local reforms as "good government" policy as it were.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
cool post
Thanks for highlighting these disturbing facts... I especially like the local Philly spin, too. I've enjoyed reading all the posts, so I wanted to briefly give my 2 cents on what I think is driving the overall, national proliferation, which was the topic of my bachelor's thesis a few years back, and I was very influenced by this excellent book from Christian Parenti, which was recently updated.
While in 1980, there were only 500,000 prisoners total in the U.S., that number has now exceeded 2 million. Many have explained this rise of the prison population by citing the growing economic incentive to expand the population by such lobbying forces as prison guard unions, companies that employ prison labor, prison construction contractors, and private prison corporations.
However, in his 1999 book Lockdown America, it is Christian Parenti’s assertion that while these interest groups do have an economic interest in the proliferation of the prison system, this alone cannot explain the dramatic escalation of the prison population. Instead, Parenti argues that prisons have become a way to control the superfluous population that has been created as a result of downsizing (wherein well-paying jobs are taking to the third world where state repression insures low wages) since the 1970s.
Parenti asserts that while social welfare programs can also help to control the politically dangerous classes, these programs help to empower the poor against their corporate masters. In contrast, the prison system serves to further the conquest of U.S. domestic colonies. While it costs infinitely more to jail someone than to offer social welfare programs (and may therefore seem inefficient) it is highly beneficial for ruling class control of poor people.
Not to be overly combative
But I might suggest that casting oneself as the subject of a plot to "reconquest the US domestic colonies" rather than a full citizen deserving of the full and equal protection of the law is probably the first step towards disempowering yourself and turning yourself into a subject of the "US domestic colonies". Strategies hinged on a monolithic corporate "them" versus "us" have not historically impressed me in terms of getting much accomplished in improving real people's actual lives - though they sure sound groovy when repeated loudly down at the coffee shop.
To be more fair - it is probably worthwhile to look at who profits most economically from the proliferation of people imprisoned in this country, where they invest their campaign contributions and how they take political advatange of your average politician's timidity at speaking honestly about our high incarceration rates.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Class Warfare is a Reality---esp with prisons
Well MrLuigi, I do find your tone mildly offensive, since I personally approached your post in a very positive way. But, maybe I'm misinterpreting you, so all I ask is to be given some respect as someone who is well-educated on these issues, and has put some thought into my remarks.
I do think there is a ruling class (ie the .5% of the country owning over 35% of the wealth) who creates policy to act in their interests. If you don't believe this, fine. But I think it is a legitimate analysis, and by the way I'm not a "marxist"--particularly because Marx himself scorned people who called themselves this and declared that he was himself certainly not a "marxist".
I like the "colonialism" language because it is a way to identify ruling class power, particularly how it relates to control of communities of color--and to do this without getting stuck on any particular ideological thread like "marxist", "post-structuralist," or whatever. To be fair to you, that phrase "colonialism" did get kinda thrown out there, and I did cut and paste a few paragraphs from a shortened version of my bachelor's thesis, and you can read this condensed essay here (take a look at it and lemme know what you think): http://hbjournalist.googlepages.com/n30
The context of the essay shows that I was talking about CIA complicity in the drug trafficking, why the "war on drugs" is a fraud, and how this relates to US foreign policy---so there was a context of colonies (or neo-colonies if you prefer) abroad.... And I was looking at how the rise in prisons is releated to "globalization" and controlling the excess unemployed/underemployed created by this.
Parenti in particular says this is the main reason that the population has increased so much since the 70s.... He thinks the many other lobbies and companies profiting from prisons also is very important but that the new globalization/downsizing trend is the major reason.
Whether or not Parenti is 100% right is up to folks to decide, but it is certainly a compelling argument.
Short answer
Short of a knock-down drag-out "liberlism" versus "revolution", "demand your rights" vs. "overthrow the system" argument - lets just put it this way. Can you see where if one's aims are specific and local - reducing the ammount money the City of Philadelphia wastes incarcerating the very poor when they could be better, more effectively treated/rehabilitated/"brought to justice/ whatever by alternative processes anyway - saving the cash strapped city boatloads of cash in the process, that setting up your discourse around class warfare might be counterproductive to say getting City Council to get on board with more limited concrete reform?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Strategic Activism is Key
Okay, Sean, I think I did misunderstand earlier.
I completely agree that when approaching city councils or general folks in the "political establishment", we totally need to choose our words, and approach in such a way as to maximize their support.
So, yes, I agree that we probably wouldn't want to use words like "colonialism," or even "capitalism." I would instead opt for a word like "poverty," which is what the anti-capitalist Martin Luther King did towards the end of his life when called for the "abolition of poverty".
My personal approach to anarchism is that working for reforms that can help improve the lives of the most oppressed are GREAT, but in the long term should only be seen as the first step towards real change. Furthermore, in line with the need to think strategically, we should, at least among ourselves, honestly look at the history, economics, and politics that shape this issues. The clearer analysis we have about our issue, the better we can strategize.
So, in the context of us educating ourselves about the issues and strategizing among ourselves to make actual political change, I think my argument about the big picture is important. And I think it is also practical because, as I argue in that longer essay, the prison issue can be linked to other issues/movements like anti-globalization/downsizing, racism, poverty, and more.... And this can make the movement stronger on a very concrete and practical level.
The big picture is important
When it comes to how to think about the history of incarceration and how to approach political/policy change in this area, that is where I agree with Sam's inital response that things are complicated.
History and the big picture matters because we need to know why things are the way they are, and what interests (both macro and micro) are shaping the current system.
But then there is the question of how to frame and reframe this as a political issue, which is not something that comes all that naturally to me, and which may require emphasizing and deemphasizing causal factors differently (for example, focusing on the unrecouped financial costs of the current system).
Anyway, the issues on the city level I think are both connected to and distinct from those that operate on a national level. We are lucky, as I've noted, to have detailed studies that isolate what it is about Philly's justice/prison system that fuels the incarceration rate and overcrowding.
But while I think there is some obvious truth to the connection between an underemployed 'underclass' and increasing incarceration rates, I don't know that that is a particuarly important causal factor in why people from cities are being locked up at the rate they are. To a large extent, isolated and impoverished urban neighborhoods achieve the same goal, without the need for the prison: a class of people who are no longer economically necessary are being cut off and kept out of the way and out of sight. And, awfully, literally killed off by drug addiction and guns. This is David Simon's dramatic comment about the world he depicted in the Wire (quoted to death, I know, but whatever):
Anyway, there is tons that is worth looking at and thinking about regarding the American prison system generally, but I feel like we can potentially cover a lot more positive ground looking at how a city like Philadelphia--with all the fiscal and other limitations--can both confront its specific institutional problems and also serve as testing ground for innovative policy, as with the welcome current focus on supporting reentry and reforming the parole system.