Thursday, July 9, 2009

By Any Other Name...

¡Hola! Everybody...
Sometimes I look around and I’m stunned at what 30 years of neoconservativism has done to our society... Someone suggested I might need a vacation. LOL You can find my response to that at the end of this post.

This one is hard to articulate and I have to be somewhere...

* * *

-=[ From the Plantation to the Rock ]=-

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky


As a nation we imprison more people than any other in the world. China, Russia, and oppressive regimes all over the world pale in comparison. The vast majority of those languishing in prisons are young men of color. One of the consequences of this historically unprecedented mass incarceration movement is that millions of people of color have become disenfranchised -- they have lost forever their right to vote. An added consequence of this over-reliance on incarceration has been that we have created a class of individuals that are, for all intents, three-fifths human...

Our national response to education, poverty, addiction, inequality, and other social ills can be summed up in one word: incarceration. I will pass a Brooklyn block later today. On that block stands an elementary school in disrepair filled with demoralized educators and bright, hopeful children of color. The state of New York spends upwards of a million dollars to incarcerate young men and women who come from that block -- sent to upstate exclusively white communities where the sole employer is often the state department of corrections.

One one level, incarceration in New York is a demented jobs creation program for rural whites.

The city of New York, loathe to spend money on education in the inner city, will spend about $70,000 annually to incarcerate a minor child. About 90% of these children are children of color.

In fact, the vast majority of those incarcerated are young people of color. A conservative response, often offered by bigots and their black and brown enablers, is that black and brown people are more criminally inclined.

Of course, this sentiment has no relationship to reality, but it doesn’t stop the onslaught. The fact of the matter is that studies show race is the determining factor in who goes to prison. Everything else being equal -- criminal history and nature of crime -- a black person is five times more likely to be sentenced than his white peer. Additionally, enforcement is applied differently to different communities. The neighborhoods of the middle to upper class, where there is more drug usage, are not subjected to the same policing strategies as in poorer sections. I doubt we would lead the world in incarceration if the majority of those incarcerated were the white children of well-to-do and politically influential parents.

The fastest growing segment of the prison population has been women. Again, the majority of those being incarcerated are women of color. Accompanying this rise are new more puntive laws meant to take away the parental rights of women. So, along with a new generation of imprisoned women, there are the children of these women, who become wards of the state -- little more than a de facto prison for kids. Children -- mostly children of color.

Some of you know I was involved in a women’s prison on Rikers Island -- the Rock, or the Island, as it is called by those who live there. Rikers Island is the largest penal colony in the world. It is also the largest mental health facility in the world. Well, officially it’s not meant to be a mental facility, but that’s where we send those afflicted with mental illness.

My relationship with Rikers Island involved bringing a cognitive/ behavioral life-skills workshop into the women’s facility. That’s where I first heard of the practice of shackling incarcerated women while in labor. I first heard about this (oddly enough) from a female corrections officer. Several of the women at Rikers mentioned it on the grounds I wouldn’t disclose their identities. At first I couldn’t believe this was possible. A part of me refused to believe we have stooped so low. It was reprehensible to me. I couldn’t even entertain the image of a caged black woman giving birth to a child while shackled to a bed.

But it was and is true. This form of torture is allowed in these United States and there are some reading this that gladly endorse this behavior. I met a young lady who claimed she had been shackled while giving birth. She was a beautiful African American girl maybe 19-20 years-old, but she looked like 16. She became pregnant while incarcerated. As she recounted her story, of having to give birth to a beautiful Black child while shackled to a bed, I became so angry, tears welled in my eyes. She made me promise I wouldn’t say anything because she was scared...

Can you imagine this? Can you begin to imagine the psychological trauma? Or perhaps you think this child deserves whatever she has coming to her... Is this the society you want?

If so, then we have become animals.

Today, I’m joining with a coalition of many different groups to bring light to this issue and to pressure our governor to sign an anti-shackling bill recently past by both house of the state.

Evil doesn’t rest...

Eddie

10 comments:

  1. Excellent blog! I couldn't have written it as well as you have. This practice is barbaric, but as you point out, it is part of a larger, more sinister phenomenon.

    One that needs to be addressed on a national level.

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  2. Eddie, I can't imagine any woman shackled to a bed, giving birth. The idea is monstrous.

    I'm going to link to this -- hope you don't mind.

    --Will

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  3. Thank you for helping to bring light to this situation. As you pointed out in the beginning of your writing, our welfare-judicial-mental health-the list goes on---systems have become self-perpetuating to the detriment of humanity.

    Keep shining the light!!

    I came via a link on Astra Navigo's site.

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  4. I came via a link on Astra's site too.
    And it's beyond horrific, in a society which claims to be civilized and criticizes other nations for their standards!

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  5. I came here via Astra as well. It's beyond belief that people even think this is acceptable. Horrific! And deeply uncivilized ...

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  6. First of all, that Dostoyevsky quote you opened with is utter genuis. And complete and absolute truth.

    I've known many people who have been and are incarcerated. In fact, I have one brother in prison and another who just got out. If you remember, blogged about this when I first got started and you commented on it.

    But of the two, one of them just acts crazy, but the other is burdened by serious mental illness. I'm not sure if he really should be in jail. I am sure that he needs treatment. I would go so far to say that many of those incarcerated are struggling with mental illness. And incarceration does nothing more than worsen these mental illnesses. But perhaps it's easier to incarcerate them rather than treat them.

    Of all the posts I've read since I have been blogging, this is perhaps the most profound. Excellent job, and I hope your call for action does not go unanswered.

    Coincidently, just as I was finishing this comment, I got a letter from my brother. And as usual, I will not open it right away. As usual, when I receive such letters, my level of anxiety rises. He might be incarcerated, but every so often when I receive a letter or a phone call from him, I feel as though I am incarcerated as well.

    Peace,
    Max

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  7. Came here from Will's page. Thanks for sharing your story of the horrid practice of shackling a woman to a bed while she gives birth. And we call ourselves a civilized country? ZeeZee Writer.

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  8. Thanks everyone for reading the post and the responses. I think that no matter where you fall on the political spectrum, this practice has to be despised.

    I'm glad to say we had a great turnout today at the governors office, and there was a group of women -- women who had suffered through this atrocity -- who spoke out against this travsty of justice.

    I'll keep you all informed how things move along. Hopefully, this form of torture will not be allowed in the state of NY (or nay other state).

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  9. There seems to be no doubt that people of color are in fact more inclined to criminal activity than are whites. Your own statistics prove that.

    The question then becomes, what was the crime exactly?

    My first inclination would be to suspect that not being white is a crime that never makes the court records, the punishment for which is met out at the will of the court. Perhaps there's a pony in that room...

    I think the most effective way to address this problem *as a society* is to start eliminating 'spitting on the sidewalk'' laws that are used by local jurisdictions to excuse prejudice. I'll give you an example: open container laws-- laws that prohibit possession of an open container of alcohol in a pubic place.

    These laws are meant to reduce the requirement of probable cause for search without warrant. A person observed holding an open beer can is immediately subject to search and any sign of resistance will be immediately charged as interference with an officer, where the definition of resistance is at the sole interpretation of the officer.

    This is a law nobody needs. Any jurisdiction with an open container law also has a drunk and disorderly law that can be used in the event that a citizen is in fact creating a public nuisance. Unfortunately that law carries with it some burden of proof on the arresting officer prior to search and arrest while an open container law does not.

    So we end up with a lot of Hispanic folks in jail for having a beer on the beach and getting pissed off for being harassed by a cop while they were trying to make sure the barbecued chicken didn't burn. Later we spend millions keeping those same people in prison because they lost their job, couldn't pay the court costs for a defense and ended up stealing cars to feed their families.

    There are literally thousands of laws like this on the books that make it very easy to arrest just about anyone and put them in prison for a long long time. What the 'white' world needs to understand is that these laws and more importantly *enforcement policies* could be turned on them at any time.

    How do we fight this? By getting rid of the spitting laws as fast as we can. As long as you can be legally stopped and searched for walking your dog in the park off leash, you are a potential victim. We need desperately to pull the teeth of our own law enforcement system. Or we can simply build a big cyclone fence around the entire country, take away all privately owned weapons, and feed everyone through a slot in their front door.

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  10. "There seems to be no doubt that people of color are in fact more inclined to criminal activity than are whites. Your own statistics prove that."

    Actually, my own numbers (what little I gave) do on4e of the sort.

    There is no causal relation between the enormously disproportionate black INCARCERATION RATES and the genteic or cultiural disposition of blacks.

    What you SHOULD have noted is that once everything is controlled for, RACE is one of the the predominant factors on who gets to go to prison. As I stated, blacks are FIVE TIMES more likely to be SENTENCED than their white peers -- EVERYTHING ELSE BEING EQUAL.

    You do bring up some valid points vis a vis the steady erosion of individual rights, but this has occured under a very conservative SCOTUS and, ironically enough, has been the response of conservative policy makers who, like you, state flat out that blacks are more criminally disposed than other races. It's called the "broken windows theory" and has been largely applauded byt the MSM and people who agree with your view.

    In any case, I would say that we should investigate these practices and start action suits against police departments across the country, but I doubt that many cons, libertarian or otherwise, would be down with that.

    Also, there are qualitative concerns you don't mention. For example, how do you outlaw "driving while black"? Or being followed by security in department stores, or being unable to hail a a cab at night.

    No...

    the issue goes much deeper than your supposed "reforms" as well-intentioned as they seem. the root of the problem is systemic racism and a national mindset that finds it tolerable to spend more than $70k to incarcerate a black child than to spend a fraction of that sum to educate it.

    ReplyDelete

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