Drug Courts in Wisconsin Mostly for White People (84%)
/Even before Dane County Circuit Judge Sarah O'Brien crunched the numbers, she knew something was amiss. Her strongest evidence: "The courtroom didn't look right when I walked in."
O'Brien, who retired in 2012, was referring to the stark racial disparities in Dane County's drug court. The people in front of her — the ones who had gotten the chance to reduce or avoid criminal convictions in exchange for completing treatment and other programming — were overwhelmingly white.
In 2012, about one-third of those arrested for drug crimes in Dane County were black, according to the state Office of Justice Assistance. But African-Americans made up just 10 percent of those participating in the county's drug court that year, according to Journey Mental Health, a Madison nonprofit that provides treatment and case management for the program.
As recently as May, despite a concerted effort to increase minority participation, 84 percent of defendants in Dane County drug court were white and 14 percent were black.
African-American ministers blast Kobach photo ID law
/African-American church leaders blasted Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on Saturday for his remarks earlier this month tied to the photo identification requirement during the primary elections.
Standing on the steps of the St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church, 701 S.W. Topeka Blvd., ministers from at least five African-American churches in Topeka, Wichita and Great Bend expressed displeasure with the photo ID requirement they contend cut back on the number of minority voters casting ballots in the primary elections on Aug. 5.
"We stand here today to say that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has imposed one of the most stringent voter ID laws in the nation," said the Rev. Carieta Cain Grizzel, director of the Social Action Committee and pastor of Grant Chapel AME Church of Wichita.
Kobach "has caused 24,000 registered voters to be held in suspension that has not only insulted, dehumanized, humiliated and degraded a segment of people, but has denied life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to each and every person affected and has hit the very image of God in the face."
Kobach flatly stated the 24,000 figure was "not accurate." The state doesn't even know how many voters were unable to vote due to lack of photo ID at this time," Kobach said Saturday.
In the 2012 general election, 838 Kansas voters couldn't vote because they didn't produce photo ID, which was .007 percent of those voting in the election. That is less than one in 1,000 voters, Kobach said. The 838 were told they could vote if they returned with a photo ID and about 300 did so, he said.
A Kansas voter can obtain a free photo ID by going to a state Division of Motor Vehicles office to ask for a non-driver's license ID, Kobach said.
During a July 30 interview on WIBW 580 radio, Kobach was asked to respond to several ministers and other critics of the voter ID requirement.
"I don't know what churches — and I would put churches in quotation marks — because the vast majority of church leaders I've spoken to are fully in favor of our photo ID law," Kobach said.
On Saturday, the African-American ministers were asked how they interpreted Kobach's "churches in quotation marks" remark.
White "Super Fans" at Brighton High School Basketball Game Chant "We Want Slurpees" to Demean Indian American Student
/Video is circulating of an incident during a basketball game between Brighton and Pittsford Sutherland high schools Friday night.
A Brighton student who appears to be of Indian descent is standing at the free-throw line and the crowd chanted, "We want Slurpees." The reference is toward a stereotype of Indian-Americans owning 7-Eleven stores.
The superintendents of Brighton and Pittsford released a joint statement Monday:
"We were very disappointed to learn of this incident. We have been working with our colleagues in both districts throughout the weekend to address intolerant and unacceptable fan behavior. That work continues today. The students involved took full responsibility for their behavior, and attempts are being made to right this wrong between the students and to address the long- term learning that can arise from the disappointing behaviors of a few.
Kevin McGowan , Ed.D., Superintendent , Brighton Central Schools
Mike Pero, Superintendent, Pittsford Schools"
Racial Turbulence on Southwest Flight: The wife pointed at me and told her husband loudly, “I don’t want him sitting there.”
/And I appreciate that.
First leg of the flight was from Seattle to Chicago. No problem—I get off the plane for my 4-hour layover (no, seriously) and go get an all-beef dog at Chicago O’Hare.
The second leg of my flight. Ugh.
I have a backpack and a small duffle bag. I’m in the “C” Boarding Group (again), and so I know that I’m getting a middle seat. Guaranteed. Therefore, I wait to be one of the very last people boarding. When I get on, there’s a seat in the very first row—it’s a middle seat. I know I’m going to get screwed on the seating, so I figure “Why not sit get screwed in the front seat of the plane?” At least I can get off the plane first. There was a middle-aged white couple (“Sarah Jessica Parker”-type middle aged, where they tried to dress like they weren’t quickly approaching AARP-status. Not “Wilford Brimley” middle aged) there, the man in the aisle seat holding a baby and the woman in the window seat. They were being slick (like I do as well) and had a pile of stuff in the middle seat pretending that it was occupied and hoping nobody would sit there.
I know the game—I’m not mad.
I asked, “Excuse me, is somebody sitting there?”
The lady responded, “Yes, I’m waiting for a friend. She’s supposed to be boarding.
I was pretty sure she was lying. Now under normal circumstances, I would’ve just taken the seat—this is Southwest Airlines, for God’s sake—there’s no “saving seats.” Southwest Airlines is PURE social Darwinism. Every person for themselves!! But since I wasn’t getting a good seat anyway, and I’m at the very end of the boarding group, I’ll wait. No biggie—I’m getting screwed on the seat anyway.
So I decided that I’d just wait it out, “Ok cool. I’ll wait here to see if your friend gets on.”
Nobody. Literally, the LAST person boarding—another middle-aged white woman—gets on. The lady literally grabs her and asks her to sit there. I’ll call that lady “The Recruit.”
I smirk and tell her, “You don’t know that lady at all—ha! You lied. You realize how rude that is right?”
She responded, “That’s not rude.”
I said, “Ok, well I suppose that’s just you then.” And smiled at her.
The Recruit got up QUICKLY and strolled toward the back—evidently she had zero interest in this discussion and saw more fertile ground in the back of the plane. I put my bags up above and went to sit down. The husband (I’m assuming they were married—so sue me) scooted over to the middle seat, chivalrously. No problem. Well, no problem until there was a problem.
The wife pointed at me and told her husband loudly, “I don’t want him sitting there.”
I looked at her to make sure that I heard her correctly. She said, “Don’t look at me.”
Yeah, I was pretty sure I heard her correctly. Damn, I couldn’t believe that—adrenaline rushed through me. I told her, “Look, you have no input into where I sit or where I look.” I sat back and got my MP3 player ready to play some Marty Robbins. I know the drill—I’ve been trained since I was a kid. “You’re a big brown guy—don’t be too scary. Don’t be too big. Don’t be too brown.”
We’re taught these things for our own safety and to get along.
And I was cool—but before I pressed play on my Sony MP3 player the husband—all 5’5 and probably 125 pounds told me, “You need to shut your mouth!”
WHOA!!! For a woman to tell me something rude, that’s one thing. I’m not going to clobber a woman for a rude remark. But this guy—let’s be clear, he would never talk to me like that under any other circumstances. Ever. But he was feeling bold or threatened or insecure or something and turned what were simply words into possibly a really bad situation.
...until you see him as a human being.
I got really close to him and told him, “Look, you know this plane ride is going end at some point, right? You have to get off this plane.”
At that point he shut up. He realized that those words had a different significance to me and that he put himself in jeopardy. But the wife continued, “You can’t sit there.”
By this time, I’m really mad. Admittedly. Not at the lady, necessarily, but that this grown man would talk to another grown man like this and expect no response. “I’m not moving anyplace so if you don’t want to sit by me, I suggest you move.”
Just then, the Captain comes out. I’m elated. Yes! I don’t like feeling like I have to run tell anybody anything, but I also don’t want to get thrown into jail for stomping this dude into the luggage area below the plane. So I’m happy to see an objective person. But unfortunately, that’s not how it went down.
He comes out and looks at only me. “Is there a problem?”
I wanted to tell the whole story, but I really just wanted to get to New York. So I responded, “Well, this lady right here told me that she doesn’t want me sitting here for whatever reason and her husband tells me to shut my mo-…”
The Captain interrupts me. “Well, I only hear you.”
I tell him, “I understand—I have a loud voice, that’s why I’m telling you what happened. Ask any of the folks sitting here…” I pointed around to the people staring at us. He didn’t ask anybody anything. Instead, his focus was squarely on me.
CAPTAIN: “You need to lower your voice. Do you want to take the next flight?” Admittedly, I DO have a loud voice and I WAS agitated by this time. I think that was understandable.
ME: “No, I don’t want to—I’m telling you what happened.”
CAPTAIN: “Well I only hear you out here hollering.”
ME: “Well, I suggest that you have selective hearing.”
CAPTAIN: Staring me down. “Oh now you want to get in MY face?” I was a bit confused because that implied that I had gotten in someone else’s “face” already. Maybe he meant that I got in the husband’s face that told me that I need to shut my mouth? I wasn’t sure how that worked, but I started to answer his question. He cut me off and answered for me, “I suggest you quiet down before you take the next flight.”
I was stewing. But I knew I couldn’t take the next flight—that would not have been until the next morning and I would’ve missed my very important meeting. I don’t have a lot of very important meetings—I’m not a very important guy—so I didn’t want to be late to/miss one of the only ones that I’ve had. I would’ve been sitting in a federal holding cell and the middle-aged, white couple would be laughing to wherever they were going. When I went to go get my bag at baggage claim, a couple of the younger white guys sitting immediately behind me came up to tell me (one of them was from Hicksville, Long Island. I laughed when he first told me that—I thought he was joking): “That was bullshit. I told the captain afterwards that everything happened exactly like you said. She obviously didn’t like you. I thought the captain was going to ask us some questions.”
Made the meeting. Thankfully. Made a complaint on the Southwest Airlines website. They responded with an incredibly patronizing and condescending email that said that they were sorry for my “less than pleasant” experience on the plane (it wasn’t “less than pleasant”—it was humiliating). The email also stated, as a matter of fact, “As you know, our Pilot did not hear any other Passengers, which is why he only addressed his question to you.” (No, I have absolutely no reason to know that—I do know that he only addressed me). Also, the Captain flat-out lied and said that he asked me to lower my voice twice before asking if I wanted to take another flight—that’s just not true. Finally, the email said, in ABC After-School Special speak:
We realize that sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it, and we apologize that you feel as if our Pilot could have used a more patient and professional tone when intervening in the exchange between you and the Customers in question.
This is just insulting: as if my problem was with the Captain’s TONE. No, it was that he didn’t ask anybody else a single question before singling me out and asking me if I wanted to take another flight and then stood staring at me as if I were supposed to stand down from his authority (which I did, by the way, because I had to make the flight. I would’ve loved to have three minutes alone with that Captain in a small room).
Inmates killed by lethal injection used to get a dose of sodium thiopental. But that drug is no longer available, and, in a blow to transparency, prison officials in Missouri and elsewhere won't say how it has been replaced
/The sharpest battles over capital punishment today are being fought over the identity of the drugs officials seek to use in lethal injections, how those drugs are manufactured and obtained by executioners, and the obligations state officials have to share material information about the drugs with death-row inmates and the rest of the world. Late Friday, in a case out of Missouri, the Eighth U.S Circuit Court of Appeals rendered the most significant ruling yet to come out of these battles. The result is catastrophic for those who believe the means of capital punishment should generally be as transparent as its ends.
The Missouri case, and many others like it, all stem from the same development in 2011. Early that year, the manufacturers of sodium thiopental, the key ingredient in the lethal "cocktail" states were using, announced they would stop making the drug due to objections about its use for capital punishment. That prompted state officials to scramble for other drugs and to obtain those drugs in circumstances that raise substantial doubts about the efficacy of the drugs to be used. And that in turn prompted defense attorneys to press for information about exactly what chemicals state officials plan to use to kill their clients.
And that, in turn, has caused state officials to begin to hide, in a way they never have before, the manner in which they are obtaining lethal injection drugs, the identities of the "compounding pharmacies" that are supplying the drugs, and even precisely what is in the drugs officials want to use. Last year in Georgia, for example, state lawmakers, at the request of corrections officials, passed a law that keeps this information secret even from the state's own judiciary. In Texas, meanwhile, state officials announced a few months ago that they would not return to a compounding pharmacy the lethal drugs it had obtained there.
The issue is not just a semantic one. No execution can be entirely painless, but the Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment, and there now are questions about whether these new injection cocktails cause impermissible suffering on the part of the condemned. In Ohio earlier this month, for example, one of these new cocktails was used on a man named Dennis McGuire, who, according to a journalist who witnessed the execution, "struggled, made guttural noises, gasped for air and choked for about 10 minutes before succumbing to a new, two-drug execution method."
Missouri Breaks
When domestic stores of sodium thiopental started dissipating, the first move Missouri made was to declare that propofol—the same drug that killed Michael Jackson—would be used to execute inmates there. But objections to the use of that drug in executions were even more pronounced than the objections had been to the use of sodium thiopental. The European Union threatened to "forbid or restrict the exportation" of the propofol to the United States (where it is used as an anesthetic in common operations). Last October, Missouri backed down—and backed away from its plans to use propofol.
Plan B, Missouri decided, was to use "an injection of five to 10 grams of pentobarbital" for its executions and to rely upon a compounding pharmacy to provide the drug. Compounding pharmacies are perhaps best known through the years for their ability to skirt federal and state regulations, so much so that President Obama last year signed into federal law a measure designed to properly regulate them. Not only did Missouri plan to use an untested drug on its death-row inmates, then, but to use one manufactured in circumstances that precluded anyone other than state officials to evaluate the drug's quality.
South Carolina Is Still Defending Its Neglectful Prisons
/Over the objections of the state's best editorial writers and some of its leading legislators, South Carolina has chosen to fight a recent court order declaring its prisons to be unconscionable (and unconstitutional) dens of abuse and neglect for mentally ill inmates housed there. Lawyers for the state filed a motion Tuesday with Judge Michael Baxley, the link to which can be found here, asking him to "alter or amend" his January 8th order in which he found that...
… inmates have died in the South Carolina Department of Corrections for lack of basic mental health care, an hundreds more remain substantially at risk for serious physical injury, mental decompensation, and profound, permanent mental illness.
The motion will be denied, as it should be, and then the legal dispute over the treatment of the inmates will move to the state's appellate courts. The process will take years. It will cost a great deal. And so long as state officials are litigating the matter, and proclaiming themselves aggrieved by the rule of law, there is little reason to think that the wretched lives of the inmates will be rendered any safer. They will instead remain citizens with grand rights but no remedies.
The state's motion is remarkable for the assertions it makes that directly contradict the evidence in the case -- and also generally accepted notions of our rule of law. So, for example, after a contested trial in which mountains of evidence of systemic abuse and neglect were proven, including evidence established by the state's own doctors and investigators going back over a decade, the state's lawyers offered this nugget:
Even if the Plaintiffs have presented some evidence of systemic constitutional violations, which the Defendants deny, the extensive remedies ordered by the Court are far in excess of what might be necessary to remedy any alleged violation [emphasis added].
And even though the evidence before Judge Baxley amply established that the state's policies and practices toward mentally ill inmates had caused the death of some of those inmates, and terrible physical and emotional harm to others, state lawyers told the judge that he had erred in ruling against South Carolina because "only extreme deprivations are adequate to satisfy the objective component of an Eighth Amendment claim." Ponder for a moment what would constitute "extreme deprivation" in South Carolina if death doesn't do the trick. (To briefly summarize some of the points I listed in a previous piece, the state's mentally ill inmates were routinely placed naked in small spaces for hours at a time, or left for days sitting in their own feces and urine.)
Court: Disgraced White ex-journalist can't practice law
/The California Supreme Court has denied a law license to a former journalist who was caught fabricating stories for major national magazines. The court ruled Monday that Stephen Glass cannot practice law in California because evidence he offered as proof of redemption and rehabilitation fell short. Glass has acknowledged making up all or parts of 42 magazine articles published in the New Republic, Rolling Stone and elsewhere in the 1990s when he was in his mid-20s and a rising literary star.
the myth of police as "law enforcement": British Police ordered to stop and search 15 a month - or face disciplinary action
/Officers in Britain's biggest police force face disciplinary action unless they stop and search at least 15 people a month, it has been claimed.
The Met also orders officers to arrest eight people a month, which has raised fears some officers may let other "things go" in pursuit of hitting their targets.
Yesterday one police source said: "If the public knew the police service had to arrest by numbers rather than crimes there would be a national outcry."
Stop and search is one of the most controversial powers in policing, with people from a black or minority ethnic background seven times more likely to be stopped than white people.
Britain's top cop, Bernard Hogan-Howe, recently claimed stop and search was only used where officers have "intelligence".
But our insider provided evidence that indicated Met officers are being told they have to use the power at least 15 times a month or face disciplinary action.
He said that officers were told to stop and search people at incidents they were called to to keep up their numbers.
The source added: "Targets are set and expected to be obtained with the threat of management action should you not achieve them. The main one is stopand search."
Traffic cops have been told they have to arrest eight drink drivers a year and issue 180 fixed penalty notices for speeding or using mobile phones while driving.
One officer failing to reach his targets was told that every shift he had to "take a laser out and spend at least one hour on this task during the day".
Another source said: "People are discouraged to deal with anything other than offences that count towards our targets."
In one example a PC investigated an allegation of "using a kettle without permis-sion" in a flat with a communal kitchen so it could be counted as a "clear up". But a team of burglars were allowed "free reign" for two years as no borough wanted to link the crimes, the source claimed.
The Sunday Mirror has seen dozens of documents that confirm the targets but Scotland Yard last night denied forcing officers to arrest or stop and searcha minimum number of people.
White N.Y. mayor at closed AIPAC gala: Part of my job is to defend Israel
/-Mayor Bill de Blasio says 'there is no greater ally on earth' than Israel, in speech to Israel lobby that did not appear on public schedule 25 Jan 2014 New York Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a heartfelt speech praising Israel at a private gala event hosted by AIPAC at the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan Thursday night, the local website Capital New York reported. According to an edited audio recording obtained by the site, de Blasio said that "part of his job description is to defend Israel" and that it is "elemental to being an American, because there is no greater ally on earth, and that's something we can say proudly."
Protesters call for independent investigation of Jan. 18 police shooting of 16-year-old Joshua Alvarez
/On the afternoon of Jan. 20, about 50 protesters gathered and marched in front of the Highland Police station in order to call for independent investigation and legal action in the case of the officer involved shooting Saturday night, Jan 18, when 16-year-old Joshua Alvarez, armed with a hammer and a sharp object, was shot by a San Bernardino County Sheriff's officer responding to a domestic disturbance call.
According to a Sheriff's Department report deputies from the Highland Police department responded to the 7400 block of Rogers Lane, in Highland, following the report of a domestic disturbance. The reporting party stated that a family member was armed with a weapon and the caller was in fear for their safety. When deputies arrived at the residence, the suspect was walking away from the location. As deputies attempted to make contact with the suspect, he turned toward the deputies; armed with a hammer and a sharp instrument. The suspect attempted to attack a deputy; causing the deputy to fire his duty weapon, striking the suspect.
According to members of Alvarez' family he received emergency surgery for damage to his liver and kidney, and he remains in critical condition.
On Sunday night a candlelight vigil was held followed by Monday's protest organized by the Inland Empire Rapid Response Network. The protesters at the police station, closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, included some of Alvarez' family members (aunts and cousins) and several community action groups dealing with immigration issues.
Joshua Alvarez' aunt and Rapid Response member Alva Alvarez spoke for the family.
The protesters were calling for an independent investigation, prosecution of those responsible and restitution to the family, the institution of a policy against the use of lethal force by police when there is no imminent threat, the repaired use of camera's in officers' lapel and the creation of in independent county commission to investigate incidents of police brutality.
The protestors were signing a petition with these demands to be given to the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department.
University of Michigan promises to 'take action' and improve racial diversity on the Ann Arbor campus
/University of Michigan is promising a renewed focus on diversity.
Black enrollment at the Ann Arbor college has dropped by a third in the past seven years and, last month, hundreds of black students took to twitter and rallied against feeling marginalized and alone on campus. Events on campus in the fall, including a planned fraternity party with racist undertones, intensified those feelings.
The Being Black at Michigan hashtag, #BBUM, was the most trending topic on social media for a time in December. The message from students was clear: They want more diversity and inclusion on campus.
"I was chastened by the comments from the students," U-M President Mary Sue Coleman said in a recent editorial board interview "Our numbers are not where we'd like them to be."
Last week U-M Provost Martha Pollack acknowledged the need to reassess how U-M promotes diversity.
At MLK breakfast, St. Cloud mayor apologizes for City’s past of racial discrimination
/St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis apologized Monday for the city’s past of racial discrimination at an event honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The event promoted education and highlighted how far the community has come. Kleis said the city celebrates past accomplishments and must also take responsibility and apologize for past failures.
Hundreds attended the event at St. Cloud State University to discuss how the community needs to work together to ensure equality for all residents. Speakers also addressed improvements in St. Cloud and said the derisive term “White Cloud” no longer applies.
On the Opinion page in the Sunday St. Cloud Times, St. Cloud State University professor and author Christopher Lehman, who has done research on slavery in St. Cloud, called on the city to officially apologize for permitting slavery and segregation.
After Monday’s event, Lehman said he heard the apology and appreciates that Kleis made it. Lehman said it was a “bold and progressive gesture” and an important step in the city coming to terms with its history.
New Speech Found - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1962 Speech in NYC
/From [HERE] The New York State Museum has unearthed a long-lost audio recording of a 1962 speech from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., state officials announced Monday.
An intern found the recording as museum staff worked on digitizing thousands of audio and video recordings in its collection, has been posted to the museum's website.
Is the United States a ‘Racial Democracy’? [the white over Black system requires the greater confinement of Blacks]
/Plato’s “Republic” is the wellspring from which all subsequent Western philosophy flows, and political philosophy is no exception. According to Plato, liberty is democracy’s greatest good; it is that which “in a democratic city you will hear … is the most precious of all possessions.” Subsequently, two notions of liberty emerged in the writings of democratic political philosophers. The dispute about which of these two notions of liberty is most central to human dignity is at the heart of Western philosophy. Both are central to American democracy. Indeed, it is best to think of these as two different aspects of the conception of liberty at the heart of American democracy, rather than distinct concepts.
The standard source of the distinction between two senses of “liberty” is a speech in 1819 by the great political theorist Benjamin Constant. The first, “the liberty of the ancients,” consists in having a voice into the policies and representatives that govern us. The second, “the liberty of the moderns,” is the right to pursue our private interests free from state oversight or control. Though the liberty of moderns is more familiar to Americans, it is in fact the liberty of the ancients that provides the fundamental justification for the central political ideals of the American Democratic tradition. For example, we have the freedom of speech so that we can express our interests and political views in deliberations about policies and choice of representatives.
Given the centrality of liberty to democracy, one way to assess the democratic health of a state is by the fairness of the laws governing its removal. The fairness of a system of justice is measured by the degree to which its laws are fairly and consistently applied across all citizens. In a fair system, a group is singled out for punishment only insofar as its propensity for unjustified violations of the laws demands. What we call a racial democracy is one that unfairly applies the laws governing the removal of liberty primarily to citizens of one race, thereby singling out its members as especially unworthy of liberty, the coin of human dignity.
There is a vast chasm between democratic political ideals and a state that is a racial democracy. The philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that when political ideals diverge so widely from reality, the ideals themselves may prevent us from seeing the gap. Officially, the laws in the United States that govern when citizens can be sent to prison or questioned by the police are colorblind. But when the official story differs greatly from the reality of practice, the official story becomes a kind of mask that prevents us from perceiving it. And it seems clear that the practical reality of the criminal justice system in the United States is far from colorblind. The evidence suggests that the criminal justice system applies in a radically unbalanced way, placing disproportionate attention on our fellow black citizens. The United States has a legacy of enslavement followed by forced servitude of its black population. The threat that the political ideals of our country veil an underlying reality of racial democracy is therefore particularly disturbing.
Starting in the 1970s, the United States has witnessed a drastic increase in the rate of black imprisonment, both absolutely and relative to whites. Just from 1980 to 2006, the black rate of incarceration (jail and prison) increased four times as much as the increase in the white rate. The increase in black prison admissions from 1960 to 1997 is 517 percent. In 1968, 15 percent of black adult males had been convicted of a felony and 7 percent had been to prison; by 2004, the numbers had risen to 33 percent and 17 percent, respectively.
About 9 percent of the world’s prison population is black American (combining these two studies). If the system of justice in the United States were fair, and if the 38 million black Americans were as prone to crime as the average ethnic group in the world (where an ethnic group is, for example, the 61 million Italians, or the 45 million Hindu Gujarati), you would expect that black Americans would also be about 9 percent of the 2013 estimated world population of 7.135 billion people. There would then be well over 600 million black Americans in the world. If you think that black Americans are like anybody else, then the nation of black America should be the third largest nation on earth, twice as large as the United States. You can of course still think, in the face of these facts, that the United States prison laws are fairly applied and colorblind. But if you do, you almost certainly must accept that black Americans are among the most dangerous groups in the multithousand year history of human civilization.
The Columbia professor Herbert Schneider told the following story about John Dewey. One day, in an ethics course, Dewey was trying to develop a theme about the criteria by which you should judge a culture. After having some trouble saying what he was trying to say, he stopped, looked out the window, paused for a long time and then said, “What I mean to say is that the best way to judge a culture is to see what kind of people are in the jails.” Suppose you were a citizen of another country, looking from the outside at the composition of the United States prison population. Would you think that the formerly enslaved population of the United States was one of the most dangerous groups in history? Or would you rather suspect that tendrils of past mind-sets still remain?
Our view is that the system that has emerged in the United States over the past few decades is a racial democracy. It is widely thought that the civil rights movement in the 1960s at last realized the remarkable political ideals of the United States Constitution. If political ideals have the tendency to mask the reality of their violation, it will be especially difficult for our fellow American citizens to acknowledge that we are correct. More argument is required, which we supply in making the case for the following two claims.
First, encountering the police or the courts causes people to lose their status as participants in the political process, either officially, by incarceration and its consequences, or unofficially, via the strong correlation that exists between such encounters and withdrawal from political life. Secondly, blacks are unfairly and disproportionately the targets of the police and the courts. We briefly summarize part of the case for these claims here; they are substantiated at length elsewhere.
In the United States, 5.85 million people cannot vote because they are in prison or jail, currently under supervision (probation, for example), or live in one of the two states, Virginia and Kentucky, with lifetime bans on voting for those with felony convictions (nonviolent first time drug offenders are no longer disenfranchised for life in the former). Yet the effects also extend to the large and growing ranks of the nation’s citizens who experience involuntary contact with police regardless of whether their right to vote is formally eliminated.
As one of us has helped document in a forthcoming book, punishment and surveillance by itself causes people to withdraw from political participation — acts of engagement like voting or political activism. In fact, the effect on political participation of having been in jail or prison dwarfs other known factors affecting political participation, such as the impact of having a college-educated parent, being in the military or being in poverty.
In a large survey of mostly marginal men in American cities, the probability of voting declined by 8 percent for those who had been stopped and questioned by the police; by 16 percent for those who had experienced arrest; by 18 percent for those with a conviction; by 22 percent for those serving time in jail or prison; and, if this prison sentence was a year or more in duration, the probability of voting declined by an overwhelming 26 percent, even after accounting for race, socioeconomic position, self-reported engagement in criminal behavior and other factors. Citizens who have been subject to prison, jail or merely police surveillance not only withdrew but actively avoided dealings with government, preferring instead to “stay below the radar.” As subjects, they learned that government was something to be avoided, not participated in. Fearful avoidance is not the mark of a democratic citizen.
“Man is by nature a political animal,” declares Aristotle in the first book of his “Politics.” “Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech … the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and the inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust.” Aristotle here means that humans fully realize their nature in political participation, in the form of discussions and decision making with their fellow citizens about the affairs of state. To be barred from political participation is, for Aristotle, the most grievous possible affront to human dignity.
In the United States, blacks are by far the most likely to experience punishment and surveillance and thus are most likely to be prevented from realizing human dignity. One in 9 young black American men experienced the historic 2008 election from their prison and jail cells; 13 percent of black adult men could not cast a vote in the election because of a felony conviction. And among blacks lacking a high school degree, only one-fifth voted in that election because of incarceration, according to research conducted by Becky Pettit, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington. We do not know how many others did not get involved because they were trying to keep a low profile where matters of government are concerned.
If the American criminal justice system were colorblind, we would expect a tight link between committing crime and encountering the police. Yet most people stopped by police are not arrested, and most of those who are arrested are not found guilty; of those who are convicted, felons are the smallest group; and of those, many are nonserious offenders. Thus a large proportion of those who involuntarily encounter criminal justice — indeed, the majority of this group — have never been found guilty of a serious crime (or any crime) in a court of law. An involuntary encounter with the police by itself leads to withdrawal from political participation. If one group has an unjustifiably large rate of involuntary encounters, that group can be fairly regarded as being targeted for removal from the political process.
Evidence suggests that minorities experience contact with the police at rates that far outstrip their share of crime. One study found that the probability that a black male 18 or 19 years of age will be stopped by police in New York City at least once during 2006 is 92 percent. The probability for a Latino male of the same age group is 50 percent. For a young white man, it is 20 percent. In 90 percent of the stops of young minorities in 2011, there wasn’t evidence of wrongdoing, and no arrest or citation occurred. In over half of the stops of minorities, the reason given for the stop was that the person made “furtive movements.” In 60 percent of the stops, an additional reason listed for the stop was that the person was in a “high crime area.”
Blacks are not necessarily having these encounters at greater rates than their white counterparts because they are more criminal. National surveys show that, with the exception of crack cocaine, blacks consistently report using drugs at lower levels than whites. Some studies also suggest that blacks are engaged in drug trafficking at lower levels. Yet once we account for their share of the population, blacks are 10 times as likely to spend time in prison for offenses related to drugs.
Fairness would also lead to the expectation that once arrested, blacks would be equally likely to be convicted and sentenced as whites. But again, the evidence shows that black incarceration is out of step with black offending. Most of the large racial differences in sentencing for drugs and assault remain unexplained even once we take into account the black arrest rates for those crimes.
The founding political ideals of our country are, as ideals, some of the most admirable in history. They set a high moral standard, one that in the past we have failed even to approximate. We must not let their majestic glow blind us to the possibility that now is not so different from then. The gap between American ideals and American reality may remain just as cavernous as our nation’s troubled history suggests.
