[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Millions in the Slammer

Fri Jan 25 06:57:56 MST 2008

We Must Reverse America's Zeal to Incarcerate

The US has the most prisoners and the highest jailing rate of any
country - the insanity must stop.

by Nomi Prins

The Women's International Perspective (December 30 2007)

The movie Atonement is a heart-breaking love-story, a historical WWII
saga. Without giving away the ending, which must be seen to be
adequately felt, it tells the tale of two lovers' lives irrevocably
changed by false testimony against one of them - for a crime he did not
commit. Thus, it's also a condemnation of unreliable witnesses, the
willingness of people to believe the worst, particularly of those in a
lower economic-class, and the havoc that a false accusation and
conviction can wreak upon human life. It's a film and message that every
judge, jury member, and prosecutor should see and consider before
convicting or sentencing anyone accused of a crime.

On December 10th, the United States Supreme Court voted 7-2 to recognize
a gross injustice with respect to sentencing guidelines which
disproportionately penalize those convicted of crack versus cocaine
related crimes. The disparity gives equal punishment to a person caught
with five grams of crack (a poor person's cocaine) and one caught with
500 grams of coke (a drug dealer's amount). In their validation of a
federal district judge's below-guideline sentence for a crack case, the
Supreme Court reconfirmed the 2005 Booker ruling that federal judges
could have more discretion in levying below-guideline sentences. They
did not rule on the validity of the guidelines themselves.

This decision should be viewed as the tip of an iceberg. American
prisons teem with non-violent prisoners. Our juries are caught between
wanting to rush home for the evening and wanting to appear law-abiding.
Members are too quick to bow to the loudest voice amongst them, and not
necessarily in The Twelve Angry Men direction. Meanwhile, false
convictions, due to witness error, prosecutorial misconduct, inferior
defense lawyers or coerced "snitching", continue to destroy multiple
generations of lives. They throw the idea of "equal protection under the
law" under the same bus as our Declaration of Independence mantra of
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

We've simply got to reverse this zeal to incarcerate. The United States
has more inmates and a higher incarceration rate than any other nation:
more than Russia, South Africa, Mexico, Iran, India, Australia, Brazil
and Canada combined. Nearly one in every 136 US residents is in jail or
prison. That's 2.2 million people, an amount that quadrupled from 1980
to 2005. (There were only 340,000 people incarcerated in 1972.) Adding
in figures for those on probation or parole, the number reaches 7.1 million.

Over the next five years, the American prison population is projected to
increase three times more quickly than our resident population. The
Federal Prison system is growing at four percent per year with 55% of
federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses, and only eleven
percent for violent crimes. Women are more likely than men (29% to 19%)
to serve drug sentences, dismantling thousands of families. One-third of
prisoners are first time, non-violent offenders. Three-quarters are
non-violent offenders with no history of violence. More than 200,000 are
factually innocent. Whether our citizens are wrongly incarcerated or
exaggeratedly so, our prison figures are shameful.

December 19th marked the five-year anniversary of the 2002 exoneration
of the five "perpetrators" who were originally caught, indicted, and
convicted in the infamous Central Park Jogger case. The five black and
Hispanic youths, ages fourteen to sixteen at the time of their
imprisonment, were exonerated only after they had spent between five and
13 1/2 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Their freedom
came late, even as it was conclusively confirmed by DNA testing results.
At the time of their arrests, they confessed to crimes after prolonged
interrogation by police.

The Innocence Project {1} counts 210 people, mostly minorities, who have
been exonerated post-conviction by conclusive DNA results (350 people
have been exonerated including non-DNA related exonerations). Fifteen of
them spent time on death row for crimes they did not commit. The average
age at the time of their convictions was 26 years old. The average time
served was twelve years. The total number of violent crimes that were
committed because the real perpetrators were free while the innocent
were imprisoned was 74.

Those total numbers may seem small, as those who favor a harsher penal
system would argue, but they only consist of the situations that have
been put through years of legal battles to conclude innocence. They
don't include cases where there is no money left for the wrongfully
convicted to fight for their freedom. They don't include the cases of
people who are so beaten down mentally or physically by their
imprisonment, they can't fight. They don't include the ones who don't
even know what steps to take.

Freedom is a basic human right destroyed by a felony conviction. And in
some states, so is the right to vote. Other casualties include the
ability to adopt children, find housing or have certain employment. The
stigma is permanent. Thus any mistake in a court-room, whether due to a
self-serving witness or an ambitious prosecutor, costs someone a part of
their life, severing them from the fabric of a justice system designed
to protect them. As Martin Luther King said from the Birmingham Jail in
1963, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are
caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment
of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Thus, there's more work to do. Providing judges more latitude to reverse
jury convictions in which there's no physical evidence, or there exists
the potential of fraudulent or self-incriminating testimony coerced
under hostile conditions or threats, would be another step in the
direction of justice. Reducing guidelines substantially would also help,
as would be alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders.
Without addressing these issues, our prisons will continue to burst
beyond the seams of their present 134% overcrowding rate, our prisons
systems will continue to get more funding than our schools, and we will
be a sadder nation for it.
_____

Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and
author of Other People's Money {2} and Jacked: How "Conservatives" are
Picking your Pocket (Whether you voted for them or not) {3}.

Links:

{1} http://www.innocenceproject.org/

{2} http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/1595580638

{3} http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976062186/

http://www.alternet.org/story/72031/

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