Month: March 2013

The Conservative Case Against More Prisons

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vgm8383 / FlickrBy Alan Bean

Vikrant Reddy and Marc Levin are unimpressed by arguments that associate high rates of American incarceration with white racism.  In fact, race hardly figures in their argument.  Liberals may not have created the high rates of violence that sparked a turn to punitive policies, they say, but liberals didn’t lift a finger to stop the killing.

Reddy and Levin aren’t even convinced that the shift to mass incarceration was a bad idea back in the day.  But with crime rates plunging nationwide, they ask, does it make sense to keep pumping billions of dollars into prisons that aren’t making us safer?

The authors attribute about a quarter of the drop in crime to high rates of incarceration, and I suspect they have it about right.  But that means 75% of the drop in crime has nothing to do with high rates of incarceration.  Let’s lock up the violent criminals, they say, but find less expensive ways of dealing with non-violent offenders that involve less tax money and less government.  To their credit, they realize that everybody suffers when felons who have served their time can’t find decent jobs. (more…)

Probing the subtleties of white racial bias

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By Alan Bean

I came across two columns this morning making the case that white people can be riddled with racial bias without feeling any particular ill will toward racial minorities.

In a guest column in the New York Times, Ta-Nehisi Coates uses a grotesque incident of racial profiling involving academy award-winning actor Forest Whitaker as his jumping off point.  The deli employee who accused Whitaker of shop lifting, and frisked him on the spot, claims to be a “good person” without a single racist bone in his body.  Coates doesn’t argue with this self-assessment, but disputes the assumption that racism necessarily involves a conscious dislike of a particular racial group.

In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist. In 1957, neighbors in Levittown, Pa., uniting under the flag of segregation, wrote: “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.” (more…)

With Immigration Reform Looming, Private Prisons Lobby Work to Keep Migrants Behind Bars

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Laura Carlsen

By Alan Bean

In this HuffPost piece, Laura Carlsen lays bare the idiot greed driving American immigration policy.  You will notice that most members of the eight-person bi-partisan team pushing the reform agenda in Congress (including all the Democrats) have received generous contributions from the private prison industry.  Why has a smart man like Barack Obama embraced a brain-dead immigration policy.  Well, consider this:

The inhumane and illogical step of pre-deportation detention was invented by the private prison industry. Last year, the Obama administration spent more money on immigration enforcement, including detention, than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined — a staggering $18 billion. The detention centers receive $166 per person, per day in government funds — an amount that would be a godsend to a homeless family or unemployed worker.

Please give this article the attention it deserves

With Immigration Reform Looming, Private Prisons Lobby to Keep Migrants Behind Bars

By Laura Carlsen

As the immigration reform debate heats up, an important argument has been surprisingly missing. By granting legal status to immigrants and ordering future flows, the government could save billions of dollars. A shift to focus border security on real crime, both local and cross-border, would increase public safety and render a huge dividend to cash-strapped public coffers. (more…)

Cliburn gives his regards to Broadway

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By Alan Bean

Last night, Nancy and I watched a taped version of the funeral service for pianist Van Cliburn.  Eight speakers, including George W. Bush and Texas Governor Rick Perry, addressed the 1500 people seated in the theater-style “pews” of Broadway Baptist Church.  A choir of 300 belted out hymns handpicked for the occasion by the great pianist himself.  I have no intention of checking out in the near future, but if I do, I’ll go with Van’s hymn picks without exception: Love Divine All Loves Excelling, Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah, All People that on Earth Do Dwell, When Morning Guilds the Skies, and Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.  (You can find the complete bulletin for the service here.)

These are all old hymns, the kind that churches like Broadway keep alive.  Broadway is known as “the liberal Baptist Church” but there’s nothing liberal or avant garde about the congregation’s musical tastes.  In fact, the l-word doesn’t define the church at all, unless feeding the hungry and ministering to the homeless have suddenly become “liberal” activities.   (more…)

Private prisons fuel growing controversy in Florida

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By Alan Bean

There’s nothing like a good scandal to get people talking about public policy issues that normally fly under the radar.  Take private prisons, for instance.  Like most people, Mary Jane Saunders knew practically nothing about the private prison industry until an alumnus of the school offered Florida Atlantic University a cool $6 million if they would name their football stadium after GEO group, one of the largest private prison companies in the world.  Fortunately, students at FAU knew more about private prisons than president Saunders.  They didn’t want their beloved Owls playing in a football stadium named after a company associated with blatant human rights abuses.    (more…)

Business writer wants more “good time” for federal inmates

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Walter Pavlo

Forbes Magazine is hardly a haunt of bleeding heart lefties and this piece by Walter Pavlo isn’t brimming with the milk of human kindness.  Pavlo writes for Forbes about white collar crime and talks primarily to business groups.  He thinks federal prisoners, who do not benefit from parole, ought to get 128 days of good time per year instead of the measly 54 days the federal system presently allows.  If prisoners could cut their sentences by one-third by acting like model prisoners, a lot of them would.  Moreover, when they return to the free world, as 97% of them will, they will be better prepared for what lies ahead.

The idea of radically reducing the prison population makes sense even if you don’t care about the human dynamics of the issue.  It saves tax payer money.  But here’s the question; if we don’t have jobs for these people, and if we refuse to hire ex-offenders with marketable skills, what’s to keep them from re-offending?  It will take a combination of compassion and common sense to answer this question.  If there is no work for felons in the free world we must make work for them–and that could cost almost as much as locking everybody up for everything.   (more…)