Author: Alan Bean

Tulia and the spell of mass incarceration

March 29, 2011April 12, 2011 · 2 Comments ·

Gary Gardner, moments before heading down to a protest at the state capital with Friends of Justice and a bus full of Tulia residents, September 2000

By Alan Bean

This is the text of a speech delivered at a Friends Committee on Legislation of California banquet in Whittier, California, March 26, 2011.

When I arrived in Tulia in the summer of 1998, I didn’t know very much about mass incarceration and the war on drugs. I had no idea that Texas, the state we had just moved to, had almost quadrupled its prison population between 1988 and 1998, or that the number of prisons had grown from 16 in 1980 to 108 in 2000.

Nor did I realize that the average family income of America’s poorest 20 percent increased 116% between 1947 and 1979 and had given back half of those gains between 1983 and 1998.

I didn’t realize that the American incarceration rate once mirrored western democracies like Canada, Great Britain and Germany, but had recently grown to six times the size of other nations.

For twenty years our family had been shuffling around the United States and Canada, and Nancy wanted our children to experience the love and support of family. Everything was going according to plan until we saw the headline in the local newspaper, “Tulia streets cleared of garbage.” (more…)

Tulia-style drug bust draws suspicion in Wichita Falls

March 28, 2011March 28, 2011 · 5 Comments ·

The good folks in Wichita Falls, Texas are celebrating the arrest of 44 drug kingpins, with four or five additional arrests waiting in the wings.

“It’s a good number of arrests, but the reality is there are probably still five-times as many of these types of criminals out there,” Sheriff David Duke told the Wichita Falls Times Record News. “It’s a scary thing to think that this stuff is being sold in our neighborhoods, near our children. A lot of these dealers are armed because of competition with other dealers. And many will steal, rob and commit financial crimes to facilitate their operations.”

No one associated with the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 can read these words without recalling the proud pronouncements of Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart and his undercover man, Tom Coleman. (more…)

The fine art of testilying

March 17, 2011 · 1 Comment ·

By Charles Kiker

The ninth of the ten commandments: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:16)

In his “Grits for Breakfast” blog, Scott Henson has a recent post (March 16) on “testilying” raised to new heights of infamy: “Police prevarication in Austin overlooked with wink and a nod.” It regards an incident from a couple of years ago in which an Austin police officer manufactured out of whole cloth a probable cause affidavit for unlawful trespassing. The officer described in detail the area in which the defendant was charged with trespassing. It was described as a heavily wooded area with numerous signs against trespassing. In fact, the area described was a multi-unit rental area devoid of “no trespassing” signs with only one tree in view. The defense attorney took pictures of the area and the prosecutor, at the pre-trial conference, decided that it was in the best interests of justice to dismiss the case. Hurrah for the prosecutor. (more…)

Perry fiddles while Texas burns

March 11, 2011March 11, 2011 · 2 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

“This is an engineered crisis—a thing that was done on purpose by people who do not mean well for our community, our city, our state or nation.” Jim Schutze

Texas is facing an estimated $27 billion deficit. Governor Rick Perry and his fellow ideologues gutted the state’s property taxes two years ago, then sat back and waited for the inevitable. At the time, according to this terrific article by Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer, Texas Comptroller, Diane Keaton Strayhorn, predicted that this radical decrease in tax money would create a deficit of $23 billion by 2011 unless new sources of revenue could be found.

Ms. Strayhorn didn’t factor in the worst financial crisis since the great depression, but the accuracy of her numbers suggest that any thinking Texan could have seen the current imbroglio coming. (Thanks to Gerald Britt at Change the Wind for bringing Mr. Schutze’s article to my attention). (more…)

The drug war is a long way from over

March 11, 2011March 11, 2011 · 4 Comments ·

When the Wall Street Journal endorses the growing shift from mass incarceration to rehabilitation and diversion programs, something is in the wind. But let’s not pop the champagne corks too quickly. Politicians are beginning to understand that long prison terms for drug offenses have failed to deter drug abuse or the illegal drug trade. Furthermore, prisons, even if run on the cheap, are unspeakably expensive. All of this is good.

Mass incarceration is primarily a function of the war on drugs, a slash and burn campaign that–its own propaganda notwithstanding–was never about getting drugs and drug dealers off the streets. The drug war is about social control. When a nation turns its back on its poorest citizens (as American did in late 197os) bad things are bound to happen. Desperate people take desperate measures. Those with little access to legitimate work will turn to illegitimate work–like selling drugs. Middle class addicts can fund their habits, but poor addicts sling drugs and commit property crime to keep the supply flowing. Entire neighborhoods become economically dependent on the trade in illegal drugs even as they are afflicted by unbearably high crime rates. (more…)

They built it, but nobody came: private prisons face bleak future

March 11, 2011March 11, 2011 · 2 Comments ·

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Prison outside Jena, Louisiana

For decades now, private prisons have been thrown up across America, often at the expense of the taxpayer, on the assumption that the policy of mass incarceration would eventually supply the needed bodies.

As I relate in Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, the prison west of Tulia was built on this basis. One scam offered to Swisher County residents was so flimsy it disintegrated before construction could begin. The second wave of con artists used junk bonds to finance a building that sat empty for years before being picked by the state for half of its original construction cost.

The prison outside Jena, Louisiana was built on the same basis, this time with the larcenous cooperation of then-Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. The same Houston outfit was responsible for the speculative private prisons built in Tulia, Jena and a dozen other little towns.

If we built it, folks reasoned, they will come. And come they did. For a time.

The Tulia prison was eventually filled to capacity. The Jena prison filled up tool, but was closed on two separate occasions in response to racially-tinged allegations of inmate abuse (it now serves as a massive ICE lock-up).

But as the rate of incarceration has slowed in response to low crime rates and the financial crisis currently afflicting state and federal governments, more and more communities are paying the bills for superfluous prisons. (more…)

Quinn signs Illinois death penalty ban

March 9, 2011March 12, 2011 · 1 Comment ·

Pat Quinn did it! The death penalty is dead in Illinois! (If you would like to congratulate the Illinois governor, Amnesty International has a nifty little form to fill out.)

Illinois becomes the fourth state to abolish the death penalty–the others are New York, New Jersey and New Mexico.

This was a tough call for a governor who has been aggressively lobbied by folks on both sides of the death penalty debate. The tipping point appears to have been the 20 innocent defendants convicted in the state of Illinois. “To have a consistent, perfect death penalty system … that’s impossible in our state,” Quinn explained. “I think it’s the right and just thing to abolish the death penalty and punish those who commit heinous crimes — evil people — with life in prison without parole and no chance of release.” (more…)

NPR and the American Mainstream

March 9, 2011March 9, 2011 · 1 Comment ·

National Public Radio CEO, Vivian Schiller, has resigned after two high-profile NPR executives were caught on tape saying that the Republican Party had been “hijacked” by the Tea Party and that the Tea Party was essentially a white-only organization dominated by gun-toting zealots on the racist fringes of American society.

Ms. Schiller had been criticized last October for what many considered her ungracious and impolitic response to the Juan Williams fiasco.

Most of the controversial remarks caught on video were nade by Ronald Schiller (no relation to Ms. Schiller). Mr. Schiller had been invited to a fancy luncheon by two Republican provocateurs posing as deep-pocket Muslim activists representing a mythical Muslim group that was supposedly planning to give NPR a $5 million gift.

The timing of this latest fiasco couldn’t be worse. Leading Republicans have been arguing that NPR was far too left-of-center to receive federal support. According to this argument, it’s okay for FOX News to slant its reporting to the right because it is a private agency. The liberal bias of NPR is a more serious matter, critics contend, because the organization is feeding at the federal teat. (more…)

Deuteronomy 10: 12-19