Author: Alan Bean

Rosa Brooks: If our prisons were a county, what would Incarceration Nation look like?

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If our prisons were a country, what would Incarceration Nation look like?

By Rosa Brooks

WASHINGTON — You already know that the United States locks up a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world. If you look at local, state and federal prison and jail populations, the United States currently incarcerates more than 2.4 million people, a figure that constitutes roughly 25 percent of the total incarcerated population of the entire world.

A population of 2.4 million is a lot of people — enough, in fact, to fill up a good-sized country. In the past, the British Empire decided to convert a good chunk of its prison population into a country, sending some 165,000 convicts off to Australia. This isn’t an option for the United States, but it suggests an interesting thought experiment: If the incarcerated population of the United States constituted a nation-state, what kind of country would it be?

Here’s a profile of Incarceration Nation:

Population size: As a country — as opposed to a prison system — Incarceration Nation is on the small side. Nonetheless, a population of 2.4 million is perfectly respectable: Incarceration Nation has a larger population than about 50 other countries, including Namibia, Qatar, Gambia, Slovenia, Bahrain and Iceland. And though the population of Incarceration Nation has dipped a bit in the last couple of years, the overall trend is toward growth: over the last 30 years, the incarcerated population of the United States has gone up by a factor of four, making Incarceration Nation’s population growth rate more than double that of India. (more…)

Starvation as a form of kindness

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Sir Charles Trevelyan

Thanks to Larry James for bringing this timely piece to my attention.  New York Times columnist Timothy Egan remembers the Christmas tours of rich and poor neighborhoods his mother conducted as part of the Christmas ritual.  This reminded me of the questions I would ask whenever my family would drive past the shacks in Yellowknife’s Old Town when I was a boy.  There were no wealthy homes in Yellowknife to drive past, but the difference between the haves and have nots was still striking.

Egan contrasts the arguments made by British aristocrats in the 19th century for cutting off aid to the victims of the Irish Potato Famine.

“The only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on government is to bring the operation to a close,” Sir Charles Trevelyan said about the relief plan at a time when thousands of Irish a day were dropping dead from hunger.

If that sounds painfully familiar, you should read on.  If it doesn’t sound painfully familiar, you haven’t been paying attention. (more…)

Phil Robertson and Megyn Kelly don’t mean to be mean

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By Alan Bean

As you must know by now, Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty clan, has been suspended by A&E for making anatomically explicit anti-gay comments.  Phil can’t figure out why a man would prefer a man’s anus to a woman’s vagina.  Well, that’s a unique way of framing the issue.

Significantly, Robertson’s views on race have received far less attention that his comments about gays.  Looking back on his early years, Phil told a GQ reporter that the black folks he worked with in the cotton fields were just happy, fun-lovin’, white-folk adorin’, hard workin’, God-fearin’ people until the civil rights movement and welfare messed them up.  Here’s his full comment:

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

This is probably too obvious to need saying, but I’ll say it anyway: African Americans in the pre-civil rights South didn’t complain to their white overlords, especially the poor whites who sometimes worked next to them.  Uttering complaints about the way you were being treated or about the heartbreaking unfairness of Jim Crow segregation was an excellent way to get fired or, if the good old boys within earshot were so inclined, lynched.

Why can’t poor Phil understand that same sex attraction is about sexual orientation, not genitalia?  And why can’t he appreciate just how offensive people of color will find his characterization of their blessed estate before visions of civil rights and welfare danced in their heads? It’s simple; Phil grew up listening to other white people tell him that blacks were perfectly happy back in the day.  “Hell, they was always equal.  All that segregation talk was just invented by liberals to make white folks feel guilty.”

If you don’t think white people in the rural South can think this way you haven’t been to places like Jena, Louisiana and Winona, Mississippi.  Slightly more sophisticated versions of this welfare-ruined-the-Negro sentiment can be heard in the posh suburbs north of Dallas (to cite but one example).

As his supporters avidly maintain, Phil wasn’t trying to be hateful or malicious; he is honestly confused by gay men and people of color. (more…)

President commutes eight federal inmates; what does it mean?

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Law professor Mark Osler appeared on NPR’s “The Take-Away” yesterday to give his take on President Obama’s commutation of the sentences handed out to eight federal inmates convicted of crack-related felony violations.  If you want to know the difference between a pardon and a commutation, whether or not Obama has the power to commute the sentences of the remaining 500,000 inmates sentenced under the old 100-1 guidelines, why only eight inmates got lucky, and what this signals for the future, these four minutes of audio are well worth a listen.

 

What if Ted Cruz’s daddy had emigrated to Canada?

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By Alan Bean

“To really understand Texas’ Tea-Partying senator,” the lede line of this article tells us, “you need to spend a few days with his father, Rafael.”

I’m sure that’s true.

I feel an odd kinship with Ted Cruz because we were both born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, albeit 17 years apart.  And I couldn’t help wondering, as I read this illuminating article from D magazine, how things might have been different if Rafael Cruz had emigrated to Calgary in the mid-50s instead of Austin, Texas.

The question isn’t as hypothetical as it may seem.  Rafael was granted American citizenship almost as a birthright because he was a Cuban refugee.  If he had faced the kind of barriers to entry that most Latinos face today, he would have been forced to enter the country illegally, or choose a different country–like Canada, for instance.

The article notes that Ted Cruz was born in a “socialist” hospital in Calgary and Rafael says he paid several hundred dollars extra to retain his existing doctor.  I doubt that would have been necessary. All my children were born in Alberta, and our family enjoyed excellent medical care.  By 1970, when Ted entered this world in a socialist hospital, his father was a card-carrying, Texas-style conservative. (more…)

The political roots of mass incarceration

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By Alan Bean

If you want to know how America became the incarceration nation, locking up six times as many of our citizens as most western democracies, look no further than this story.

I’ll admit it, my blood boils when I think of the reckless behavior of a pampered kid from a wealthy family destroying so many innocent lives.  And experience (and prejudice) leads me to suspect that an indigent defendant would not have fared nearly as well.

But you don’t change legislation in response to a single case.  This is always how it works in America.  The populous gets up in arms about an isolated case bristling with unusually bad facts.  Next, the politicians chime in with promises of vengeance.  They sense a political opportunity and fear the consequences of appearing soft.  Finally, bad laws are passed giving rise to a host of unintended consequences.

Hopefully this story will be long forgotten by the time legislators have a chance to exploit it.  But if a law is passed to ensure that rich kids are held accountable, the first to suffer will be the usual suspects from the wrong side of the tracks.

Would Texas be a safer place if the young man at the heart of this story had been sentenced to 20 years?  Inmates are released back into society in 95% of cases and generally re-enter the community as walking time bombs ticking loudly.  Prison crushes the human spirit–that is what it is designed to do.  We stopped talking about rehabilitation forty years ago.

The desire for revenge is natural and understandable, but it makes for incredibly bad public policy.  If you aren’t sure what I mean, read on . . . (more…)

Joerg Rieger: Charity or Deep Solidarity?

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I first heard of Joerg Rieger from Brian McLaren and had an opportunity to meet the German-born Methodist professor a few months ago in New Orleans.  Most theologians discuss ideas as if they strictly rational constructs with little relation to the hope, fear and ambition of everyday life; Rieger places ideas in historical context.  He is also one of the few theologians I have encountered who appreciates the profound relationship between theology and economics.  

Deep Solidarity: Embracing God’s Power to Alleviate Poverty and Create Structural Change

While charity and advocacy are widely discussed, there is a growing sense that deep solidarity may be the more appropriate response of faith communities to poverty.

Poverty is real and growing. In many places in the United States between 20 and 30 percent of the children experience “food insecurity,” which means that they do not have enough to eat. Unemployment and underemployment are rampant, and even many working people are no longer able to make ends meet. The average wage of workers at Wal-Mart — the world’s largest private employer — falls significantly below the poverty level. As the Wal-Mart model of employment is copied elsewhere, even mid-level jobs are losing full-time status and benefits.

In this climate, religious charity provides some much-needed assistance. Soup kitchens, food pantries, and clothes closets face a higher demand than ever before, and many religious communities support these efforts. Unfortunately, this kind of charity fails to address the underlying problems. Worse yet, by not addressing the root causes, the problems are covered up and in some cases intensified. Typical efforts to provide charity might be compared to a doctor who tries to cure the symptoms of a disease without addressing its cause. For good reasons, key figures of faith from Moses to Jesus did not limit their ministry to charity. (more…)

Budget Deal leaves unemployed hanging

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By Alan Bean

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 is just what it claims to be: a bipartisan bill.  Which means the legislation gives neither party all of what it wanted.  Liberals and conservatives are lamenting the deficiencies of the bill, but most analysts realize that a meet-in-the-middle compromise is superior to the only practical alternative: another year at loggerheads.

That said, the bill kicks many cans down the road, and the fate of the 1 million people who will stop receiving unemployment benefits shortly after Christmas is chief among them.  By March, an additional 2 million Americans will lose their benefits if nothing is done.  In essence, this legislation creates short-term consensus by ignoring the big questions.  Bread for the World president David Beckmann does a good job of identifying the key issues:

Though it is a good first step, the act is not perfect. It leaves more than 1 million unemployed workers without benefits before the year’s end. Congress should address this immediately.

Ultimately, Congress needs to address the entire sequester and resolve long-term budget issues. Congress must put the country on a fiscally sustainable path, and not leave struggling families out in the cold.

The Budget Act of 2013 sets top-line discretionary spending levels for fiscal year 2014 at $1.012 trillion, and at $1.104 trillion for FY 2015. It replaces much of the 2014 sequester, and some of the 2015 sequester, due to a combination of cuts to mandatory spending programs and increased fees.

There are no provisions to extend emergency unemployment rates, which are due to expire on Dec. 31, 2013. This will leave more than 1 million workers without benefits the week after Christmas, and an additional 2 million people will lose benefits by the end of March.

Stories we believe in: Learning from Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm

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By Alan Bean

I published this essay almost three years ago, but it is still generating a lot of interest so I thought it deserved as second go-round.

American liberals can’t fathom the appeal of the Tea Party phenomenon.  Here we are, struggling to recover from a recession created by massive tax cuts, military adventurism, and an under-regulated financial sector and what are they asking for: more tax cuts, even less government regulation, and more military spending.

Moreover, this message sells in the heartland, big-time.

By every standard of rationality, progressive politics should be enjoying a renaissance.  The alternative has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.  And yet politicians aligned with Tea Party rhetoric are winning elections and shaping the political agenda.  How can these things be?

Progressives were equally amazed by the stellar political career of Ronald Reagan.  There was little rational argument in his speeches, his facts were frequently askew, and he enjoyed little support in the halls of academe.  Yet he won two elections and is revered by many Americans as the greatest president of the 20th century.

Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm

Walter Fisher, a professor of communication arts at the University of Southern California who published his most influential work during the Age of Reagan, is known as the father of the narrative paradigm (you can find a seven-minute video summary of his thought here.)  Academics and educated liberals misread American politics, Fisher taught, because they subscribe to a rational-world paradigm.  To wit,

  1. Humans are essentially rational beings
  2. The primary mode of human decision-making and communicating is rational argument
  3. Different rules apply in different fields: legal, scientific, legislative, public and so on
  4. Rationality is a function of subject-matter knowledge, argumentative ability, and skill in employing the rules of advocacy
  5. The world is a set of logical puzzles that can be solved through appropriate analysis and the application of reason.

The rational-world paradigm, in Fisher’s view, requires the participation “of qualified persons in public decision-making” and assumes that experts will call the shots.  The logical consequence has been “to restrict the rational-world paradigm to specialized studies and to treat everyday argument as irrational exercise.” (more…)

Is There a Word from the Lord?

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Besieged by his enemies, King Zedekiah sent for the imprisoned prophet Jeremiah and, through trembling lips, posed his question: “Is there a word from the Lord?”

GettyImages_157334290 (1)Tradition held that after Jeremiah spoke the words from the Lord, a spirit-drought gripped the land and no word from the Lord would be heard until the Anointed One appeared.

Five hundred years later Jesus announced that the spirit-drought was broken.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he declared in the ancient words of Isaiah: “because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives.”

As an old year dies and a new year struggles to be born, is there a word from the Lord for us?  Is there good news for the poor?  Is there release for those who are bound?

Your generous tax-deductible gift towards our $25,000 December goal will contribute to good news for the poor and release to captives.

Friends of Justice has been preaching good news to the poor since New Year’s Eve, 1999.  When poor people are oppressed by immoral public policies, we say so, repeatedly and with great effect.

Common Peace Community-001God has called us to build a Common Peace Community where the walls that divide God’s people along lines of race, gender, wealth, social class, denomination and political affiliation crumble. “For Christ is our peace, having broken down the dividing wall, the hostility between us.” (Ephesians 2.14).

Friends of Justice is giving voice to congregations that have heard the good news to the poor, but lack a prophetic public voice. Through our Common Peace Community initiative, we are equipping and supporting existing faith leaders to break the silence. Because good news for the poor and release to the captive is as spiritual as it gets.

We challenge you to invest in the Common Peace Community.  We challenge you to contribute generously toward our December goal of $25,000.

Photo: Lightning and dark storm cloudsIf you wish to bring the Common Peace Community to your community of faith, contact us for more information.

The spirit-drought has broken.  We have a word from the Lord that speaks good news to the poor and release to the captive.  People of faith are finding a prophetic public voice.  Will you join us?