The immigration debate unfolding in the halls of Congress is directing increased attention to the nuts and bolts of American immigration policy. Republicans insist on “securing the border”. Democrats insist the border is already secure. But what is the cash value of “border security” rhetoric and what price, in dollars and in human misery, are we willing to pay to achieve it. As things presently stand, we are building border walls, establishing dozens of new immigration detention centers (half of them run by private prison companies), turning police officers into immigration agents and generally transforming the border region into a draconian police state.
It is very gratifying to see Operation Streamline getting a sliver of the publicity it deserves. This program is highly controversial in federal legal circles because it is very costly, it deflects prosecutorial attention from serious crimes of violence, and it involves legal procedures that are tantamount to human rights abuse. Until recently, Operation Streamline was rarely mentioned by the mainstream press. If this ABC story is anything to go by, that might be changing.
The American Civil Liberties Union says United States border security treats people crossing the border illegally to look for work as criminals instead of as desperate people trying to feed their families.
Border security continues to be a central point of the ongoing immigration reform debate, with Republican saying they won’t move forward without it and Democrats arguing the borders are already secure. (more…)
This essay was presented at the recent Samuel DeWitt Proctor conference in Dallas, Texas.
I went from being a Baptist preacher to my current work as a justice advocate in July of 1999. A massive drug bust hit the little farming community of Tulia, Texas, putting forty-seven people, most of them black, in jails and prisons. Some of us didn’t think it was wise to let a gypsy cop with a reputation for dishonesty send men and women to prison for up to 300 years on nothing but his uncorroborated say-so.
As the long battle for justice evolved, I started asking how it had come to this. The locals assured me that Tulia hardly had a single black resident in 1950 when they figured out how to pump the waters of the Ogallala Aquifer up to the dry prairie. Suddenly, Swisher County was blooming like the proverbial rose and share croppers from Deep East Texas were migrating westward. They were forced to live in little shanty towns on the wrong side of the tracks. There was hardly any running water or police protection and everyone, especially the children, suffered through the winter months. But there was more than enough work to go around. It didn’t pay well, for sure, but it was enough to keep food on the table and the young folk out of trouble. Most of the time, anyway. (more…)
Saturday Night Live has everybody talking. Actually, the sketch described below has folks beating their chests, rending their garments and howling at the moon.
Is it blasphemy to portray Jesus as a revenge-seeking action hero from a Quentin Tarantino movie?
It all depends. If you portrait of Jesus is primarily culled from the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) then the SNL spoof will make you wonder what these guys were thinking. On the other hand, if your vision of Jesus is a cross between the more graphic bits of the book of Revelation, a Jesus-is-a-badass Carmen number, and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series (more on this below), then SNL is pretty much on target. Fred Clark, who has been writing a running commentary on the Left Behind books for edification and laughs, has some insights that will amaze and horrify you.
Here’s the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, as envisioned by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins in The Glorious Appearing [note: this is R-rated graphic violence]: (more…)
Florida Atlantic University didn’t know what it was getting into when it agreed to name it’s football stadium after the private prison giant GEO Group. George Zoley, the CEO of GEO Group calls FAU his alma mater and was willing to hand over a $6 million donation. The good folks at FAU who gladly took Zoley’s money didn’t realize that private prisons are highly controversial.
As the article below makes clear, GEO Group, like every other private prison company, has been dogged by a long list of abuse allegations in places like Broward County, FL, Walnut Grove, MS, and Jena, LA. Immigrant rights and DREAM Act groups immediately sprang into action, linking to GEO Groups Wikipedia article to corroborate their unflattering portrait of the private prison company. In a desperate attempt at damage control, GEO Group gave the Wikipedia article a radical edit, replacing all the unflattering facts with its own corporate propaganda.
I first learned about the FAU-GEO Group connection on Tuesday morning at the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference in Dallas. I had just finished my presentation on the private prison industry when a woman in the audience stood to announce the breaking news. This morning, my Google Alert on Walnut Grove led me to the article below.
Private prisons are cheap because they cut corners at every turn, diverting tax dollars into corporate coffers and massive bonus checks for men like George Foley. They must understaff their prisons to remain in the black. (more…)
Thanks to Gene Elliott for bringing this column to my attention. George Will generally writes from a conservative perspective, but he thinks independently and writes as well as anybody in the business. Having spoken to inmates like Ramsey Muniz who have been subjected to prolonged stretches of solitary confinement, I know just how cruel and usual it can be. It is particularly encouraging to see that opposition to mass incarceration has recently become bipartisan. If anything, folks on the right have been more inclined in recent years to inveigh against the warehousing of US citizens than avowed liberals. This piece is highly recommended.
“Zero Dark Thirty,” a nominee for Sunday’s Oscar for Best Picture, reignited debate about whether the waterboarding of terrorism suspects was torture. This practice, which ended in 2003, was used on only three suspects. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of American prison inmates are kept in protracted solitary confinement that arguably constitutes torture and probably violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.” (more…)
On February 23rd, several advocacy groups are sponsoring a briefing for congressional staff that shines a spotlight on Operation Streamline and the link between immigration policy and the private prison boom.
What is Operation Streamline, you ask? This helpful fact sheet will bring you up to speed. Pay particular attention to the recommendations at the very end. It’s good to see proponents of a sane and sensible immigration policy placing concrete policy recommendations on the table.
Bipartisan negotiations over immigration reform – which pit a “pathway to citizenship” against “more
enforcement” – could lead to an expansion of “Operation Streamline” and federal felony prosecutions
of people crossing the Mexican border into the US. Criminal prosecutions of migrants promote the
unnecessary growth of private prisons at a time when crime is down nationwide. Lucrative contracts
for 13 “Criminal Alien Requirement” (CAR) prisons only serve the interests of private prison
profiteers, not public safety. (more…)
This beautifully crafted story about an executioner turned death penalty abolitionist has the pacing of a crime novel. Jerry Givens has experienced every aspect of the criminal justice system, including time behind bars. If anyone has taken the full measure of the American gulag, he’s the guy. The bit where Givens is asked if he would have executed Jesus if the state gave him the death penalty literally took my breath away. Highly recommended.
His routine and conviction never wavered. He’d shave the person’s head, lay his hand on the bald pate and ask for God’s forgiveness for the condemned. Then, he would strap the person into Virginia’s electric chair.
Givens was the state’s chief executioner for 17 years — at a time when the commonwealth put more people to death than any state besides Texas.
“If you knew going out there that raping and killing someone had the consequence of the death penalty, then why are you going to do it?” Givens asked. “I considered it suicide.” (more…)
This story by Bob Allen of the Associated Baptist Press should excite Baptists who care about justice. The fact that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship nominated a woman for the position of Executive Coordinator is itself reason for rejoicing. A woman like Suzii Paynter who possesses an unusually deep passion for justice is more than we had any right to hope for.
A few months ago, I wrote an opinion piece called “A Candle in Search of Darkness” after attending a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship gathering. “Every good story needs an antagonist, a villain,” I wrote, “and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship story doesn’t have one.”
Formed in the wake of the infamous fundamentalist takeover of Southern Baptist institutions, the CBF seemed determined to recreate a world in which “moderate”, politically savvy preachers could nuance their way to professional security. As a result, I said, Cooperative Baptists shy away from anything potentially controversial, including the immigration and criminal justice systems.
Paynter is smart enough to avoid my candle critique (that’s the role of independent voices like mine), but she clearly wants to lead the CBF upward to holy ground.
Suzii Paynter, executive coordinator nominee for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, sees advocacy on social-justice issues as consistent with the Fellowship’s longstanding dedication to ministry to the “least of these.”
By Bob Allen
A woman nominated to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s top leadership post says her extensive background in lobbying and public policy would bolster the Fellowship’s holistic missions strategy of targeting critical needs among the world’s most neglected peoples.
Suzii Paynter, director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, said in a Skype interview on EthicsDaily.com that if elected Feb. 21-22 by the CBF Coordinating Council, one of her primary interests as the group’s next executive coordinator would be “the intersection between our missions and justice.”
“In looking at our missions, we have eight communities of missions in CBF — poverty and transformation missions, disaster recovery, missions with internationals, economic development, missions around economic development, missions education, medical care — and in all these areas we have the opportunity not to just do hands-on missions on the ground but to also use the responses of our congregations and the interests of our many lay people to advance policies and to advance advocacy for issues that affect all of those areas,” she said.
As head of the ethics agency of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Paynter has been assigned to speak on a wide variety of ethical issues including citizenship and public policy, family life, religious liberty, ethnic reconciliation, faith in the workplace, hunger and poverty, substance abuse, environmental justice and creation care, war and peace, gambling, bioethics and more.
She was Baptist representative for an international delegation to Africa sponsored by the Gates Foundation and Bread for the World and has worked on national think tanks including the Council on Foreign Relations and Institute for American Values.
She has been recognized for her work on issues including immigration ministries, environmental stewardship, predatory gambling, underage drinking and prison reform. She has established interfaith and ecumenical relationships around common-good initiatives that she hopes to keep intact in the years to come.
Paynter cited Together for Hope, the Fellowship’s 12-year-old rural poverty initiative focused on breaking cycles of economic disparity in 20 of the nation’s poorest counties, as “a great example of places all over the country where we can match the love and experience we’ve had in missions with an advocacy word and voice on the national level.”
The Sentencing Project published this report over a year ago but it remains the single best introduction to the truly scary private prison industry on the web. Like everything put out by Marc Mauer’s organization, Too Good to be True: Private Prisons in Americais cautious, understated, balanced and authoritative.
Nationwide, about half the states have significant private prison populations and half do not. Some states dabbled with privatization, then gave it up; others have recently developed an unwarranted enthusiasm for selling their prisons to the private industry.
But it is the federal prison system, thanks largely to almost invisible programs like Operation Streamline, that is the real sugar daddy for one of America’s creepiest industries. Since 2005, when the feds started prosecuting the folks detained at the border for illegal entry or illegal re-entry, 400,000, largely Latino detainees spend time in federal prisons and detention centers every year. Latinos comprise 16% of the American population and over 50% of federal prisoners. (more…)
The graph to the left shows how the prison population exploded after 1980. Part of the blame for this nightmarish experiment with big government must be laid at the feet of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA.
The goal was to raise money for the cash-strapped anti-gun regulation organization. Accusing the Clintons (both of them) of being soft-on-crime was a great way to catch the attention of conservative Americans shocked by the apparent demise of the Reagan revolution. Banging the drum for more prisons, mandatory minimum sentences, and the defunding of rehabilitation, re-entry and alternatives-to-prison programs fit the tenor of the times.
In 1992, when the NRA’s “lets-build-more-prisons” campaign got underway, Bill Clinton, like every other American politician, was doing his best to talk tough on crime. The NRA’s goal was to talk tougher, even if that meant spewing utter nonsense and supporting ruinous policies. You rarely see mass incarceration identified as a massive tax grab, but that’s exactly what it is. (more…)
By Alan Bean
By Alan Bean
By Alan Bean
By Alan Bean
Alan Bean
By Alan Bean
By Alan Bean
By Alan Bean
Friends of Justice 