Is house arrest an alternative to prison?

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By Marie Owens

Increasing the Use of House Arrest

While our federal and local governments teeter on the brink of financial collapse, lawmakers at every level are scrambling to bring their exploding budgets under control. According to Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee of Oversight, fraud, waste and abuse account for around 7 percent of all government spending. Things are no different on local levels. Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. overspent his $1 million-plus office budget by $87,500. In fact, there isn’t a state in America that isn’t in debt. However, exasperated taxpayers are tired of funding such squandering, and are demanding spending cuts. So while they consider the obvious financial inequities of their spending, consider the potential savings that can be created by something a bit more obscure.

Beginning in the 1970s the federal government, and nearly every state legislative body, has enacted a variety of mandatory sentencing policies, which primarily targeted drug offenses and other non-violent crimes. Additionally, there was also the institution of such initiatives as the “three strikes and you’re out” laws. As anyone with a criminal justice degree will tell you, it is due to these tougher sentencing policies that the United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world.

According to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the prison population rose 380 percent from 1980 to 2008. In the meantime, the United States Census data revealed that the nation’s population rose only 33 percent during the same period. Comparatively speaking, the number of people incarcerated in state and federal facilities has grown ten times faster than the rate of our entire population. In 2008, the U.S. correctional system held over 2.3 million inmates. Of those, 60 percent were non-violent offenders. With an incarceration rate of 753 prisoners per every 100,000 people in 2008, there has been about a 240 percent increase of the number of people in prison since 1980. Thus the fact that we have passed into our third decade of these mandatory sentencing policies and have seen incarceration levels raise rather than diminish, it is fair to conclude that these laws have failed. (more…)

Have we given up on the common good?

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By Alan Bean

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War reminds us that America is as deeply divided now as it has ever been.  We can’t even agree about the basic meaning of the Civil War.  Was Robert E. Lee a hero or a villain?  

In the 1860s, and again in the 1960s, the federal government, albeit with deep misgivings, moved powerfully to defend the nation’s most vulnerable members.  Too marginalized to deserve the title “citizens,” 19th century slaves and the 20th century victims of Jim Crow segregation, were protected from the tyranny of the majority.  In the 1860s, the Republican Party controlled the process; by the 1960s, the Democrats were in charge–but the principle was the same.

As we wander aimlessly into the 21st century, the political divide is largely defined by the traumatic events of the 1860s and 1960s.  Conservatives are increasingly inclined to see the 1860s and 1960s as periods in which a tyrannical federal government crushed legitimate states’ rights.  In the liberal view, the demise of slavery and Jim Crow oppression are milestones in the long march to freedom.  To liberals, “states’ rights” is shorthand for state-sanctioned bigotry.

Tragically, neither conservatives or liberals give much thought to the ties that bind us together as a nation.  We are too fixated on the failings of our ideological opposites to examine what our side has lost.  As things stand, neither conservatives nor liberals have a narrative that all Americans, or even most Americans, can rally around. (more…)

Crucified with Christ: Holy Week through a prisoner’s eyes

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Enrique Salazar, Irma and Ramsey Muniz, Alan Bean, Ernesto Fraga

By Alan Bean

Friends of Justice was introduced to Ramiro (Ramsey) Muniz by Ernesto Fraga, a ember of our board who publishes the Tiempo newspaper in Waco, Texas.  Ramsey ran for governor of Texas on two occasions in the early 197os for La Raza Unida party and worked with Mr. Fraga and other members of the Chicano movement.  Ramsey was a standout with the Baylor football team in the late 1960s and graduated from Baylor Law School in 1971.  After his brief sojourn in the world of Texas politics, Muniz returned to south Texas where he worked as an attorney.  You can find more biographical information at FreeRamsey.com.

Ramsey Muniz sees himself as a political prisoner.  The Texas Anglo establishment had no problem with the Latino presence in the 1960s and 70s–somebody had to work the fields and mow the lawns.  But the Texas power structure had no place for a charismatic Latino football hero with a law degree who had the gall to run for governor. 

Texas was firmly in the grip of the Democratic Party in the early 1970s. La Raza Unida was formed because Latino activists believed (correctly) that the Democratic establishment had no interest in running Latino candidates or sharing political power with the Hispanic community.  If the Democrats represented the white population, the reasoning went, Latinos needed to create a separate party to represwent the interest of Chicanos.

It is difficult to exaggerate the sense of outrage and resentment the Chicano movement generated among Texas Democrats.  Ramsey Muniz was commonly viewed as a wild-eyed revolutionary, little more than a terrorist.  Shortly after beginning his post-politics legal career, the federal government charged Muniz with engaging in a narcotics conspiracy with some of the accused drug dealers he was defending.  The only evidence was the uncorroborated testimony of an inmate who agreed to testify for the government in exchange for lenient treatment.  Believing he had no chance before an all-white jury, Muniz accepted a plea agreement and served five years in an Alcatraz-like federal prison off the coast of Washington State. (more…)

Why we can’t be honest about the Civil War

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By Alan Bean

As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, a new Harris Interactive Poll suggests that 54% of Americans believe the South seceded over states rights, not slavery. 

That would have been news to the folks at the helm of the Confederacy.  Consider this lead quote from A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. (more…)

Kellogg challenges the colorblind consensus

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By Alan Bean

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation recently launched a $75 million grant-making program dedicated to racial healing.  “We believe that all children should have equal access to opportunity,” the foundation’s website reads.  “To make this vision a reality, we direct our grants and resources to support racial healing and to remove systemic barriers that hold some children back. We invest in community and national organizations whose innovative and effective programs foster racial healing. And through action-oriented research and public policy work, we are helping translate insights into new strategies and sustainable solutions.”

In an article written for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Dr. Gail Christopher, Kellogg’s vice president for program strategy, addressed the issue squarely:

The vision that guides the work of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is clear: we envision a nation that marshals its resources to assure that all children thrive.  What may be less self-evident to some is the pernicious and self-perpetuating way in which racism impedes many children’s opportunities to do so. (more…)

Rethinking Hell

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By Alan Bean

Hell has always been a hot topic in America.  Rob Bell’s Love Wins created such a pre-publication stir that the book debuted at number 2 on the New York Times best-seller list and remains on Amazon’s top 10. 

Bell’s take on heaven and hell rests on the recent scholarship of folks like NT Wright (on the evangelical side) and Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan (writing from a more liberal perspective).  (Brian McLaren offers a slightly more cerebral, and original, popularization of this new scholarship.)  The big idea is that salvation isn’t about going to heaven (or hell) when you die; eternal life (for better or worse) begins now. 

In a recent chat with Welton Gaddy, Rob Bell offered this typically folksy summary of his perspective.

I start with the first century world of Jesus. Jesus spoke very clearly and forthrightly about this world: that the scriptural story and the Jewish story that he was living in was about the reclaiming of this world, the restoration and the renewal of this world. So, Jesus comes, He teaches his disciples to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The action for Jesus was here on earth, about renewing this earth, about standing in solidarity with those who are suffering in this world. And he spoke of a kingdom of God, which is here and now: upon you, among you, around you, within you.

So in the book, I talk about this urgent, immediate invitation of Jesus to trust him, that God is good, that God is generous, that God is loving, that God is forgiving… And to enter into a new kind of quality of life with God right here, right now. So let’s bring some heaven to earth, let’s work to get rid of the hells on earth right now, let’s become the kind of people who love our neighbor… And that, for Him, it was immediate and urgent about this world. What happens when you die? He talks a little bit about that, but He’s mostly talking about this world. I think, for a lot of people, the Christian faith doesn’t have, for them, much to say about this world; that it seems to be all about what happens when you die. And so, the book, in some ways, flips it around and says: “I think this is actually what Jesus was doing.” (My emphasis, along with a few quick edits) (more…)

Should an innocent man suffer to protect the integrity of the legal system?

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John Kinsel is going on his twelfth year at Angola prison. Locked up on the charge of aggravated rape, his sentence is for life without parole.
John Kinsel

By Alan Bean

The judicial system doesn’t like recantations.  When a witness recants you know they are capable of lying.  But when did they lie; at trial or after trial? 

Motivation is always difficult to determine.  Is the witness changing her story because of a guilty conscience, or is she merely succumbing to social pressure?

And then there’s the big issue: judicial credibility.  The criminal justice system is only as credible as the state witnesses who take the stand.  Prosecutors can’t acknowledge that a star witness lied under oath without calling the accuracy and finality of the judicial process into question.  Lying witnesses don’t invalidate the system, of course; but they do undermine confidence in legal outcomes.  

As Caiaphas told the Sanhedrin in John’s Gospel: “It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.”

The tragic story of John Kinsel illustrates how easily finality can trump fairness when the integrity of the legal system is on the line.  The witness who accused Kinsel of rape and molestation in 1996 now insists she invented her testimony.  A judge granted a new trial only to be overruled by the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  (more…)

Innocent man: Why has the system left my prosecutor free to re-offend?

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By Alan Bean

Sometimes innocent people go to prison even though everyone in the legal system behaves with integrity.  But what happens when a wrongful conviction results from a prosecutor sitting on a pile of exculpatory evidence?  Shouldn’t the man we pay to represent the state be held accountable? 

I wish this was a hypothetical question; it isn’t.  In this gripping op-ed for the New York Times, John Thompson tells us how it feels to come within a whisker of the electric chair.  He also explains the prosecutorial misconduct that placed him in that situation and wonders aloud why the Supreme Court of the United States thinks its okay for prosecutors to withhold evidence.

The Prosecution Rests, but I Can’t

John Thompson

I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I’d won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn’t mine. (more…)

Right-winger + hard time = compassion

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prisonBy Alan Bean

Why are so many right-wingers suddenly arguing the case for criminal justice reform?  In this fascinating piece in Salon, Justin Elliot of Salon directs this question to Doug Berman, author of the influential Sentencing Law and Policy blog. 

Here are the highlights:

1. Prison is far more brutal than most people believe it to be

2. Most of the conservatives currently leading the smart on crime crusade have been locked up: Duke Cunningham, Charles Colson, Pat Nolan, Conrad Black

3. The religious concept of redemption generally plays a large role in these conversions.

4. Historically, mass incarceration required the enthusiastic cooperation of the political left

5. When you do hard time you realize that harsh penalties are typically applied to crimes disproportionately committed by minorities

6. Busting budgets and historically low crime rates make this a good time for reform, but . . .

7. The political forces that drove mass incarceration are always lurking. (more…)

The Problem with Pornography

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By Alan Bean

This site has had little to say on the subject of pornography.  Our primary agenda is shutting down the machinery of mass incarceration; a subject far removed, one would think, from a discussion of popular culture.  But if Robert Jensen is right, pornography is fundamentally about patriarchy, and patriarchy is about hierarchy: the powerful maintaining a dominant position over the powerless.  So maybe there is a connection, and not just because, as Jensen suggests, there may be a link between the explostion of internet pornography and sex crimes.

As Michelle Alexander suggests, we can’t reform the criminal justice system until we move away from the cruel and punitive public consensus driving the prison boom.  How do we move from a society built on a foundation of hierarchy, control and domination, to a society rooted in equality, love and conversation. 

The piece pasted below is a conversation between Robert Jensen, a fifty-two year-old journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and a twenty-four year-old writer for UT’s F-Bomb blog who keeps trying to argue for a kinder-gentler form of pornography.  Jensen argues that the social impact of the porn industry has changed radically in recent years and doesn’t think that’s a good thing for women or for men.  Jensen, by the way, is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, so he’s given this matter a great deal of thought. 

The Problem with pornography?

FBOMB: If you could briefly describe, what is the problem with pornography?

Robert Jensen: Well, let me first sort of step back. There has long been a conservative, typically religious critique of pornography that poses the problem of pornography as being in conflict with what is traditional family values, which is sexuality confined to a heterosexual marriage. That’s the critique you’ll hear most often in the culture is that conservative, typically religious critique. The feminist critique of pornography approaches it from a very different perspective and says that, in patriarchy, in a society structured around male dominance, one of the ways that dominance is reinforced and perpetuated is in men’s sexual use and abuse of women. One way to say this is, in patriarchy women are routinely presented to men as objectified bodies for male sexual pleasure. One of the vehicles for the routine presentation of women to men as objectified bodies for male sexual pleasure is what I would call the sexual exploitation industries: prostitution, pornography, stripping. These are ways that men buy and sell primarily women’s bodies. Pornography, like prostitution and stripping, is one of those methods of buying and selling women’s bodies. So from a feminist critique, the problem is the way in which those sexual exploitation industries reinforces male dominance, and leads to predictable consequences, primarily for women and children. (more…)