Category: mass incarceration

Cornelius Dupree, Jr. gets his life back

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Cornelius Dupree and his wife, Selma Perkins Dupree

By Alan Bean

Exoneration stories out of Dallas County are almost becoming routine, but this one is particularly gratifying. 

And maddening.

Cornelius Dupree Jr. spent three decades in prison because the Dallas Police Department thought he and his buddy, Anthony Massingill, looked like rapists.  They placed both men in a lineup.  An eye witness also thought the two men looked like rapists.

Cornelius was 21 at the time, Anthony was 19.

The media likes DNA exoneration stories.  Who doesn’t.  Because guilt has been scientifically ruled out, we know who the good guys and bad guys are.  Even the prosecutor is forced to admit that he messed up.  (more…)

A progressive icon hears from his critics

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Craig Watkins has been an inspiration to criminal justice reformers since he became Dallas County District Attorney in 2006.  There aren’t many black prosecutors in Texas so Watkins’ narrow election victory provided some much-needed balance.  But it went deeper than that.  Watkins had the backing of South Dallas ministers, people who have felt the impact of mass incarceration in their congregations.

“We’re going to reduce this crime rate,” Watkins promised in his 2006 acceptance speech. “We’re going to address the underlying reasons why people are committing crime.”

After generations of convict-at-any-cost prosecution, prevention and redemption were to be the new watchwords.

For the most part, Mr. Watkins has delivered.  He has cooperated with innocence programs and has created his own integrity unit to cull through old convictions for signs of wrongful conviction.  The Dallas County DA isn’t solely responsible for the dramatic stream of DNA exonerations flowing from Dallas County, but he has certainly facilitated the process.

No one was surprised when Watkins cleaned house shortly after his election by firing several of the prosecutors he inherited from the Bill Hill administration.  The new man was working with a new vision and needed assistant DAs who were willing to get with the program. 

But it wasn’t long before Watkins’ admirers were lamenting his thin skin.  A prolonged struggle with the County Commissioners punctuated by angry rants from the DA did little to enhance his stature as a statesman.  (more…)

Pardons in a punitive age

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By Alan Bean

‘Tis the season for executive pardons–or at least it used to be. 

The editorial board of the Washington Post is criticizing President Obama for making nine trifling pardons, most of which involve small crimes that date back decades. 

In a slashing opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News, Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast questions the prevailing practice of handing out a few scattered pardons like Christmas presents while ignoring entire categories of people who have fallen victim to ill-considered policies like putting non-violent citizens  in prison for simple pot possession.

Meanwhile, NYT columnist Bob Herbert takes a stripe out of Mississippi Governor Hailey Barbour and the political establishment of Mississippi for their shabby treatment of the Scott sisters. (more…)

Georgia prisoners strike for human rights

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By Alan Bean

On December 9, prisoners at six Georgia state prisons launched a coordinated strike.  The silence from the mainstream media has been thundering.

Across America, prison labor remains a vestige of the old convict leasing system that Robert Perkinson describes in great detail in Texas Tough.  Some inmates receive nominal wages–ranging from a dollar a day to a princely forty cents an hour; others, like the striking inmates in Georgia, work for nothing.

When discussing prison labor, it is important to avoid vague generalities.  Every state has its own laws and practices vary widely.  Sloppy references to the “prison industrial complex” can conjure images of multinational corporations earning massive profits from unreimbursed prison labor.  This happens, to be sure, but more prison labor involves chores related to prison life: preparing meals, doing laundry, cleaning floors, landscaping, gardening and, in some prisons, large-scale agriculture.  In most cases, private corporations aren’t involved, but there are plenty of exceptions.

It has been estimated that 80,000 inmates in America work directly for corporate interests, which suggests that only one-in-twenty-eight American inmates fall into this category.  Most inmate labor mitigates the cost of incarceration–one reason why, since the days of convict leasing, it has been so popular. (more…)

You can help the Scott Sisters

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Nancy Lockhart has been working behind the scenes to bring the plight of Jamie and Gladys Scott to national attention.  Interest in the story spiked recently but, with no recent developments, interest is beginning to flag.  Nancy would like you to get personally involved.  The message below tells you how.

Alan Bean

Message from Nancy Lockhart

Jamie and Gladys Scott both went before the Mississippi Board of Pardons and Parole today. Results from this hearing are unknown at this time. Please continue to call and e-mail governor Haley Barbour’s Office in support of their release. Each call and e-mail is very important! (more…)

Michelle Alexander: hard times won’t end the drug war

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With America wrapped in the coils of a budget crunch, can we afford a drug war?  Shouldn’t the appalling cost of mass incarceration be giving us a terminal case of sticker shock? 

Many pundits are looking for modest cutbacks in prison populations and narcotics task forces in the years ahead.  No need to worry, they suggest, the new Jim Crow will soon collapse under its own weight.  It might be a slow process; but change is inevitable.

Michelle Alexander isn’t convinced.  Her article, “Obama’s drug war,” will appear in the December 27th edition of  The Nation along with several shorter pieces written by notable drug war critics like Bruce Western and Marc Mauer. 

Most of the articles in this series advance common sense public policy arguments construing the war on drugs as a misguided attempt at crime control.  Most of the writers know it ain’t that simple, but when you’re writing for the Nation you reach for arguments that click with white liberals.

Michelle Alexander comes bearing bad news.  The war on drugs and mass incarceration cannot be scaled back, she says, “in the absence of a large-scale movement—one that seeks to dismantle not only the system of mass incarceration and the drug war apparatus but also the habits of mind that allow us to view poor people of color trapped in ghettos as ‘others,’ unworthy of our collective care and concern.” (more…)

Portraits of a Problem: the Jena 6 and Mass Incarceration

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Robert Bailey working out with friends

Thanks to their participation in the nationally televised Bayou Classic, Mychal Bell and Robert Bailey Jr. have now been recognized for something unrelated to the Jena 6 phenomenon.  When their names were called, it was because they had made a contribution on the field.

But there is far more at stake here than simple athletic success.  Mychal and Robert are making a positive contribution to their teams under the tutelage of seasoned football men who care about their players’ moral and educational advancement more than they care about winning.  Mychal and Robert are getting a second chance.

That’s a big deal when you consider that, in the natural order of things, Mychal and Robert would now be institutionalized felons rotting away in obscure Louisiana prisons.  By the time the prison doors swung open, the road to higher education would be blocked by dozens of petty regulations designed to keep offenders from reintegrating into society.  (more…)

Challenging the new Jim Crow, part 2

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This is the second excerpt from a speech recently delivered at the Campaign to End the Death Penalty conference on the campus of the University of Chicago.  The introduction can be found here. AGB

The new Jim Crow comes to Tulia, Texas

By Alan Bean

Sheriff Larry P. Stewart

To understand how radically our society has changed it is helpful to trace the life stories of the folks running the new Jim Crow machinery in small southern towns. The stories you are about to hear are taken from cases investigated by Friends of Justice, but they are symptomatic of a national disease.

I started talking about the new Jim Crow in Tulia, Texas when I realized that a drug bust that swept up half the adult black males in town was standard operating procedure.

There is a picture of Larry Stewart in an old copy of the Tulia Herald. It was Cowboy Day at the Tulia High School, circa 1960, and Larry came dressed as an old-time Texas Sheriff, badge and all. But Larry wasn’t supposed to grow up to be a lawman; like most local boys he wanted to farm like his daddy did before him. (more…)

Michael Vick dodges the New Jim Crow

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Michael Vick in court

Michael Vick’s performance against the Washington Redskins on Monday Night Football may constitute the most impressive single game by a quarterback in the history of the NFL.  Nicole Greenfield gives the religious backstory of Vick’s remarkable post-prison turnaround at Religious Dispatches this morning. 

But Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy takes a different slant.  Quoting copiously from Michelle Alexander’s game-changing The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in an age of colorblindness, Milloy points out that Vick’s “prison was just what I needed” testimony may be sincere, but his experience is hardly typical.  The Eagle’s QB isn’t just adept at dodging would-be tacklers, his celebrity status and high-profile supporters allowed him to escape America’s new caste system.  Here’s the normal pattern:

“Once swept into the system, one’s chances of being truly free are slim, often to the vanishing point,” Alexander writes. “The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system [or saddled with criminal records] is not – as many argue – just a symptom of poverty or poor choices, but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work.” (more…)