Category: war on drugs

McWhorter: end the drug war and racial tension evaporates

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John McWhorter

John McWhorter is a conservative African-American who enjoys needling white liberals and the “racism-is-still-real” brand of civil rights advocacy.  For over a year now McWhorter’s take on race has taken on a decidedly libertarian tone.  He’s for legalizing drugs; all of them.

The Cato Institute’s current newsletter contains a PDF version of McWhorter’s new message.  The version I have pasted below appeared last year in The New Republic.

If you are a fan of HBO’s The Wire (the best television of all time in my opinion), the essential features of McWhorter’s argument will come as no surprise.  African-American youth have little incentive to look for conventional work because drug money comes so easy.  As a result, hundreds of thousands of black males are doing time on drug charges, inner city street gangs slaughter one another in turf battles, black children have no fathers, black women give up on finding a marriage partner, and everything goes to hell. (more…)

Good news, bad news for final two Tulia defendants

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The good news is that the last two victims of the Tulia drug sting, Landis and Mandis Barrow, have had their records cleared.  (The full explanation for this delay of justice can be found here.)  The bad news is that both men remain entangled in the criminal justice system.

It is difficult to decipher the extent of the Barrow twins’ involvement with Tom Coleman in Tulia.  My files are stuffed with letters from Landis and Mandis wrote me while in prison, and my book Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas benefited from that correspondence.   A few Tulia defendants admitted selling crack to the undercover agent, but they were charged with selling powder cocaine. 

This may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it isn’t.  Coleman bought a few ten or fifteen dollar rocks of crack cocaine from known users but received as much as $200 for the highly diluted 8-balls of powder he turned in to the Amarillo Police Department. (more…)

Can we end mass incarceration without mentioning race?

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By Alan Bean

The criminal justice reform movement has two distinct branches that may have trouble sharing a common message or strategy.

The first branch of reformers is best represented by Michelle Alexander’s “New Jim Crow” thesis.  Alexander sees the war on drugs as primarily an assault on poor people of color.  Reformers, she argues, have either avoided racial arguments altogether, or have focused on Rosa Parks-type defendants who transcend racial stereotypes.  Consider this quote from her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness:

Challenging mass incarceration requires something civil rights advocates have long been reluctant to do: advocacy on behalf of criminals. Even at the height of Jim Crow segregation—when black men were more likely to be lynched than to receive a fair trial in the South—NAACP lawyers were reluctant to advocate on behalf of blacks accused of crimes unless the lawyers were convinced of the men’s innocence . . . outside of the death penalty arena, civil rights advocates have long been reluctant to leap to the defense of accused criminals. Advocates have found they are most successful when they draw attention to certain types of black people (those who are easily understood by mainstream whites as ‘good’ and ‘respectable’) and tell certain types of stories about them. Since the days when abolitionists struggled to eradicate slavery, racial justice advocates have gone to great lengths to identify black people who defy racial stereotypes, and they have exercised considerable message discipline, telling only those stories of racial injustice that will evoke sympathy among whites. (more…)

Simple Justice reviews “Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas”

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“That Alan Bean chose to keep his narrative close to the vest, to let the facts do the talking for him rather than ram the moral of this sordid story down the reader’s throat, makes this book a fascinating and consuming read. Be prepared, as once you start reading Taking Out The Trash, chances are you won’t put the book down until you’ve finished.”

Scott Greenfield’s review of Alan Bean’s book, “Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas” originally appeared in Scott’s highly respected blog, Simple Justice.

Book Review: Taking Out The Trash in Tulia, Texas

I’ve never been to Tulia. There’s no particular reason why I would go there, and yet after reading Alan Bean’s book, Taking Out The Trash in Tulia, Texas, published by Advanced Concept Design Books, I feel as if I know the place well. (more…)

Is mass incarceration history?

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Neal Peirce

By Alan Bean

Over at Citiwire.net, Neil Peirce has a balanced, informative and succinct report on the growing trend to re-think mass incarceration.  What’s driving this reappraisal of  lock-em-up policies?  Declining tax revenues. 

The states, which fund the bulk of our prisons, were hit by a breathtaking revenue decline of 30 percent in 2009 alone. It’s become ever-tougher for law-and-order politicos to justify ever-expanding prison rolls and costs.

What’s likely to frustrate a serious re-evaluation of prison policy?  Too many people are dependent on the prison boom and its poisonous fruit.

Rural legislators across the country have pressed for prisons as job opportunities for their residents. Will they agree to shutdowns, even in these toughest of economic times for state budgets ever?  It’s hard to believe.

Michelle Alexander doubts that tough times will make much of a dent in the drug war, and I fear she’s right.  We may see a year or two of minor decline in the prison population, but when happy days are here again politicians will start banging the “tough-on-crime” drum. (more…)

Sex and the single black woman: how the mass incarceration of black men hurts black women

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“The simplest way to help the black family would be to lock up fewer black men for non-violent offences.”

Michelle Alexander recommended this disturbing article in the Economist when she spoke in Dallas last Thursday.

Consider this:

Some 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock. The collapse of the traditional family has made black Americans far poorer and lonelier than they would otherwise have been. The least-educated black women suffer the most. In 2007 only 11% of US-born black women aged 30-44 without a high school diploma had a working spouse, according to the Pew Research Centre. Their college-educated sisters fare better, but are still affected by the sex imbalance. Because most seek husbands of the same race—96% of married black women are married to black men—they are ultimately fishing in the same pool.

Faith and Mass Incarceration: An Annotated Bibliography

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By Dr. Charles Kiker

I thought it would be helpful to list some works I have read which I feel would be helpful in understanding the topic and in working to end the New Jim Crow.

1. First would have to be the recent work by Michelle Alexander,

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Ms. Alexander argues convincingly that the criminal justice system at all levels, including the Supreme Court, especially in regard to the war on drugs, has effectively instituted a new Jim Crow by incarcerating young African Americans and those of Hispanic origin vastly disproportionate to their numbers. (more…)

Why are Newt and Grover jumping on the prison reform bandwagon?

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By Alan Bean

Sure, we can save a pile of money by cutting back on the size of our military and our prison system; but if we don’t reinvest that money in the lives of our most desperate citizens we are only sewing the wind.

Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan have published a surprising op-ed in the Washington Post asserting that our criminal justice system is broken and needs to be fixed. 

Here’s the heart of their argument:

The Right on Crime Campaign represents a seismic shift in the legislative landscape. And it opens the way for a common-sense left-right agreement on an issue that has kept the parties apart for decades.

There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections – 300 percent more than 25 years ago. The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every American.

Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high, but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.

We can no longer afford business as usual with prisons. The criminal justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it. (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…)