Family & Corrections Network

Fathers Behind Bars and on the Street

Overview Proceedings    Agenda and Bio Resources

The Second North American Conference on
Fathers Behind Bars and on the Street
November 6-8, 2002   St. Louis, MO

The Criminal Justice System: Reproducing the Badges and Incidents of Slavery

Good Morning, I thought I would begin by saying that I am elated to be here and I am honored by the opportunity I have been give to share some thoughts with you. This conference provides a wonderful chance to reflect and share our experiences related to practice and policy issues affecting incarcerated parents and their children. Folks such as yourselves who are engaged in the work day-in-and-day out matter!!!!  You are doing the hard, but vital work of saving lives and  relationships. I want to thank you for that and I want you to thank yourselves. PLEASE APPLAUD YOURSELVES FOR YOUR LIFE SAVING EFFORTS!!!

Constitutional Underpinnings

“WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS”

The concept that all men are created equal had a particular point of reference for the Founding Fathers, that point of reference focused on “white men of means,” the “landed gentry”. Essentially, all affluent white guys were equal!!!

The ratification of the US constitution occurred in 1788, subsequent to the ratification of the constitution, women could not vote and enslaved Africans counted as 3/5 of a person and had no fundamental rights of citizenship. When the U.S. constitution was ratified slavery had a 200-year history in the colonies. The brutal institution of slavery consisted of mass psychological terrorism and physical brutality for purposes of social control that drove an economic and societal agenda that simultaneously institutionalized White Privilege and Black Inequality.

The system of inequity was built on the tenet that Africans brought to America “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” as articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Dred Scott v. Sandford  in 1857. 

The Civil War and the Union victory ushered in the period of Reconstruction, the period after the official abolishment of Slavery in 1865. There was the ratification of the 13^th , 14^th  and 15^th Amendment which were suppose to remove the “Badges and Incidents of Slavery;” granted  “Equal Protection” and bestow the right to vote and  full citizenship upon Africans. As a brief interlude, the Reconstruction period offered a glimmer of hope for equality and citizenship for African Americans, who participated for the first in the political process. Full citizenship for African-American was short lived. By means of economic pressure and the terrorist activities of violent anti-black groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, most African Americans were kept away from the polls. By 1877, with the withdrawal of the last federal troops from the South, Southern whites were again in full control. The provisions of new state constitutions disfranchised African Americans. The emergence of Black Codes, during the Post-Reconstruction, excluded African Americans from competing with Whites in trades and occupations, denied the right to vote through poll taxes and grandfathers clauses, and prohibited African Americans from being anything other than servants.  Senator Carter Glass, a Virginia Senator a century ago during a state Constitutional Convention, shouted:

“Discrimination! Why that is precisely what we propose. That, exactly, is what this Convention was elected for-to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limits of the Federal Constitution.” 

Foundation for Institutional Racism

America’s history, America’s very foundation, has been shaped by social, economic, and physical oppression of African Americans. America continues to struggle with issues of racial injustice and economic inequality. This struggle has been marked by hard fought for advances and an equally significant array of setbacks.

In the main, as an American people we are pre-occupied with personal forms of discrimination. Personal forms of discrimination tend to spring from one-on-one or group interactions were individuals may display discomfort, dislike, or malicious anti-person-of-color attitudes and sentiment. We have this image of Baba in his pick-up truck with a gun rack in the back and his Confederate flag waving or extremist white racist groups marching down Main Street USA. 

The Face of the most virulent form of racism is often grossly OVERLOOKED. I would argue the most dangerous form of racism in the 21^st Century is not that manifest by individuals who may or may not be willing or able to act on their discriminatory attitudes. Institutional forms of racism are far more insidious and destructive, they are systematic and covert. As such, they dramatically undermine the security, stability, and the well being of our families and children of color.

Institutional Racism Roots in the Criminal Justice System

As student of the constitution, I find it curious that the 13^th Amendment that was designed to dismantle activities in the STATES that promoted the continuation of the institution of slavery had an interesting loophole. That loophole provided for the enslavement of individuals based on their status as a Criminal Offender. In short, there is a constitutional exception to slavery in our country that has its originates in the 13^th Amendment. This constitutional loophole has been a basis for reinforcing institutionalized racism, such as the form manifested in our criminal justice system. Constitutional Slavery, if you will!!!

During the Jim Crow Era of the late 19^th Century African-Americas were convicted of crimes at a much higher rate than whites. Efforts were made to identify and elevate particular indiscretion and wrongdoings by African Americas such that those acts would yielded unreasonably harsh sanctions and punishments.  There was a belief that pervaded this period that African Americans were congenital thieves-born criminals!! In 1908, in Georgia, Black prisoners out numbered White prisoners 10-to-1, the majority of the Black prisoners were convicted of non-violent property crimes.

If we examine statistics related to African-Americans and the criminal justice system in the 21^st Century we witness the same disproportionate representation of African-Americans in the criminal justice system we saw in the Jim Crow Era of the 19^th Century.

The statistics are startling!! At the start of the Reagan administration in 1980, there were approximately 502,000 prisoners in the nation’s prison’s and jails. By 2001, the close of the Clinton administration, there were approximately 1,800,000, nearly a four fold increase of prisoners. Of this number approximately 800,000 were Black males and approximately 70,000 were Black females.

§         Statistics show the racial and class dimensions of incarceration

§         It is amazing that a Country that prides itself on Democracy and Freedom is the World’s Biggest Jailer

Given the increasing emphasis on incarceration, punishment, and various forms of criminal justice interventions as a necessary solution to crime, we might ask ourselves whether there is evidence that increased incarceration leads to less crime and whether national public policy that has dramatically increase incarceration is guided by sound evidence. It appears that our public policy to incarcerated is not anchored in present trends nor research.

• Over the last 20 years crime rates have steadily dropped, but incarceration rates have mushroomed.

•  In a study by the Justice Policy Institute of the 10 year period from 1980-1991, the period in which the nation’s prison population increased the most, it was found that the causal relationship between increased incarceration and decreases in crime were extremely weak, if not non-existent.

So, if trends in crime rates and research evidence have not been the basis for the public policy formulation that drives incarceration, what is?

One Key Factor is the “War on Drugs”

§         The “War on Drugs”  is reminiscent of the Post Civil War -Black Code Era and based on a belief that African Americans are inherently criminal which requires a different standard and application of criminal law enforcement)

The 2^nd Key Factor is the Growth of the Prison Industrial Complex

Prisons have become an Engine for Economic Development and Profit. There are troubling parallels to be drawn between the Prison Industrial Complex and Slavery, which itself was an Institution for Economic Development and Profit. 

Susan Hart, the company spokesperson for Correction Corporation of America, the first private company to go public, whose stock has moved from the NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange, had this to say about the company’s tremendous growth and prosperity:

“The public is demanding that government do something about crime, and do it now. The breakdown in the social setting, the increase in single parent homes, the fact that there are not a whole lot of career choices for people, combined with the reality that people need money to live. Social barriers are preventing many people from getting good-paying jobs, along with other factors.”

WHO IS THIS PUBLIC DEMANDING PRISONS!!!

Placing prisons at the center of the solution seems to treat the symptoms and advance the social disease of institutional oppression, and not address its root cause, which is racism and economic inequality. The social cost of maintaining the Prison Industrial Complex is staggering in financial terms.

The path that has been chosen for us as a nation has torn many communities apart leaving social carnage in its wake separating children from their parents and separating individuals from their communities just as the slave-master did time and time again!! But at some point these separated individuals try to find there way home. 660,000 inmates were release in 2002, and it is estimated that about 887,000 will be released in 2005, and about 1.2 million in 2010.

What are folks coming back to?

1)       Marginal Economic and Social Existence

2)       A Compromised Democratic Process

Our national social welfare policy mandates work and personal responsibility, yet we have constructed a cast system where by formerly incarcerated individuals carry lifelong penalties. There has been some emerging public policy and federal support in the form of 12 million dollars for mentoring services for children of incarcerated parents, but all the mentoring services in the world will not help children unless we help their parents with jobs, housing, health care, and educational and training supports. Children are healthiest when their parents are whole, engaged, and functioning.

Increasingly our understanding of democracy is being challenged given the growing Disenfranchisement created by our criminal justice system.

Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi rank among the top 5 states with the largest population of Felons and they also rank among the top 4 states with the largest Black Male Felon population who have temporarily or permanently lost their voting rights. Many of the prisoners in these state penal systems are individuals who are more often than not poor people-of-color and Democrat. These persons are moved from their communities which are typically urban to rural white communities.  The result is that these white communities benefit from the population increase created from the prison and receive the benefits of electoral redistricting and governmental funding driven by the US census count. This has corrupted the state redistricting process and also has made rural towns appear poorer than they actually are, causing two dramatic results. There has been a shifting of federal housing and anti-poverty funds from black urban communities to white rural communities. Secondly, some white rural communities are welding more electoral power than they should, because while prisoners are counted for purposes of redistricting, they cannot vote. This has reinforced the “Get Tough on Crime” public policy approaches because these communities tend to be politically conservative on an array of social policy issues, which operate to the detriment of low-income African American communities. 

I am by no means a conspiracy theorist, but if I look a little paranoid, that’s because I am. I think a little paranoia is in order, if not down right healthy given the trends I have discussed.

So given these tremendous institutional challenges where do we go from here?  I have a few thoughts.

*We as a nation must embrace a Family Support approach. Our public policy cannot simply focus on “family values” our public policy must VALUE FAMILIES. It is estimated that 2 million children in America have parents in prison. This is a “Home Security” issue of a magnitude not unlike the “Home Security” issue presented by external threats to America’s peace and stability only this threat is from within. Children need their parents. Our criminal justice system has systematically and disproportionately separated African American parents from their children. This is a public crisis not simply a parental failure. Full scale advocacy efforts in the form of political pressure, community organizing, and public awareness building will be necessary.

*Family Support demands the engagement of incarcerated parents in building the solutions that address their strengthens. We must anchor national public policy with the fundamental assumption that incarcerated parents want the best for their children.  That means, whenever possible, we must not work with the children of incarcerated parents without also working with their parents. We must start by asking the question what strengths can we find in these families and extended families of incarcerated individuals. Our goal should be to create capacity in these families to be self-sufficient and self-directed. This also means that while the delivery of social services to these families is necessary, it is not sufficient. We must create opportunities to develop parent leadership, political activism, and public policy awareness. Parents and families must be able to be full partners in the struggle for their on liberation and healing.

*Practice and policy should work to build communities of caring that have both formal and informal networks of supports for incarcerated parents and their children. These networks and supports would function to decrease social isolation, stigma, and rejection and embrace these families and give them safe haven in their own community to negotiate the stress and pressure they experience.

* We must attack the economic violence and social marginalization that incarcerated parents are subjected to by restoring full citizenship rights to them upon their release from prison such that the badges and incidents of slavery caused by incarceration are removed. If public policy requires individuals to be responsible and meet their economic responsibilities to their children, for example by paying child support, and if public policies require individuals to fulfill their social and community responsibilities upon release, formally incarcerated individuals should be able to vote, be supported in securing stable and meaningful employment, and have full access to social services.    

*Finally, we must do everything humanly possible to prevent our youth from ever coming in contact with the criminal justice system. We must do this through parental and community vigilance and the creation of high parental expectation and community norms. We must contend with  and counteract a media and music industry BLITZ that glorifies a subculture lifestyle, and that downplays the consequences of those behaviors, where the Thug Life Rules, bling…bling and slag’n and bang’n is the order of the day, and where Pimps, Playas Are liv’n large driving big Mercedes cars. We even got Gangsta Rap Record labels named MURDER, INCORPORATED. One small lapse in judgment by a Black youth could result in a life altering, if not life threatening exposure to the American Criminal Justice System.

Closing:

Ralph Smith at the Casey Foundation, a leader in the fatherhood field and someone I consider a mentor shared this insight:  

“We have got to be willing, we’ve got to have the courage of our convictions, we’ve got to be willing to say out loud that a criminal justice system should pay as much attention to the justice as it does to the crime.”

Let’s always remind ourselves of the tremendous imperfections in our democracy. Let’s remind ourselves that many of the people sitting in this room this morning were never contemplated as full citizens upon the writing of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. But also let’s remind ourselves that true justice and democracy is about struggle. Struggle is what we all must be committed to if families of incarcerated individuals and their children are to do well, and if our democracy is to be transformed.

SLIDE # 16