End of the “war on crime”?

THE NATION magazine recently published an article called "Is This the End of the War on Crime?" by journalist Sasha Abramsky, raising the question of whether the nation's race to incarcerate is finally coming to an end because of state budget crises, which have forced states to release tens of thousands of inmates.

In addition to these releases, the article says, several states have begun to implement programs focused on treatment and conceptually based approaches to crime like "restorative justice" and "harm reduction," instead of imprisonment and incarceration.

Indeed, these are welcome changes after almost 40 consecutive years of the ranks of the imprisoned growing with no end in sight. This past year alone, 25 states saw their prison rolls drop. Moreover, as Abramsky points out, even notoriously "tough-on-crime" states like Texas are being forced to look into alternatives to simply warehousing people in prisons. According to Abramsky, in 2007, Texas scrapped a $600 million prison expansion for a less expensive $300 million set of programs aimed at treating alcohol and drug abuse.

The crisis in state budgets has created an opportunity to discuss alternatives to the reckless imprisonment that has been fundamental to the American criminal justice system for a generation.

But despite this opportunity, a narrow focus on state budget crises and the resultant release of thousands of inmates exaggerates the extent to which the "war on crime" can be declared over.

WHILE HALF of U.S. states have seen the number of prison inmates drop, the overall decline in the number of people imprisoned was only 0.05 percent. Given the extreme rate at which people have been imprisoned in the U.S. over the last 40 years, this barely detectable decline in overall imprisonment isn't worthy of declaring the end of the war on crime.

In fact, only two short years ago, the U.S. was recognized as imprisoning a historically high number of its citizens--with one in every 100 American citizens behind bars. In 2003, the U.S. prison population reached 2 million for the first time, earning the country the notorious moniker of "incarceration nation."

And the number of people in prison says nothing of the number of citizens who operate under the jurisdiction of some aspect of the American criminal justice system, whether it is prison, jail, parole or probation. The total number of Americans under the authority of the criminal justice system is the highest in the world, exceeding the combined prison populations of Russia and China.

It's also worth noting that the declared end of the war on crime has meant very little in ending the racist war on African Americans in the criminal justice system. Regardless of whether prison populations are in slight decline, African American men, women and children remain dramatically overrepresented in all facets of the criminal justice system.

While there has been a 22 percent decline in the number of African Americans imprisoned for drug offenses between 1999 and 2005--a product of the increase in production and use of "crystal meth," leading to a 44 percent increase in the incarceration of whites on drug charges--African American men are still imprisoned at six times the rate of white men, and Black women at three times the rate of white women, according to Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project.

One in every 27 African American adults is in prison or jail versus one in every 45 whites. Despite the fact that Blacks commit approximately 9 percent of the crimes in the U.S., according to statistics, they represent 50 percent of the incarcerated.

The state of Iowa is a case in point for why any excitement about decreasing prison rolls has to be tempered by an understanding of the overall racist context. Though African Americans make up less than 3 percent of the Iowa state population, their numbers in prison have been growing. In 2009, African Americans were more than 24 percent of all new prisoners, despite the fact that the state's overall prison rate was in decline--hardly a cause for celebration.

The focus on declining state prison rates also says nothing about what prisoners are being released into--and how this may ultimately affect the long-term move away from imprisonment.

In her startling new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander shows how the effects of imprisonment reverberate long after the prison sentence has subsided. Alexander argues that the combined effect of disproportionate imprisonment of African Americans and the legal impediments placed on those with prison records has:

trapped [African Americans] in a permanent second-class status in which you may be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. All the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind...are suddenly legal again once you've been branded a felon.

When you combine this reality with the Depression levels of unemployment among African Americans in the U.S. today, it's clear that Black men or women with criminal records do not stand a chance.

In fact, a study conducted by Northwestern University found that white men with criminal records were twice as likely to receive a job offer than Black men with no record. So despite the release of prisoners, if there are no jobs available and no sustainable means for people to get on their feet, the overall climate is a recipe for recidivism--and more incarcerations when states are financially capable of it.

PRISON RELEASE is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the racist criminal justice system.

From recent studies confirming how African Americans are illegally scrubbed from juries by state prosecutors, to consistent reports of police brutality, to racial profiling by the cops, it's clear that racism and corruption in the criminal justice system is far from over.

Just last May, the New York Times reported that Blacks and Latinos were nine times more likely to be stopped and frisked by New York City police than whites. In 2009 alone, a shocking 490,000 Blacks and Latinos were stopped and searched by police simply for looking "suspicious," compared to 53,000 whites. These stops resulted in only a handful of arrests.

In Arizona, as a result of the racist Jim Crow law SB 1070, police are now required to racially profile--meaning an even greater number of Latinos and those who "look" Latino, or non-white, will be subjected to racist harassment by the police.

Finally, the racist murder of Oscar Grant--shot in the back while lying face down with his hands behind his back--demonstrates that at every level, the criminal justice system views Black life as much less valuable than others. Grant's killer was convicted, but of the least severe charge possible, even though the murder was committed in front of hundreds of witnesses and captured on multiple cell phone videos.

If the cops and the courts have gotten away with this kind of racist treatment of African Americans and other minorities for so long, it's not because the authorities don't understand the impact of their actions.

The 40-year "war on crime" has never been about crime, justice or "upholding the law." Rather, policies regarding prisons, courts and police have always been about racism and scapegoating--to divert attention away from the real crimes and criminals in American society: poverty, inequality, racism, the judges, the courts, the police, the bankers and billionaires, and the politicians who carry water for them.