Posted on 06/19/2002 4:41:45 PM PDT by TheRedSoxWinThePennant
Fettered Fathers
By Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
06/16/2002 © Tribune Syndicate
For too many children -- 1.5 million according to the Department of Justice statistics -- this Father's Day will pass with a father who is incarcerated. These fathers will be disproportionately African American and Latino, the vast majority incarcerated for non-violent crimes. In our passion to punish rather than treat drug addiction, we are contributing to a new generation of poor children without fathers.
America's disgraceful criminal justice system continues despite undisputed proof of its racially discriminatory effect. According to the federal Household Survey, "most" -- almost three fourths -- current illicit drug users are white, only 15% are black. Yet African Americans constitute over one third of those arrested for drug violations, and almost 60% of those in state prisons for drug felonies. Black and Latino drug users are more likely to be arrested than white drug users, more likely to be charged with a felony when arrested, more likely to be convicted when charged, and more likely to be imprisoned if convicted.
Racial profiling focuses police on young blacks and Latinos. Prosecutors use their discretion against black and Latino offenders. Drug laws punish the drugs of the poor (crack cocaine) more harshly than the drugs of the rich (powder cocaine). Judges use their discretion against black and Latino offenders.
The result is devastating. One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 is under correctional supervision or control: imprisoned, on probation or on parole. A newborn African American male has a one in four chance of going to prison in his lifetime (for whites, it is only 1 in 23). All Western European national incarceration rates are below 100 per 100,000. In America, for white men, the rate is 630 per 100,000. For African Americans, it is 4,617 per 100,000. There are more young black men in jail than in college.
Harsh mandatory sentencing laws, particularly on street drugs like crack cocaine, impose long-term sentences on people who are sick. Low-level crack dealers and first time offenders sentenced for trafficking in crack cocaine, receive an average sentence in federal courts that are two times longer than the average prison sentence received by rapists, and almost as long as those convicted of murder.
This "drug war" policy has had no visible effect on drugs, which are more available and cheaper than ever. But its consequences in the African American and Latino communities are clear. "Crime control policies are a major contributor to the disruption of the family, the prevalence of single-parent families, and children raised without a father in the ghetto," conclude scholars Craig Hancy and Philip Zimbardo, after a study of US prison policy over the past twenty-five years.
In many states, political disenfranchisement is added to family disruption. Forty-eight (48) states prohibit inmates from voting while incarcerated. Thirty-two (32) prohibit felons from voting while on parole. Nine states deny the right to vote to all ex-offenders, even after they have done their time and "paid their debt to society." Four others disenfranchise some ex-offenders.
The result: 13% of black men are disenfranchised. In the states that deny the right to vote to ex-offenders, one black man in four is permanently disenfranchised. These laws then have political effect. For example, in Florida, 31% of black men are permanently disenfranchised. 400,000 ex-felons were unable to vote in the 2000 presidential election. That wasn't enough for Katherine Harris, the Bush campaign chair who headed the Florida State Election Commission. She then got a Republican firm to purge eligible African Americans from the voting lists, inaccurately labeling them as ex-felons.
The excluded voters were more than enough to change the result in the 2000 presidential race - and in many statewide contests. In states like Florida and Mississippi, this discriminatory system is stripping blacks of their right to vote as effectively as Jim Crow laws did a generation ago.
We now keep a staggering 2 million people in jail and prisons. Most of these people are sick and poor. Two thirds have not completed high school. One third are unemployed. Over seventy percent are convicted for non-violent crimes.
This makes no sense. The fiscal cost of warehousing these young men exceeds the cost of educating them and of treating them for their addictions. The human cost of locking people up rather than lifting them up is incalculable.
The social cost of separating fathers from their children is apparent. We are recycling the pain into the next generation, raised largely in poverty by single mothers against the odds.
On this Father's Day, celebrate your father, but remember those children whose fathers are locked away. These shameful policies will change only when Americans let themselves be guided by their common sense and common decency rather than driven by their fears.
Gee Jesse, maybe blacks should stop committing the bulk of the crime in this country. Have you said that once to da communitiezz?
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