United States of Incarceration?
This is not a good thing.
on 02/28/2008 at 04:36 PM
OK, time for another pile of my observations and questions (questional observations?).
We have produced a system that neither provides enough punishment to deter crime, nor any significant rehabilitation. When crime first began to spiral, the first reaction was to increase penalties for many crimes. That actually doesn’t work, except that when the criminal is behind bars, he can’t commit a crime in society. The only drawback is that it’s expensive to keep him locked up and he’s still a problem when he gets out.
Most of the criminals I’ve ever met just don’t believe they’ll get caught. They’re too smart and the cops are too stupid. Yeah, right, Dummy, that’s why you just got done doing 8 years in prison. You can define insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results. There is an overall recidivism rate of about 60%. The rate is higher if the first institutional time was when they were teenagers or young adults. They become “Institutionalized” and it sets a pattern that functionally sentences them to life in prison. It’s a life sentence on the installment plan, 5 years here, 8 years there; they can rarely stay out of trouble more than about 2 years. They just don’t know emotionally or any other way, how to live in the world as we know it.
There are probably a number of crimes that 50 years ago, the cop would have just said “get out of here.” Also at that time, the person caught had enough respect for the police to take the officer’s advice to heart. That’s a key difference that goes along with some of the negative changes in our society. This relates to how each of us sees him or herself in relation to the larger society.
When I taught at a trade school in East Los Angeles, most of my students were Hispanic, male, Gang Bangers. The reason that they were in my class was that they’d finally realized that La Vida Loca (The Crazy Life) just wasn’t going to cut it and they didn’t know what else to do. The school’s “admissions” department was actually a sales department and the kids got hit with some serious recruiting. Most of them weren’t from the serious hard core of the gangs, but they were all affiliated with or members of gangs. The gang gave them a place in society. The gangs were really the only society where they felt accepted and among their peers. From their schools, from their parents, from all the leaders they’d known, they had been taught that they were nothing but dumb Spics (Only a word that ugly can describe what they’d been taught about themselves.) who ought to stay out of the white world and not get too big for themselves. Very little of it was direct. Mostly it was low expectations. No one ever expected them to do well academically or in almost any other way that would give them a piece of the American Pie.
My cure was to teach them as if it was 1960 again. No calculators. No hats in class. No walkmen or beepers in class. Lots of work with clear standards and clear rewards when they did it right. I demanded respect and in turn I also respected them. I still love them. They were neither lazy nor stupid and they understood pride. Once they learned they could learn, they learned. They did Algebra and Trig with pencil and paper. They got to know what they had accomplished. They also realized they could have a piece of the American Pie. During those 3 years, I figure I let about 200 tiger cubs loose. Most of them at least got decent jobs; some of them started successful businesses. The important part of what I taught wasn’t the course work. The important part was to teach them what they could accomplish. From the natural geek to the hard-core banger who came in secretly for extra tutoring (didn’t want to mess up his street cred), they were self-powered and on their way. THAT’S empowerment, not the “feel good” B.S. we get from the Liberals. When you achieve, you feel good about yourself.
Anyway, it’s actually no surprise that Hispanics and Blacks make up a disproportionate amount of the prison population. They are often disenfranchised from the greater society to the point where many don’t even try to enter the mainstream. It’s the discrimination of low expectations. They are often raised in messed up families, especially the Blacks. In some cases, we are now dealing with multiple generations that have never completed High School or held a regular job. A lot of Hispanics are very loyal and very much in contact with their extended families. That seems to help some, even if there are children out of wedlock. The father usually affiliates with the mother’s family and vice versa. I’ve no study to back this up; it’s just my observation from having lived over 50 years in different parts of Los Angeles.
My apologies for the extended rant. This is a very complex situation, involving the overall society, various pressure groups, individuals, families and institutions. It’s also one I care about a lot. There is no simple analysis that can be done here. Except for very broad concepts such as “Return to Traditional Values”, there are no simple cures. Yet even within the concept of traditional values, there are a lot of individual parts, some of which are more important than others. That relative importance of each part will vary a lot with the individual and the region. A concept that is “one size fits all” is as non functional as the petty details of an environmental bureaucrat.
I believe the key is the sense of disenfranchisement.
La Vida Loca is Spanish for The Crazy Life. It’s how the Hispanic Gangbangers and such call their lives. Sometimes they use the phrase Mi Vida Loca; My Crazy Life instead. Since their lives involve drug usage, drug sales, assaults of one kind or another, shootings and retribution shootings, it’s a pretty good description. It also shows a serious problem that has to be dealt with. Not that the gangs are criminal enterprises, that’s bad enough, but that the gangs have grown because the people joining the gangs feel they have been completely disenfranchised from the larger society. Since they don’t think they can have a piece of the larger society, they form their own society.
The answer to who is doing the disenfranchising is: Almost every institution from schools to family to welfare to politics and beyond. White racial bigotry against Brown and Black exists, but it’s a pretty minor factor except in the opinions of Sharpton and Jackson. Welfare programs are already famous for their corrosive effect on those they’re supposed to help. The schools with their political correctness and lowered standards can’t actually confront and deal with the problem. That’s a big problem in itself. The teachers who actually try to make a difference are usually told to STFU by the school administration, which was afraid of getting sued. When I was teaching, I regularly used techniques that would have gotten me fired on the spot if I’d worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District. I sometimes got the impression that students in the LAUSD are passed from one grade to another because the were good boys and girls who didn’t assault the teacher.
Then there are additional problems within the communities of these folks. I know it specifically from the Hispanic side, but I’m pretty sure it’s got it’s own version on the black side. The Hispanic community here has no trouble with hard work. They have no trouble with learning delicate, professional work. I’ve seen a welder who could barely speak English, weld 2 pieces of titanium together and make it look as if the two had grown as one piece. If you know about welding and titanium, you know how difficult that is. He was an expert at his job and worked with real pride. The problem lies in the expectation for the next generation. The kids are expected to go to work, not get a PhD. In any case, the Hispanic community is seriously growing away from that defeatist attitude. The campaign and election of Antonio Villaraigosa as the Mayor of Los Angeles is a prime example. A less benign example gets involved with the politics of immigration and the illegal aliens who are not only an integral part of the our Hispanic community, they are sometimes even relatives of U.S. born Hispanics whose families have been here for decades or centuries. The immigration issue is a serious “wedge” with no apparent solution that will keep all parties happy or even not too unhappy. It quickly makes a divisive us verses them situation, in this case we have a border dividing a rich country from a poor one.
They never forget that Anglos took all of the United States, from Northern California to the Eastern border of Louisiana, from Mexico. Never forget, these are people with a lot of pride and very strong ties to their families and culture.
My thoughts on White/Black relations here are that the work of Sharpton, Farrakhan, and Jackson is readily apparent. Even in mixed, “enlightened” areas, there’s always some undercurrent of Black anger and White fear. Mostly the Blacks are angry about the past and very sensitive to anything they perceive as discrimination. The Whites are afraid of offending the Blacks and triggering another racial incident. That makes for a pretty twitchy situation. That’s a side of the Poverty Pimps work that usually isn’t considered. To keep their power and position, they have to keep Black people angry and White people scared. They’re a long way from Dr. King. Fear and anger are a good way to keep the society divided and have one or both groups feel disenfranchised. Beyond that, I believe that the problems affecting Blacks are similar to those affecting Hispanics. The answer is actually the same though: When you know your accomplishments will get you a piece of the pie, not much really bothers you.
I think That’s most of it right there, 1) the politics of fear and anger, and 2) the low expectations creating a dependent, victim mentality. However, I also see another side.
Any of you Pratchett fans remember this quote? “It wasn’t that the city was lawless, it had plenty of laws. The problem was that it didn’t provide many opportunities not to break them.”
The more you web people round with little niggly-shit laws, that it costs more to fight and win than to just shut up and pay the fine.... the more frustrated and helpless people feel. This will express itself in randomized violence, things like vandalism and road rage. The constant 24/7 frustration that *you can’t do anything about* going on for YEARS will also contribute to heart attacks, back problems, ulcers, migraines. It’ll make a difference in whether a couple arguing curses each other for a while and then one leaves, or whether it becomes a “domestic violence” situation. It’ll show up in all sorts of little ways that will add slightly to the population of jails.
Drug laws.... I’m not gonna argue the right and wrong of drug laws. People’s mileage varies. However, I will note that it seems likely that robbing a liquor store to pay for your drug habit would probably be less common if the druggie *wasn’t subject to arrest and incarceration already*. He has less to lose.
Yes, I fully sympathize with “I don’t want someone who’s brain is fried on __________ to be able to legally ___________ like the rest of us can.” Where I hit a snag is that I can apply that sentence to most of the people I know who drink alcohol, too. Personally, I firmly believe that the only reason alcohol and tobacco are legal and all the others are not is because alcohol and tobacco are the legislators’ and lobbyists’ drugs of choice.
But regardless of where you stand on right or wrong, it DOES add to the jail population. Add to that that the political left has spent the last several decades trying to criminalize anything that is not expressive of subservience (but only when the perp is straight/white/male/conservative/Christian/wealthy, pick any 3)… I really do think a lot could be done if Congress was tasked with going through every old law and revoting it.Personally I think every law on the books should have a sunset. It keeps Congress busy enough to have a record they can tout during elections, WITHOUT requiring them to pass stupid shit just to have something to do. And I’d think it would *tend* to keep laws cut noticeably closer to the absolutely necessary minimum. Even things like laws against murder 1 should have to pass a majority every 10 years, or 20 years, or whatever. Granted, I don’t think that’d be difficult for something like murder 1.... but I think it would be helpful on things like driving while talking on a cell phone. 20 years from now talking on a cell phone while driving is likely to be safer than listening to the radio while driving. It just seems obvious to me, pass the law, then give it a decade or so to see how it ACTUALLY works out. Not workin? Good, do NOTHING, it will expire all by itself.
