PRISON, POLITICS, AND POLEMICS
With the massive buildup of the Prison/Industrial Complex and the warehousing of millions of citizens, convicted for their ethnicity, social/economic status in an unfair criminal justice system, US justice is for sale-sold to the highest bidder. At this rate, the prison population will grow to four million by the year 2008, and half of these will be re-offenders far more violent than when they went in.
The majority of the prison population is poor, but not only black, brown, and red. Poor whites as well are caught up in the wave of warehousing humans for profit, breeding a new class of people-young, uneducated, guilty of minor crimes of drug possession or theft, and now serving sentences averaging 10 years. Brutalized by the prison subculture and by seasoned prisoners, these young offenders are learning disrespect, rage, hate, racism, intolerance, brutality, anarchy, exploitation, and blind revenge, and are returning to the free world to re-offend due to lack of programs and opportunities. These are the true political prisoners of today-youths who come into the prison system by the hundreds of thousands every year, more than the number of youths who graduate from high school.
The 17-year-old Chicano, born in East Los Angeles or San Jose to a family of nine, whose mother is on welfare or hustling in El Barrio, is sentenced to an adult prison for 7 years, where he will earn a Bachelor's degree in prison political science. This youth lacks the opportunities of a 17-year-old living in West Los Angeles or Lincoln, Nebraska, whose parents make a combined six-figure income and can bail him out and hire a decent attorney. At worst, he will catch a year's probation with 50 hours of community service and restitution.
Most states do not have prisoner-rights legal programs, activists, or interest groups. The ACLU doesn't even scratch the surface. A few states, like California, New York, Illinois, and a handful of others, have organizations such as California Prison Focus, Critical Resistance, The Fortune Society, Prisoner Rights Coalition, but these are private nonprofits with limited resources. The new Prison Litigation Reform Act and other strict prison reforms have virtually tied the hands of a prisoner with legitimate civil liberties/civil rights violations. Even if he gets a hearing, it's usually before a biased jury ignorant of the current prison industrial complex and effects of the overall judicial system.
The answer is not rapidly executing all on death row or building new multi-million dollar prisons. We should be advocating on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, many of whom have waged war against the prison/industrial complex and US imperialism. These are truly prisoners of war, caught in a web of planned oppression, tracking, profiling, and forced poverty. Many do not claim innocence and stand behind their actions against the government.
We need change now, before the situation gets worse. Activists should demand an overhaul of the criminal justice system with provisions for education, legal and judicial equality, pre- and post- release programs, and prison administrative accountability for abuses.