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NEWS & LETTERS, July 2002
Youth column
Injustice system grows
Chicago—Five panelists convened to discuss the deeply
unfair and flawed nature of the criminal justice system, from the death penalty
to surveillance of youth in high schools. They met at the Rolling Thunder Down
Home Democracy Tour in Union Park on June 15. Dr. David O. Stovall, a professor at University of
Illinois, Chicago, said that as far back as the Nixon presidency there was a
discussion of ways to control the Black population in our country. Everything
was in place for a crackdown even before September 11, he said. Now these plans
have come to fruition and include South Asian and Arab Americans as well. Stovall described a Chicago law enforcement
"sweep." All people must be out of sight. People can be arrested
for sitting on their front porch during the sweep. During the summer months,
this goes on twice a month in some neighborhoods. The sweep's purpose is
unclear. It results in anger and alienation for the residents (mostly Black and
Latino). A policeman trumps school protocols when a student is a
suspect, Stovall said. A lawman can walk into a classroom and remove a
student—no academic procedure necessary. Stovall cited the 2001 name change,
when the unconstitutional Gang Loitering Ordinance of 1996 was reincarnated as
the Gang Terrorism Act. This law allows the arrest of children as young as seven
years old. He mentioned that in Michigan a 13-year-old boy is being tried as an
adult. The media is the handmaiden of the criminals who enforce
and prosecute unconstitutional laws. According to Edwin Yohnka, ACLU director of
communications, the crackdown on youth was accompanied by a 700% increase in
media coverage of youth crime during a period when juvenile crime was actually
decreasing. Yohnka explained that the school system has become a
feeder for the prison system. Prisons need labor to fulfill contracts with
industry. The least powerful socially and economically are targeted for this
legal racket. Pastor Carlos Linnear of the Community Renewal Society
said because ex-felons are unable to find jobs and have been taught no skills,
their life on the outside is extremely hard, a fact that leads to recidivism. He
made it clear that a prison term is merely a down payment on a person's
"debt" to society because society exacts payment that continues
throughout the ex-prisoner's life. Through the Corrections Corporation of America,
businesses—Russell Athletics, for example—take advantage of slave labor at
Danville Correctional Center (Illinois), said Linnear. Russell, which has
recently discontinued its arrangement at Danville CC, remitted only $2 per hour
for the labor of prisoners. Most of the "salary" went to the
correctional center for room and board, he said. The prisoner got 21 cents per
hour for other necessities. This transfer of funds to corporations amounts to
corporate welfare. U.S. taxpayers foot the bill for a justice system that
perpetrates modern slavery. His colleague at Community Renewal Society, Don
Washington affirmed Linnear's opinion saying, "We've created a
prison-industrial complex that is anti-democratic and driven by market forces.
So it consumes those who have been historically discriminated against, namely,
Blacks, Latinos, women and all the poor." Joanne Archibald of the Chicago Legal Advocacy for
Incarcerated Mothers and former prisoner discussed the effect of imprisonment on
family development and coherence. And Rachel Dietkus from the Illinois Coalition
Against the Death Penalty discussed efforts to change the death penalty
moratorium to abolition. All the panelists, in one way or another, made it clear
that the system favors money, not masses, and profit, not people. Linnear quoted
a politician saying, "There are no votes in justice, but you can run and
win forever on crime." Politics is not the place where people will learn that
new human relationships are necessary if we are going to make a better society. —January |
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