American Values Questioned

James
Caroll, in a
Boston Globe op-ed piece, mentions some alarming statistics concerning
the US criminal justice system. He makes the argument
that racism has been so effectively and insideously institutionalized
under the guise of the "War on Drugs" that we have liquidated an entire
generation of our minority population. The Dowbrigade assumes that
had he been born a member of a more obvious minority he would have
been
put away long ago…..

In late October, in a speech in Fall River, Robert A. Mulligan, chief
administrative judge of Massachusetts, noted current characteristics
of US criminal justice. The American prison population recently went
over 2 million for the first time, putting the United States ahead of
Russia as the world capital of incarceration. Add to that number those
on parole or probation and the total under "correctional" control
grows to 7 million. Thirty years ago, one in 1,000 Americans was locked
up; today, almost five are. In famously liberal Massachusetts, the prison
population has grown, since 1980, from under 6,000 to almost 23,000.
In 2003, for the first time, the amount of money Massachusetts spent
on prisons was more than what it spent on higher education.

These statistics accumulate a punishing weight falling more on African-American
males than anyone else, and from that springs the year’s fundamental
epiphany. Justice? Democracy? In the United States, according to Judge
Mulligan, one in three African-American males between the ages of 20
and 30 is "under correctional control." In places like Baltimore
and Washington, more than half are. The number of African-American men
in college is less than the number of those under supervision of the
courts.

from the
Boston Globe