BLACK BERMUDA TRIANGLE - White Conspiracy Vs. Negroes - BLACKS IN U. S. PRISONS Part 4 of 4

Originally published @Blog-City August 9, 2005

BLACK BERMUDA TRIANGLE -


WHITE CONSPIRACY AGAINST

BLACKS IN AMERICA


– BLACKS IN U.S. PRISON


INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX


Part 4 of 4

Originally published @ Blog-City August 9, 2005 (H: 4,357 + C:3)

Republished April 11, 2007 (H: 3,000 + C:3 - Reissued August 30, 2009

Total H: 7,357)

This is the 4th of 4 articles entitled, “Black Bermuda Triangle: White Conspiracy Vs. Negroes” – Yes, It Does Exist!

If you have not already done so, please read
Part 1, “Conspiracy Responsibility Overview”.

If you have not already done so, please read Part 2, “Rockefeller Drug Laws”.

If you have not already done so, please read Part 3, “Racial Profiling”.

BLACKS IN U. S. PRISONS – 3rd Vertex of Black Bermuda Triangle – Part 4 of 4 Articles

Incarceration Nation
The US is the World’s Leading Jailer
by Michael I. Niman, Buffalo Beat January 4th, 2000

When historians look back at the end of the 20th century they’ll write about "the era of incarceration." Prisons, like consumerism and suburban sprawl, have emerged as defining features of the American cultural landscape. Building and running prisons is one of the fastest growing industries in America, supported by a subservient judiciary eager to keep them filled. We are suffering through a bizarre but tragic social epidemic.

Since 1970 our state and federal prison population has grown nearly seven-fold from just under 200,000 to close to 1.4 million people. Add to that an additional 606,000 or so people locked up in county and city prisons, and we have approximately 2 million people in American jails.

In New York State we’ve seen the number of our neighbors locked up increase from 12,500 to over 70,000 during the same time period.

In 1998 the US surpassed the former Soviet Union and won the crown as the globe’s foremost jailer with an incarceration rate of approximately 690 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. By comparison, that is almost 6 times Canada’s incarceration rate (115), over 12 times Greece’s rate (55), 19 times Japan’s rate (37) and 29 times India’s rate of 24 prisoners per 100,000 citizens.

Most Americans have turned a blind eye to the growth of what economists now refer to as "the Prison Industrial Complex." We know prisons are being built, but politicians and news anchors assure us that prisons are being built for prisoners, for bad people, for scumbags, not for us. It’s not our concern. At these epidemic levels of incarceration, however, we need to picture ourselves in prison, because the industry’s drive to build and fill cells is insatiable. We need to picture ourselves toiling to pay taxes to support these prisons at the expense of cuts in education and most social programs we hold dear.

Ronald Reagan’s Legacy Prison growth is fed politically by the growth of the pro-prison lobby, consisting of the newly empowered prison employees’ unions and the private prison industry. Mandatory sentencing laws adopted by most states as part of Ronald Reagan’s "war on drugs," assured that our spanking new jails would be full for decades to come. This is Reagan’s legacy. The same people who voted Reagan into office voted for a plethora of state ballot propositions such as "three strikes and you’re out" laws mandating prison without parole for people convicted of three crimes.

In California, progressives recoiled in horror not only at the social cost of incarceration, but at the economic impact of filling jail cells at a cost of $20,000 to $60,000 per prisoner per year. The cost of "three strikes" legislation in California, according to a RAND Corporation study, would add nearly $6 billion to the cost of running California’s jails. Horrified that these billions would come at the cost of cuts to education, the arts, parks, environmental programs and social programs, the statewide teachers’ union led a campaign to defeat the resolution. They were outspent many times over, however, by a statewide prison guards’ union whose members were salivating at the thought of thousands of new jobs. The resolution passed in 1994, as did similar laws in state after state including New York.

In the 1990s as prisons filled and bills came due, states such as New York placed public universities and school systems on austerity budgets, cutting faculty lines at the same time prison spending grew by epic proportions. For the past 15 years New York hired relatively few college professors, but a hell of a lot of prison guards. Drug Arrests Triple - Jail Sentences Quadruple The war on drugs, if successful at nothing else, was extremely prolific in filling cells.

Drug arrests tripled from 1980 to 1997 with almost 80% of these people being arrested for simple possession. The number of people in state prisons for drug offenses increased eleven-fold from 1980 to 1996. Mandatory sentencing laws stripped judges of their ability to exercise judicial discretion, thus increasing the likelihood that a drug law offender would wind up in jail by almost 450% from 1980 to 1992. It wasn’t really a war against illicit drug users or even drug dealers as much as it evolved, either by design or by chance, into a war on people of color.

The statistics are horrifying, yet this institutional racism continues unabated, rubber-stamped by a complicitous judiciary.

A War on African Americans -"Driving While in Kenmore"
Consider these numbers: According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, African Americans make up 13% of illicit drug users in the United States. However, according to the Sentencing Project, a policy research institute funded in part by the Department of Justice, African Americans constitute 35% of all arrests for drug possession, 55% of all drug possession convictions and a whopping 74% of people sentenced to jail for drug possession. White people, by comparison, make up 74% of illicit drug users but roughly account for only one fifth of those serving jail time for drug possession. Put simply, this means that if a white man in Amherst and a Black man in Buffalo both personally consume illicit drugs, the Black man is over 20 times more likely to wind up in jail.

Part of the blame for this disparity lands with police agencies that are more prone to stop and search African Americans (for infractions such as "driving while in Kenmore") or carry out the bulk of their drug enforcement operations primarily in African American neighborhoods where their heavy-handed tactics meet less political resistance.

Statistics show that both practices are racist, as blacks are not statistically much more likely to abuse drugs. Blacks are, however, statistically more likely to be arrested for abusing drugs, making racial profiling a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The bulk of the blame for this disparity lies with the judiciary. First, judges seldom blink an eye at the fact that black drug users are three times as likely to be arrested as whites, thus raising a plethora of constitutional issues. Second, once arrested, African Americans are over 50% more likely than others to be convicted in the courts. And third, once convicted, blacks are another 40% or so more likely to receive jail time.

Skip College - Go Directly to Jail
The end result in New York State is that 51% of the state prison population and 91% of the New York City prison population is African American. Take into account the subsequent cuts to education funding which were needed to fund this prison growth and we wind up with the horrific fact that there are more African American men in New York State prisons than there are enrolled as students in the State University of New York system. When we factor in parole and probation, we wind up with twice as many African American men, under the control of the criminal justice system, as are enrolled in all community colleges, colleges and universities, private and public, in New York State.

This does not bode well for the future of New York. Aside from providing needed dollars for prison construction, education cuts also guarantee that prisons will remain occupied. Nationally, 65% of prisoners have not completed high school. In New York State prisons that number is 75% and in New York City prisons a full 90% of inmates never completed high school. From an economic point of view, it is much cheaper to educate someone and radically lower their probability of landing in jail, than it is to incarcerate them. Politically, however, prisons are still the rage. Like the Nazis Before Them... State and local governments nationwide are finding out that even with cuts to other programs, they cannot afford the costly price tags associated with their new jails. To meet these costs, states are turning to prison labor.

American prison administrators are now "leasing" prison labor to private corporations in a system reminiscent of their Nazi predecessors, who "leased" concentration camp labor, to corporations such as Ford and BASF. The difference is that while the Third Reich prisoners were virtual slaves, the current American prisoners are paid. Their wages, however, are often less than state minimum wages, and the prison systems take about 80% of that wage for "room and board". The prisoners who stuff junk mail into envelopes for the likes of Bank of America, Chevron and Macy’s, take telephone reservations for hotels and airlines such as Eastern, pack golf balls for Spaulding, repair circuit boards supplied to Dell, Texas Instruments and IBM, etc. often earn about $1 an hour.

During the 1990s creative managers leased prison labor for a variety of tasks ranging from the nocturnal restocking of shelves at Toys R Us to raising hogs and manufacturing Honda parts and El Salvadoran license plates. Strange Math in the Census The prison boom has also caused a massive paper shift in the population of New York. The US Census counts prisoners as residents of the towns where they are imprisoned and not the communities where their homes and families are located. In reality, nearly 75% of the inmates in New York State prisons hail from seven neighborhoods in New York City (South Bronx, Harlem, Brownsville, East New York, South Jamaica, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Manhattan’s Lower East Side). These are some of the neediest communities in New York State, yet anti-poverty program funding that should be destined for these communities winds up diverted to communities that, at least census-wise, show large clusters of poor residents. Likewise, prison towns also enjoy bloated political representation since prisoners, who cannot vote, still count when legislative districts are apportioned, thus amplifying the pro-prison voice in the state legislature.

Again, constitutional issues come into play here, this time involving equal representation, yet there has been no remedy forthcoming from the judiciary. We fill prisons as rapidly as we build them, and build them as rapidly as we can fill them.


Prison wise, America is juggernauting out of control — Watch out.
Michael I. Niman is a faculty member at the University at Buffalo Center for the Americas. Dr. Niman’s previous articles are available on-line at http://mediastudy.com /articles. For more information about prisons, contact The Sentencing Project at http://www.sentencingproject.org, or The Correctional Association of New York State at (212) 254-5700. http://mediastudy.com/articles/incarceration.html  

U. S. Population by Race per 2000 Census


 

 
U. S. Federal & State Prison Population by Race per 2000 Census
 
The country that holds itself out as the "land of freedom" incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than any other country. The human costs — wasted lives, wrecked families, troubled children — are incalculable, as are the adverse social, economic and political consequences of weakened communities, diminished opportunities for economic mobility, and extensive disenfranchisement.

Contrary to popular perception, violent crime is not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States since 1980. In fact, violent crime rates have been relatively constant or declining over the past two decades. The exploding prison population has been propelled by public policy changes that have increased the use of prison sentences as well as the length of time served, e.g. through mandatory minimum sentencing, "three strikes" laws, and reductions in the availability of parole or early release.

Although these policies were championed as protecting the public from serious and violent offenders, they have instead yielded high rates of confinement of nonviolent offenders.

Nearly three quarters of new admissions to state prison were convicted of nonviolent crimes. Only 49 percent of sentenced state inmates are held for violent offenses. Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national "war on drugs." The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelve fold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.

Even more troubling

than the absolute

number of persons in

jail or prison is the

extent to which those

men and women are


African-American.

Although blacks


account for only

12percent of the


U.S. population,

44 percent of all


prisoners in the

United States are


black.








Census data for 2000,which included a count of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States, reveals the dramatic racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeds the proportion among state residents in every single state.

In twenty states, the percent of blacks incarcerated is at least five times greater than their share of resident population Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2002," April 6, 2003, available at: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs /abstract/pjim02.htm.

See Human Rights Watch, "Punishment and Prejudice," at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/
Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Prisoners in 2001," July 2002, p. 12, available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ bjs/abstract/p01.htm.
Ibid. Race, Population, and Incarceration U.S. Population by Race Source: U.S. Census, 2000. White and Black excludes Hispanics.
State and Federal Inmates by Race Source: Percentages calculated from data in Table 13, Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2002," April 6, 2003. White and Black excludes Hispanics.

Ratio of Percent of Blacks Among Incarcerated Population to Blacks Among Resident Population 

Tabacco: The following graph is Mind-Boggling:  Every State listed (37) arrests more Blacks than Whites for Drug offenses (even Hawaii, regardless of Black population % within that State).  The 13 States not included in graph are Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachussetts, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, & Wyoming.  I don't know why these 13 are not included.  I will give them the benefit of the doubt and surmise they don't keep such records - why they wouldn't keep such records, I leave to your imagination.

Prison Admissions for Male Drug Offenders by Race 

THE WORST 10 STATES FOR A BLACK MAN TO BE IN:
(The higher the Ratio, the higher the chances for a Black to be arrested in that State.) ................................

..STATE..................%Residents..%Jail Population....Ratio

1-South Dakota........0.6% ...........6.9% ................11.1
2-West Virginia.........3.2% .........34.9%.................11.0
3-Vermont ..............0.5% ...........5.2% ................10.3
4-Iowa....................2.1% .........19.7%..................9.3
5-N Hampshire .........0.7% ..........6.5%...................8.9
6-Minnesota.............3.5% .........28.5%...................8.2
7-Rhode Island........  4.5% ........ 35.9%...................8.0
8-Wyoming..............0.8% ...........5.9%...................7.8
9-Maine...................0.5% ...........4.1%...................7.7
10-Utah...................0.8% ...........5.9%...................7.4

National Avg........... 12.3%..........43.7%...................3.5

Tabacco Speaks: I see the trend here. States with very low Black populations look for Blacks to incarcerate. 6 of the Worst 10 have less than 1% Black population. None of the Worst 10 has 5% Black population, let alone the 12.3% national average. Only 1 State, Rhode Island (4.5%) has as much as 4% Black population.

Note that none of the Worst 10 are in the Deep South. Florida (14.6%) and Arkansas (15.7%) have the lowest % of Black residents in the Deep South. Mississippi (36.3%) has more than 1 in 3 Black residents. I guess that’s why the Deep South is solidly Republican – rednecks don’t like living among a large Black population. The Worst 10 all have miniscule Black populations, and they still jail every Black they can. And they don’t need Rockefeller Drug Laws to do it.  Who would have thought it could be that dangerous for a Black man to drive through South Dakota?

Warning: this comparison by factor is misleading in that any State with 30% black population, even if the black jail population were 100%, would not make the top ten since it's highest factor attainable is 3.3.  So a drive through a State like Mississippi cannot be considered "Safe" if DWB because this Factor comparison fails for all Deep-Southern States because of their large Black populations.

Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ has been proven to be a joke! ADVICE TO BLACK MEN (AND WOMEN): If you live in one of these ten States, MOVE! For the prurient among you, wondering where Colorado ranks (that’s where Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers had his alleged rape charge), the answer is: 3.8% Black population 22.1% prison population. 5.7 Ratio not far out of the Worst 10 group.

James Horton on “Like It Is” re why the biggest labor organization in the country was doing nothing re Blacks in prison manufacturing goods, quoting Seymour Melman, who died December 16, 2004, telling him to call the Research Director of AFL-CIO, “ Well, brother Horton, you have to keep in mind that the fastest growing sector of our organization are the prison guards. So we have to be very careful about what we say and what we do.”

Horton: The irony, after they (Black convicts) serve their time 15 or 18 years, they come back out onto the streets only to find there are still no jobs for them.

Additional Websites re Prison Industrial Complex: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-01.htm http://www.drugwarfacts.org/racepris.htm http://www.prisons.org/racism.htm http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/ny_prisonpoprace.shtml http://www.prisonpolicy.org/importing/importing.shtml http://www.doc.state.nc.us/r&p/abstract/1995/file14.htm http://members.tripod.com/~ronmull/racism.html http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/forum/16/2summer1999/b_essay.html http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KAY/is_1_5/ai_83457939 http://www.afsc.org/pwork/1200/122k05.htm http://salt.claretianpubs.org/sjnews/2003/04/sjn0304f.html http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2082.shtml http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36000.html http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dcp/html/census/pop2000.html http://terceiroanel.weblog.com.pt/nunoalmeida/bermudatriangle.jpg 

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corrtyp.htm Source: Correctional Populations in the United States, Annual and Prisoners in 2002. Violent offenses include murder, negligent and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, extortion, intimidation, criminal endangerment, and other violent offenses. Property offenses include burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, fraud, possession and selling of stolen property, destruction of property, trespassing, vandalism, criminal tampering, and other property offenses. Drug offenses include possession, manufacturing, trafficking, and other drug offenses. Public-order offenses include weapons, drunk driving, escape/flight to avoid prosecution, court offenses, obstruction, commercialized vice, morals and decency charges, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses. U.S. Department of Justice · Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics Prison Statistics Summary findings On June 30,2004, -- 2,131,180 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails -- an increase of 2.3% from midyear 2003, less than the average annual growth of 3.5% since yearend 1995. -- There were an estimated 486 prison inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents – up from 411 at yearend 1995. -- The number of women under the jurisdiction of State or Federal prison authorities increased 2.9% from midyear 2003, reaching 103,310 and the number of men rose 2.0%, totaling 1,390,906. At midyear 2004 there were 4,919 black male prison and jail inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,717 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 717 white male inmates per 100,000 white males. Between 1995 and 2001, the increasing number of violent offenders accounted for 63% of the total growth of the State prison population; 15% of the total growth was attributable to the increasing number of drug offenders. Percent of sentenced State inmates Most serious offense 1995 2001 Total 100% 100% Violent 47 49 Property 23 19 Drug 22 20 Public-order 9 11 Demographic trends in correctional population by race Adults under correctional supervision by race, 1986-97 Number of adults in prison or jail, or on probation or parole Year White Black Other 1986 2,090,100/ 64.5% 1,117,200/ 34.5% 32,100/ 1% 1987 2,192,200 1,231,100 36,300 1988 2,348,600 1,325,700 39,800 1989 2,521,200 1,489,000 45,400 1990 2,665,500 1,632,700 49,800 1991 2,742,400 1,743,300 49,900 1992 2,835,900 1,873,200 53,500 1993 2,872,200 2,011,600 60,200 1994 3,058,000 2,018,000 65,300 1995 3,220,900 2,024,000 90,200 1996 3,294,800 2,083,600 104,500 1997 3,429,000/ 60.2% 2,149,900/ 37.8% 113,600/2% Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics Correctional Surveys (The National Probation Data Survey, National Prisoner Statistics, Survey of Jails, and The National Parole Data Survey) as presented in Correctional Populations in the United States, 1997. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/cpracetab.htm (Tabacco Speaks: Watch out Puerto Ricans, America is discovering you next!) Q. The 3 places in America where Blacks are overrepresented re population %? A. 1- NBA, NFL, MLB 2- McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC 3- State & Federal prisons Incarcerated America Human Rights Watch Backgrounder April 2003

Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.

In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".




T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)

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