opinion@dailylobo.com
Is America a “police state?” Within the context of mainstream political discourse in America, the subject is unworthy of discussion. Despite the lack of any critical public debate on the issue, however, it’s clear that we are already well on our way to reaching full-blown police state status.
We’re a lot closer than most people think. Consider the authorities’ heavy-handed response to the recent nationwide “Occupy” movement: That popular, spontaneous uprising has been effectively crushed through the utilization of brute force. Legal political dissent has been violently and successfully suppressed across the country in recent years.
My wife and I just returned from Texas: a huge open-air prison, as far as I’m concerned. Austin is a great town, but outside the city limits the police presence is oppressive. They’re everywhere. In Texas it’s legal for police to shoot people from helicopters, and it has already authorized the use of unmanned drones to fight crime along the Mexican border. It’s only a matter of time until those drones are fully armed.
Central Texas was quite a contrast to New Mexico, where a notable lack of law enforcement is evident as one travels throughout the state. The Daily Lobo recently ran a front page article decrying the APD’s looming personnel shortages and the department’s ongoing problems with recruitment. Let’s hope this trend continues; I support a competent and well-funded police force, but I sure don’t want our state to become another Texas.
The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation on earth, far more than even China or Russia. China is home to more than four times the U.S. population — a billion more people than the United States — yet our prisons currently house more prisoners than that globally acknowledged “police state.”
The rise of the private prison industry in America is largely to blame for this trend. In the past three decades we have seen a crusade to privatize state and federal prisons in order to “save money” and ease overcrowding under pressure from the courts. These savings have never materialized, and from the very beginning the industry has been accused of an assortment of crimes, including influence peddling, double-dealing and illegal corporate lobbying.
More than 2 million Americans are now held in U.S. jails. Blacks make up somewhat less than half that number. A total of around 6 million people are under some form of correctional supervision — either incarcerated, on probation or on parole. Human conduct is becoming criminalized like never before, and for political reasons judges have been required by law to mete out increasingly punitive, lengthy and costly sentences, even for nonviolent offenders.
The recent laws decriminalizing marijuana in Washington state and Colorado are encouraging signs that voters are becoming dissatisfied with the federal government’s failed War on Drugs. It will be interesting to see how the feds handle this new challenge.
No doubt the local SWAT teams will be involved.
Nonviolent offenders make up around 60 percent of the American prison population. Releasing just half of them would provide almost $20 billion a year for education and other worthy social programs, with no measurable impact on the crime rate. Several recent studies reveal that locking up people for minor offenses actually increases recidivism because they become hardened criminals while incarcerated. Inmates rarely have access to therapy or vocational programs while in jail, and the children left behind in broken homes are more likely to grow up to become offenders themselves. It’s a vicious cycle.
Over the last 30 years, the rate of incarceration in America has been nothing short of phenomenal. The money that states now spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. It’s obvious that politicians care more about locking people up than they do about educating them. The costs associated with the prison industrial complex are untenable in the long term, both economically and socially: a free society should not have 2 million people behind bars, and a fiscally responsible nation simply can’t afford it.
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Today, private prisons are a $74-billion-a-year industry in America. Privately run prisons routinely cut corners on worker salaries, training, inmate health and facility maintenance for the sake of shareholders’ portfolios and increased profits.
It is immoral to profit from the misery of others. Several religious organizations have called for a moratorium on construction — or outright elimination — of private prisons: the Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church and the Catholic Bishops of the South have all joined the appeal.
Proponents of privately run prisons contend that cost-savings and efficiency give them an advantage over public facilities. Recent research casts doubt on the validity of these claims, however.
Evidence has shown that private prisons are neither more cost effective nor more efficient than public facilities. There is virtually no difference in cost between state-run and privately run prisons.
The creation of the prison-industrial complex came about with the politically motivated demands for legislators to “get tough on crime” during the Reagan era. By creating new laws and by increasing the severity of sentences for many existing crimes, American courts created a shortage of prison cells. Soon, prison overcrowding surpassed construction budgets, and politicians who had promised to construct new prisons suddenly could no longer afford to build them.
In the early 1980s, a group of investors with close ties to the Tennessee legislature saw a great business opportunity, and they formed the Corrections Corporation of America. Their plan was to create a new kind of prison, leasing their beds to the state for a profit, like a hotel. The idea caught on. Today, nearly 10 percent of all U.S. prisons and jails have been privatized.
CCA and another key player in the prison industry, the GEO Group Inc,. operate facilities in New Mexico. Both of these corporations are also major contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council, the D.C.-based lobbying organization which develops model bills that state legislators consult when proposing new “tough on crime” initiatives such as the “Truth in Sentencing” requirements, or the abhorrent “Three Strikes” laws. Both companies have lobbied to create new laws and increase sentences for offenders in several states, notably in California and Kansas. Critics argue that private prison companies directly influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences. You think?
The GEO Group and CCA both manage portions of New Mexico’s prison system. They currently maintain four facilities in this state. The GEO Group was recently forced to pay nearly $300,000 in penalties on top of the $1.1 million in fines assessed last year by New Mexico’s Corrections Department for the company’s continued failure to adequately staff the women’s prison in Hobbs. Fines were also levied against the state’s number two prison operator, CCA.
Many people believe that more police, more prisons and more surveillance make us more secure. Others say our criminal justice system is “broken” and in need of repair. Nothing could be further from the truth. The prison-industrial complex does exactly what it was designed to do: It creates a lot of wealth for a few people, and it destroys those who represent the greatest threat to state power — people of color, women, noncitizens, dissenters and young adults.
It’s called a “win-win” situation.
