Inside or outside the rule of law our prison system is full of inequalities and discrepancies with our proposed democratic method.
2. Create a gulag
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.
This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.
Secret prisons across Eastern Europe were used to interrogate some of the most important al-Qaeda suspects. Nearly four years ago the CIA established a secret prison system that spanned eight countries: Thailand, Afghanistan, a number of Eastern European democracies, and Guantanamo Bay. In Soviet-era buildings terrorist suspects disappear, what happens is still unknown. In White House, CIA, and Justice Department documents these secret prisons are referred to as "black sites." While it is unsure what happens at these locations, the increase in abuse by US military and other forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are reason for concern. Images of the abuse are disconcerting, but what have we really done about it? Congress is supposed to have oversight on such operations, but we seem to have a Congress that prefers to not live up to its mandates.
More recently controversy has arisen about the practices at the most more well known of these "black sites." Torture has become the defining activity of the current administration. Last week, the top Bush Administration officials met to sign off on torture tactics that were "ok" to use. The Bush Administration has signed off on torture. In an article from The Progressive one author can't believe that this news was so quickly out of the main stream media. I for one an not surprised, but the author makes a good point. We know that torture is happening, our government is ok with it, and somehow we have a democracy here?
Secret prisons across the world, one just off the coast of Florida, but what about the US prison system? Why has there been such a surge of inmates in recent years? Why is the US the only country and society in history to imprison more of its people in the name of security? A 1998 article in The Atlantic excellently explains the "prison industrial complex." The surge in the numbers of people in prison has been steadily rising. The number of minorities and those of 'lower' economic class are outrageously high.
During enslavement, Black people were severely punished according to the whims of the plantation owners, for "real or imaginary" crimes, such as running away, disobeying an order, or assaulting an overseer (Deason, 2005, p. 95). After the Civil War (1861–1865), a new form of enslavement was instituted when southern states needed to rebuild plantations and cities that had been destroyed during the war. Policies and laws crafted by southern lawmakers were designed to entrap homeless and hungry formerly enslaved Black people.
As of 2003, there are 2.2 million people incarcerated. However this is a surprising occurance since from 1923-1973 there was a stable level of about 110 in prison for every 100,000 people. The high numbers are equally disturbing since from 1992-2000 crime rates steadily declined. Racial minorities were also disproportionately represented in the prison system. Blacks, American Indians, and Latinos all had higher incarceration rates than whites. Minority youth make up 34 percent of all juveniles are 62 percent of those youth incarcerated. This is paired with a sharp rise in government spending on prisons and the idea that prisons represent an industry of safe jobs that will not be outsourced. Some of the harshest laws passed by Congress have been to crack down on crime and push the war on drugs forward. Shall we incarcerate the majority of our population to provide some jobs that cannot be outsourced and the powerful can financially benefit? As a way to strengthen the prison industrial complex, Congress has passed a number of harsh laws and acts to regulate crime and drug policy. I suggest reading the full article by Adolphus Belk Jr.
Read Step One.
No comments:
Post a Comment