| Number 66 | April 14, 2000 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, A call has gone out: Those of us who are concerned about social justice and who want to make a general statement in opposition to the corporate world view and in favor of democracy and stuff like that are invited to come into downtown Minneapolis on Monday, May 1st, to participate in any of a number of actions that will be decided upon by the participants. “Both creative and political statements are needed,” the loosely-organized and decentralized sponsors say. Is your group going to be there? To find out more, call 612-676-2188. See ya there! Correction: I said last week that the demonstrations against the World Bank and IMF were going on last week and this week. In fact, they started this week that we are now in and are continuing into next week, the week of April 17th. What was I thinking? Sorry. No room for a Website Of The Week in this issue of the Notes. Maybe I’ll do more than one next week to make up for it. There is some really great activism going on around issues of criminal justice, and websites galore! We’ll see. There’s just so much to say, and so little space to say it! See ya next week, Nygaard |
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The myth of Minnesota Nice took another hit in an article in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of Sunday, April 9th. Entitled “Justice’s Disparities in Race Draw Scrutiny,” the article included the following statement by reporter James Walsh:
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I try to respond privately and promptly to all the readers who contact me, but some responses deserve to be read by everyone. So this week I am publishing a few responses to recent letters: Conscientious Spokane reader R. Olson was hoping that my promise two weeks ago to talk about “values, biases, and how to think” was an error. He wondered if I meant to say that I would talk about how to think “critically.” No, I said what I meant to say. To reflect on something in an “uncritical” way is not what I call “thinking.” But thanks for the comment, Mr. O; I will be more careful with my language in the future. A couple of readers pointed out that, with all my going on last week about values, I didn’t state my own values for all to see. For the record, the core values motivating Nygaard Notes are Solidarity, Democracy, Compassion, and Justice. They are also stated quite clearly on the Nygaard Notes website at www.freespeech.org/nygaard_notes . (What do you MEAN, you haven’t visited the site yet?!) In speaking about a wealth tax in Nygaard Notes #64, I did not make it clear that the modest proposal put forth by Professor Ed Wolff would exempt from the tax all wealth up to $100,000. Since most of us have most of our “wealth” tied up in our houses (if we’re lucky enough to have one), and since a lot of those houses are now worth more than $100,000, any wealth tax that started below that amount would hit the middle class pretty hard. Wolff’s proposal is also progressive, so assets that total just over $100,000 are taxed at a much lower rate than those that come in at over a million bucks. I was called on this lack of clarity by conscientious reader L. Cunningham, who added that “The real answer, I feel, lies in redistributing the hog trough of corporate subsidies, tax breaks, and benefits the government slops out every day.” That’d be a good start, all right. Thanks for pointing out my sloppiness. Most of the letters I get are very positive and make me feel appreciated, and I thank all of you who have sent me such letters. I also get some angry and critical letters. While these letters do not give me warm fuzzy feelings, I certainly appreciate getting them. When someone writes to call me a hypocrite or to inform me as to just how biased or ignorant I am, it invariably causes me to take a close look at whatever I said that offended them. That can only be good! So I am absolutely sincere when I invite you to write whatever is on your mind. If there comes a time when most of the letters I get are mean and nasty, then I might re-think the whole project. In the meantime, all your letters are helping make Nygaard Notes better. Thank you. |
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As we approach April 20th, which is the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School that so horrified the nation, I’m sure the airwaves will be filled with stories about how we fear for our schoolkids and how to protect them from their maniacal classmates. So it’s a good time to offer a few facts about violence in the schools. According to a study just released by the Justice Policy Institute and the Children's Law Center entitled “School House Hype: Two Years Later,” kids are actually pretty safe when they go to school. The study points out that FBI arrest data indicate there has been a 56% decline in juvenile homicides from 1993 to 1998, and a 30% decline in overall juvenile crime. Still, nearly two thirds of poll respondents (62%) believe that juvenile crime is on the increase, and 71% of respondents in a recent poll said they thought a school shooting was “likely” to happen in their community! The actual chances of any child meeting a violent death at school is about the same as their chance of being struck by lightning. Literally. (About a 1-in-two-million chance.) As Justice Policy Institute Director Vincent Schiraldi points out, “The data reminds us that our young people are neither school-house assassins nor the kids on the other side of the yellow tape, weeping over the deaths of their classmates. Our kids are the ones playing soccer, going to dances and doing the other normal things kids do. They don't need us to turn their schools into prisons, they need our support to live healthy, happy lives.” One of the political effects of this irrational fear is that schools have gotten on the “zero tolerance” bandwagon and are much more willing to punish and suspend students for trivial reasons, like having a jackknife in their pocket. Lots of students are being victimized by this official paranoia, with the consequences being felt disproportionately by African-American students, as usual. So instead of protecting our students from a remote risk, we are creating real risks to their well-being by our own reactions. This mirrors the (possibly) unintended consequences of our reactionary response to crime in the larger society. |
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A couple of years ago I asked one of my soccer teammates if he could give me a ride to the game we had that night. Since he lived in a southern suburb and our game was in a northern suburb, my central-city house was right on his way. He gladly agreed, and asked if I could be waiting out front when he came, adding sheepishly, “I don’t like to get out of my car in your neighborhood.” “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be waiting on the front porch.” I didn’t tell him that our neighborhood has one of the lowest crime rates in the city. He wouldn’t have believed me, since my neighborhood is quite racially mixed, and we’re about a half-mile from downtown Minneapolis. And I guess we all know what that means in modern America. This man grew up in the suburbs of St. Paul, which is apparently a different world. And, of course, he has a television. I thought of this last week when, in a rare departure from my usual avoidance behavior, I actually watched the local television news several times. (Why? I thought there might be some coverage of a demonstration I had attended; there wasn’t.) What an eye-opener that was! No wonder people think they’re going to fall victim to a drive-by in my neighborhood! If you watch the TV news every night you can’t help but be a little paranoid about life in the city. The top stories were all stories of random disaster, crime, and bad luck. I forget exactly, but I think some building collapsed and killed a kid, then a woman was reported missing, and there were a couple of rapes and murders, and who- knows-what-all chaos and pandemonium. There’s a monster lurking around every corner! This viewing experience reminded me of why I so often encourage people to avoid watching the TV news. Speaking about the violent and negative programming found there, Eisenhower Foundation president Lynn Curtis says, “Day in and day out, the average, middle class, suburban American viewer is left with the feeling that nothing works. This may increase the likelihood that the middle class viewer will conclude that policies like naysaying and prison building are the answer, [rather than] replication of programs that do work.” As we enter the 21st century, “naysaying and prison building” certainly seem to be the popular answers. And they most certainly do not work. What Americans Want I believe that most Americans want the same things when it comes to crime. We want to reduce the levels of crime, we want to reduce the number of actual criminals at large in the society, and we want to reduce the level of fear of crime among the public at large. Despite the fact that there are numerous examples of policies that have proven successful in meeting each of these goals, many of our political “leaders” still pander to the public fear by promoting the old “tough” programs and policies that have proven to be failures, such as mandatory minimum sentences, “zero tolerance” policing, prison “boot camps,” and the “war on drugs.” It might surprise some to learn that the overall crime rate in the United States has been falling since 1993. While every political leader from President Clinton down to your local police chief likes to take credit for this drop in crime, there is no apparent correlation between their “get tough” policies and lower crime rates. Violent crime rates have gone down at roughly the same rate in virtually all of our cities, regardless of the style of policing or the level of resources devoted to cracking down. Cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis have notoriously “tough” approaches to policing, while cities like Boston, San Diego, and Columbia, South Carolina have “liberal” approaches to policing. Levels of crime are dropping at similar rates in all of those cities. San Francisco hasn’t done much of anything in terms of police reform over the past ten years, yet similar declines in crime are reported there. The same is true even in East St. Louis, Illinois, where the police force did not have sufficient funds to even buy enough police cars! The Crimes of Law and Order If the lack of a correlation between increased policing and a drop in crime rates were simply evidence of a gigantic waste of money it would be bad enough, and worth fighting against. But it’s much worse than that. Our mindless attempts to suppress crime with “toughness” are eroding the quality of life for all Americans, with poor people and people of color suffering the most, by far. We have criminalized huge segments of our population, forcing huge numbers of people into overcrowded, nightmarish jails and prisons. Once there, prisoners are subjected to conditions that are unconscionable, going beyond crowding and lack of medical care to include rape and torture at the hands of the authorities. While many Americans are outraged at the stain on our national honor that is being imposed by this punitive ideology, many others are ignorant of what is happening. Even worse, many Americans choose not to look. Here are a few facts about our criminal justice system that may surprise some readers:
Why are so many people in jail? Mostly for drugs. Who are they? Mostly poor people and people of color. Next week I’ll look at race and drugs, and also highlight some positive alternatives to this misguided war on our own people. |