| Number 68 | April 28, 2000 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, I try never to do a series of more than three parts (for some reason). That’s why this week is the final part of this series, even though there is much more to say. I haven’t even mentioned the issue of conditions inside the prisons (including prison labor), nor the issues of political prisoners, immigration policy, police brutality, the death penalty, prison privatization, or the larger political economy of the prison-industrial complex. Whew! There’s another dozen issues of Nygaard Notes right there! Mark your calendar for two fast-approaching rallies: The first will be next Tuesday at 4:30, protesting the impending invasion of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques by the United States military. Call Manny at 729-6832 for details. The other one will focus on women in prison, about which I’ll say more next week. That’ll be on Thursday, May 11th, 11:30 am, in downtown Minneapolis.Next week I plan to catch up a bit, with a few shorter pieces about some of the most instructive and interesting items in the news lately. One of ‘em will probably be about crime, but mostly I’ll be on to other things. I made some minor efforts to jazz up the E-mail version this week. Let me know if it screwed up your version. Solidarity, Nygaard |
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From an Associated Press report on the sale of Ben and Jerry’s “socially responsible” ice cream company (for $326 million) to Unilever, the world’s largest ice cream maker, known around the world as a union-buster and water polluter:
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Since I haven’t offered a Website of the Week for a couple of weeks, here are no fewer than six of the best sites to visit for taking action on the national disgrace that is our criminal incarceration (I can’t say “justice”) system.
There are lots more sites but that’s enough for now. |
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The story on crime and punishment in Minnesota is a mixed one. Relative to other states, Minnesota is generally less punitive - we sentence fewer people to prison than any other state - and more willing to explore community-based and preventive approaches to crime. At the same time, our justice system is one of the most racist in the country, judging by the numbers. Let’s take a look. The Good News There are a number of reasons why Minnesota has a generally low rate of incarceration. One reason is that relatively few crimes are committed here compared to other states. This is not an accident. The social causes of crime have been reduced by, among other things, Minnesota’s historically low unemployment rates and high levels of education and public services. At the same time, our commitment to public health - including chemical dependency treatment - helps to address some of the most important individual causes of “crime.” Minnesota has a long history of funding victims’ services efforts as well, which also plays a role in improving the community’s capacity to deter crime before it occurs. We can thank Minnesota feminists for getting that started. After crimes are committed, Minnesota is better than many states at providing appropriate medical, rehabilitative, and educative assistance for the offenders, since some people around here still cling to the notion that these are human beings with the potential for rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. A seemingly quaint notion these days, but it is effective in reducing crime. One thing our state has done is to modify the “automatic lock-up” provisions in federal drug felony laws, choosing instead to “reserve prison space for violent and more serious offenders, while establishing a network of support programs for less serious offenders.” Minnesota also has a law called the “Community Corrections Act,” under which the state pays counties a percentage of what it would otherwise cost to send a petty thief (or other non-violent offender) to prison to retain him in a local, community-based program. Minneapolis judges still have the option of sending those offenders to prison. However, if they feel that a drug treatment program with intensive supervision is more appropriate, the county gets state funds to purchase such services and the state gets to keep the rest of what it would have cost to imprison that offender. That gives both the state and the county incentives to create and utilize programs that have a public health orientation. This orientation is not only cheaper for the state (which was a large part of the impetus behind its original passage) but is also more effective in reducing crime. Furthermore, it increases the chances that our fellow citizens who have been convicted of a crime can get it together and have better lives. Minnesota is one of only two states that still provides TANF (welfare) payments and Food Stamps to all drug felons, recognizing to some extent that the simple cutting off of addicts from all public services only reduces the chances for a full and lasting recovery. All of these efforts are to be applauded, but being the “best” state in the United States is faint praise, given that we remain the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. It also should be noted that Minnesota’s commitment to health-care, housing, public infrastructure, and decent-paying jobs is under attack here as everywhere, and will continue to decline in proportion to the success of the anti-tax, “free-market,” crowd. A genuine concern about crime, therefore, should logically lead one to take action to retain our relatively high levels of taxation and the public services that go along with them. The Bad News While the overall numbers on incarceration make Minnesota look pretty good, at least in the American context, the picture is absolutely horrifying when we introduce race into the picture. We have already seen the incredible impact of racism on our criminal “justice” system on the national level. As bad as that is, the situation in Minnesota is much worse. Nationally, an African-American man is almost 8 times more likely to be in prison or jail than a “white” man. Outrageous? In Minnesota the ratio is 25 to 1, three times as bad! And that’s only one statistic. As on the national level, blacks in Minnesota get treated worse at every step along the way in the criminal incarceration system. Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page points out that a recent study in which he participated found that blacks in Minnesota are not only incarcerated more often than whites, but “they are given longer sentences, they receive higher bails, they are subject to less favorable plea bargains, and on and on and on.” He added that “Whites are more likely to get a summons to appear in court; blacks are more likely to be arrested and held in jail. Whites are more likely to get fined; blacks are more likely to serve time.” What’s So Complex? Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reporter Dan Olson introduced an April 17th report on this phenomenal racial disparity in Minnesota’s incarceration rate by stating, “Some say racism is behind the disparity; some say the cause is more complex.” What remained unsaid in the MPR report is that racism itself is pretty complex, especially the “Minnesota Nice” version. john powell of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota points out that “When you factor out poverty, education, and everything else, the remaining gap can be explained by racial bias.” That’s a lot to factor out, but it’s not too complex. Many white folks in Minnesota have failed to do their homework on racism, so they continue to think that racism is no more than overt acts of hostility between individual people of different races. It’s not too hard for most people to see the racism when an innocent black man is sent to jail by a bigoted judge. But how about when an unemployed black man with an 8th-grade education is targeted by a municipal enforcement policy that sweeps through his neighborhood and catches him buying crack from his buddy? He is “guilty” under Minnesota law, but no more “guilty” than the suburban stockbroker who discreetly purchases powder cocaine from his buddy on the 13th floor of the IDS Center downtown. But one will likely end up in prison; one will never even be arrested. (Whether or not either of them should be guilty of anything is another story; see last week’s Nygaard Notes) This is not really that complex, either, but if you have a desire to deny the impact of racism in our “Nice” state, it’s complex enough to hide behind. Hennepin County Drug Court Judge Kevin Burke says that, “Racism occurs in Minnesota courts, and the first part of recovery is admitting you have a problem.” True enough, and aren’t those of us from Minnesota - the “Chemical Dependency Treatment Capital of the World” - supposed to understand this idea? How ironic that the white majority’s attempt to make Minnesota appear “Nice” in our own eyes requires us to avert those eyes while our police and courts systematically victimize entire populations of people of color. White people’s reluctance to admit that we have a problem with racism is one of the real problems with “Minnesota Nice.” Referring to the 25-to-1 ratio of black men to white men in prison, MPR reporter Mark Olson stated that “the obvious reaction is, ‘It’s a statistical fluke.’” In the chemical dependency business, we call this “denial.” If you are determined to avoid seeing racism, you can come up with all sorts of alternative explanations for the racism you see. Racism allows people to see the world as “us versus them.” And it’s much easier to victimize “them” than it is “us,” whether the victimization takes the form of street crime or the denial of home loans or whatever form it takes. The truth is that all crime involves real people with real souls, and it is never as simple as “good guys” and “bad guys.” Unless and until we do our homework on racism, the response to crime by the fearful majority will be increasingly powerful punishments directed at “them” in a futile attempt to protect “us.” That approach has not reduced and will not reduce crime. But that’s not to say that nothing can be done. The next article is about a positive alternative approach. |
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Many people around the world, from the United Nations Crime Congress to indigenous elders in Hawaii, have been talking about an alternative approach to crime that would turn us away from our punitive, vengeful systems and move us toward a healing vision. There are many variations on this theme, but I have chosen to publish here the following rather eloquent introduction to the idea by Dan Van Ness, activist and author. (These words are actually the text of a slide show presentation on Restorative Justice. For a fuller understanding, see the Websites of the Week.) Healing the Wounds of Crime “Something is wrong with our ideas about criminal justice. “For one brief moment the victim and the offender confront each other. Crime establishes a relationship in which one wounds another. But we seldom deal with the wound. We try offenders when we catch them. And we sometimes send them to prison, not for the injury done to the victims, but because they broke the law. So now we have two wounds, and no healing. “The wounds multiply. Friends and neighbors of the victim, concerned for their own safety, start taking greater precautions. Fear is also a wound. The families of prisoners, unable to deal with the separation and stigma, begin to draw apart. Another wound. The victims who are recovering and the prisoners who are being released discover that the community cannot accept them as victims or ex-prisoners, and they conceal that part of themselves. More wounds “We must hold offenders accountable. They have broken the law; they have hurt others. If we do not insist that those who commit crimes be held responsible for their actions, we begin a slide into chaos. But the offender can be held responsible in many ways. It is in our best interest to find those ways that heal wounds, not create new ones. “That is the vision of restorative justice. It is victim-centered in that it focuses on the people who have been harmed. It is participatory in that it involves those directly affected by crime: the victim, the offender, their families and representatives of the community. “It is a process that begins with listening to the victim, community, and offender. It reinforces their common values. It assumes that with crime comes accountability. “It responds to crime by efforts to make things right.” |