February 8, 2017
Mass Incarceration: Through a 2017 Lens
Bill Wakefield
Chair of the Presbytery of the New Brunswick’s Mass Incarceration Task Force
Bill Wakefield and Claire Jacobus
Minutes of the 19th Meeting of the 75th Year
On Feb. 8, 2017, President Jock McFarlane gaveled open the meeting of the Old Guard at 10:15 a.m. in the Convocation Room of the Friend Center. Shirley Satterfield led the invocation and various members introduced their guests: Patrick Henry introduced Tom Giacobe; Susan Beck introduced Connie Hassett; David McAlpin introduced Jonathan Shenk; Claire Jacobus introduced Paul Wakefield; Keith Wheelock introduced Rainer Muser.
Claire Jacobus introduced the speaker, Bill Wakefield, whose subject was “Mass Incarceration: Through a 2017 Lens.”
Mr. Wakefield began by noting that the American passion for putting people in prison has put this nation quite literally in a class by itself. Indeed, the United States has a disproportionate share of the world’s prison population. The size of our population would entitle us to have only 5 percent of the world’s prisoners, but we have 25 percent of them. Indeed, the United States imprisons a far higher proportion of its general population than the more repressive regimes of Russia or Cuba.
Why, then, has this country so distinguished itself from other nations? You might think that as a democratic nation that fought a devastating war to eliminate slavery, the United States might be more reluctant to fill its prisons. But as Mr. Wakefield reminded us, in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, while freeing Americans from slavery and involuntary servitude, made an exception for those who have been duly convicted of a crime.
Kicked out the front door, practices derived from white supremacy and Jim Crow thus returned through the back door provided by laws, courts and law enforcement agencies.In part because of the conservative reaction to the civil rights laws passed during the 1960s, the prison population in the United States since the 1970s has grown three times faster than our general population.Mr. Wakefield went on to mention the impact of President Nixon, who adopted what has come to be called the Southern strategy of mobilizing the votes of white conservatives opposed to the civil rights movement. Thus it is no accident that white male Americans are only one-ninth of the prison population, as compared with one out of three African-Americans.
Thus the tradition of white supremacy has a way of perpetuating itself even when more liberal laws require the courts to ignore social background factors when sentencing offenders. To be sure, Americans have made great progress in extending voting rights, access to education, the equal protection of the laws and due process in the courts to all Americans. But as an example of due process and equal protection, Mr. Wakefield cited the three-strike law: If you have two prior convictions, a third will be enough to send you to jail, perhaps for 25 years. Originally, that law was a progressive attempt to make sure that, when a judge sentences an offender to prison, only the number of his or her prior offenses would be taken into account rather than the offender’s race or social status. Unfortunately, by removing judicial discretion, the reformers had given the judges no choice except to impose a prison sentence. Similarly, increases in the rate of incarceration can be attributed to the Violent Crime and Control Act: a bipartisan effort passed in 1995 and signed into law by President Clinton.
Policies increasing rates of incarceration are bipartisan for a reason. Mr. Wakefield reminded us that involuntary servitude, like antebellum slavery, is a powerful economic engine. Thus, by effective and increasingly militarized policing, local municipalities have been acquiring billions of dollars through fees and fines and by confiscating the property of offenders. Privatizing the corrections industry has allowed corporations like Aramark and the Corrections Corporation of America to turn prisons into profit centers. Similarly corporations like Whole Foods, Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret and McDonald’s profit by hiring prisoners for a small fraction of the minimum wage.
If high rates of incarceration have roots in the Constitution and in white supremacy; if they are deeply entrenched in the American social system; if they are the unintended consequence of well-intentioned and bipartisan social policy; if they are immensely profitable, what can be done?
Mr. Wakefield recommended several reforms: better paid and more experienced public defenders, leniency for nonviolent offenses, wider discretion for judges in sentencing, more mentoring before, during and after incarceration, more education in prison and more job training prior to release, a less punitive system of parole, debt relief for prisoners and ex-prisoners and the construction of more detention centers rather than more prison cells.
As a state that has made progress in introducing these some of these reforms, Mr. Wakefield cited New Jersey, whose incarceration rate is only 60 percent of the national average. But African-Americans are more vulnerable than white Americans to arrest for the possession, use and sale of drugs. That is because African-Americans violate the law on street corners whereas whites prefer to do so in the safety of their own homes and institutions.
That vulnerability, as Mr. Wakefield pointed out, begins early in life. Children who cannot read by the end of third grade have already entered what he called the school-to-prison pipeline and are very likely to be the ones hanging out on street corners, where they are more vulnerable to search and seizure. In the end, it is children, not offenders, who lack due process and the equal protection of the laws.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard Fenn
Claire Jacobus introduced the speaker, Bill Wakefield, whose subject was “Mass Incarceration: Through a 2017 Lens.”
Mr. Wakefield began by noting that the American passion for putting people in prison has put this nation quite literally in a class by itself. Indeed, the United States has a disproportionate share of the world’s prison population. The size of our population would entitle us to have only 5 percent of the world’s prisoners, but we have 25 percent of them. Indeed, the United States imprisons a far higher proportion of its general population than the more repressive regimes of Russia or Cuba.
Why, then, has this country so distinguished itself from other nations? You might think that as a democratic nation that fought a devastating war to eliminate slavery, the United States might be more reluctant to fill its prisons. But as Mr. Wakefield reminded us, in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, while freeing Americans from slavery and involuntary servitude, made an exception for those who have been duly convicted of a crime.
Kicked out the front door, practices derived from white supremacy and Jim Crow thus returned through the back door provided by laws, courts and law enforcement agencies.In part because of the conservative reaction to the civil rights laws passed during the 1960s, the prison population in the United States since the 1970s has grown three times faster than our general population.Mr. Wakefield went on to mention the impact of President Nixon, who adopted what has come to be called the Southern strategy of mobilizing the votes of white conservatives opposed to the civil rights movement. Thus it is no accident that white male Americans are only one-ninth of the prison population, as compared with one out of three African-Americans.
Thus the tradition of white supremacy has a way of perpetuating itself even when more liberal laws require the courts to ignore social background factors when sentencing offenders. To be sure, Americans have made great progress in extending voting rights, access to education, the equal protection of the laws and due process in the courts to all Americans. But as an example of due process and equal protection, Mr. Wakefield cited the three-strike law: If you have two prior convictions, a third will be enough to send you to jail, perhaps for 25 years. Originally, that law was a progressive attempt to make sure that, when a judge sentences an offender to prison, only the number of his or her prior offenses would be taken into account rather than the offender’s race or social status. Unfortunately, by removing judicial discretion, the reformers had given the judges no choice except to impose a prison sentence. Similarly, increases in the rate of incarceration can be attributed to the Violent Crime and Control Act: a bipartisan effort passed in 1995 and signed into law by President Clinton.
Policies increasing rates of incarceration are bipartisan for a reason. Mr. Wakefield reminded us that involuntary servitude, like antebellum slavery, is a powerful economic engine. Thus, by effective and increasingly militarized policing, local municipalities have been acquiring billions of dollars through fees and fines and by confiscating the property of offenders. Privatizing the corrections industry has allowed corporations like Aramark and the Corrections Corporation of America to turn prisons into profit centers. Similarly corporations like Whole Foods, Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret and McDonald’s profit by hiring prisoners for a small fraction of the minimum wage.
If high rates of incarceration have roots in the Constitution and in white supremacy; if they are deeply entrenched in the American social system; if they are the unintended consequence of well-intentioned and bipartisan social policy; if they are immensely profitable, what can be done?
Mr. Wakefield recommended several reforms: better paid and more experienced public defenders, leniency for nonviolent offenses, wider discretion for judges in sentencing, more mentoring before, during and after incarceration, more education in prison and more job training prior to release, a less punitive system of parole, debt relief for prisoners and ex-prisoners and the construction of more detention centers rather than more prison cells.
As a state that has made progress in introducing these some of these reforms, Mr. Wakefield cited New Jersey, whose incarceration rate is only 60 percent of the national average. But African-Americans are more vulnerable than white Americans to arrest for the possession, use and sale of drugs. That is because African-Americans violate the law on street corners whereas whites prefer to do so in the safety of their own homes and institutions.
That vulnerability, as Mr. Wakefield pointed out, begins early in life. Children who cannot read by the end of third grade have already entered what he called the school-to-prison pipeline and are very likely to be the ones hanging out on street corners, where they are more vulnerable to search and seizure. In the end, it is children, not offenders, who lack due process and the equal protection of the laws.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard Fenn