Josh MacPhee - Just Seeds Artists' Cooperative

If you are curious to know what type of hotel accommodations you could afford for the cost of incarcerating prisoners in various states, then this is the post for you.  A quick check of hotels.com allowed me to find hotel rooms that mirror the daily costs of incarcerating a prisoner in the U.S.  Pay particular attention to all of the amenities that each hotel room comes equipped with in order to understand what an insane waste of resources incarceration really is.  We need to find another way to address the root causes of violence and crime.

I thought that it might be interesting to look at the rate vs number of prisoners under state jurisdiction by race across 2000 and 2009.  This does not capture prisoners under federal jurisdiction.   Not surprisingly, you can note the disproportionate rate of black incarceration at the state level.  It’s important when trying to understand the problem of mass incarceration in the U.S. to look at the RATE of incarceration relative to the total population.

Rate vs. Number of Prisoners Under State Jurisdiction by Race, 2000 & 2009

Boise State Public Radio reports on a new fundraising strategy which I sincerely hope does not become more popular:

BOISE, ID (idaho) – A lot of people in Boise workplaces were carted off to “jail” today. There they’ll spend their incarceration calling friends and asking them to donate bail money, in this case the money goes to the Muscular dystrophy Association. Boise State Public Radio’s own computer expert Rick Dorey was hauled off to jail this morning.

Honestly, trivializing the experience of incarceration in this country is a regular occurrence.

Cornell Companies reported revenues of $103.9 million in the second quarter.

They also reported that:

For the six months ended June 30, 2010, revenues were $203.9 million as compared to $205.0 million for the first six months of 2009. The decrease was principally related to the D. Ray James Prison facility transition, and as well the available capacity at those programs (including our two small California community correctional facilities) mentioned earlier. As previously noted, the 2010 period included revenues of approximately $2.7 million resulting from the guaranteed population contract at the Regional Correctional Center for the contract years March 26, 2007 through March 25, 2008 and March 26, 2008 through March 25, 2009.

“Corrections” is big-business worldwide.

I am very interested in the concepts of prisoner recidivism and particularly in re-entry.  With more than 630,000 individuals released from state and federal prisons a year, a lot of attention is being paid to re-entry issues.  In particular, a number of faith-based organizations are taking the lead in this area.  A few weeks ago, I blogged about a new report by the Legal Action Center which created scorecards for each state based on the number of barriers that returning prisoners face. 

I have been interested in comparing recidivism rates between states.  This is a difficult task because each state defines recidivism differently and measures it in its own way.  On average, national recidivism rates for men are 37.8% and for women 29.3%. I was able to find recidivism rates for most U.S. states.  In this blog post, I am particularly interested in identifying states with over 50% recidivism.  

These numbers have important public policy implications and suggest that certain states are doing a terrible job of ensuring the successful reintegration of former prisoners.  Additionally in every case, female prisoners recidivate at a lower rate than male prisoners.  What accounts for this phenomenon?  What can we learn from former female prisoners about their successful integration into their communities that might be applied to male prisoners?

Didn’t see your state represented in the chart? In the next couple of days, I hope to feature recidivism rates for other states that fall under the 50% target.

Apparently, it is illegal to videotape traffic stops or other interactions with the police.  Presumably, police officers do not believe that they are accountable to community members.  An article in Time Magazine asks the question: “Should Videotaping the Police Really be a Crime?”

From the article:

Anthony Graber, a Maryland Air National Guard staff sergeant, faces up to 16 years in prison. His crime? He videotaped his March encounter with a state trooper who pulled him over for speeding on a motorcycle. Then Graber put the video — which could put the officer in a bad light — up on YouTube.

It doesn’t sound like much. But Graber is not the only person being slapped down by the long arm of the law for the simple act of videotaping the police in a public place. Prosecutors across the U.S. claim the videotaping violates wiretap laws — a stretch, to put it mildly.

Another incident cited in the article:

Last year, Sharron Tasha Ford was arrested in Florida for videotaping an encounter between the police and her son on a public sidewalk. She was never prosecuted, but in June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida sued the city of Boynton Beach on her behalf, claiming false arrest and violation of her First Amendment rights.

The legal argument prosecutors rely on in police video cases is thin. They say the audio aspect of the videos violates wiretap laws because, in some states, both parties to a conversation must consent to having a private conversation recorded. The hole in their argument is the word “private.” A police officer arresting or questioning someone on a highway or street is not having a private conversation. He is engaging in a public act.

In Brooklyn, a terrific group called Sista II Sista used to tackle police violence specifically against young women of color by videotaping encounters with the police.  They even produced a video and workshop around this work.  While Sista II Sista is no longer in existence, they have memorialized their work in a terrific toolkit created by Incite! Women of Color against Violence.

Under the headline “Prisons: They’re not just for criminals anymore,” USA Today offers yet another article about prison tourism with a twist:

But Americans excel at re-imagining their prisons as tourist attractions. Dozens of former U.S. jails and prisons now charge admission, most notably San Francisco’s Alcatraz, operated by the National Park Service. Audio tours feature riveting narration by former inmates and guards.

But several other institutions have kicked it up a notch. As reported here recently, the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield (seen in the 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption) hosts a dozen or so weddings a year, plus “Glamour in the Slammer” bridal shows.

In Moundsville, W.Va., the Saturday all-night ghost-hunting tours are are so popular they’re sold out through 2010. (You can try again in January 2011, when new dates will be announced.)

But some of the most creative prison programming comes out of Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary. This Saturday and Sunday it’ll host a Prison Break Weekend, in which “visitors can hone their escape skills” by crawling through a tunnel designed to mimic one used in a 1945 escape attempt by 11 inmates who dug a 90-foot tunnel.

Bring the kids! No, really, says Eastern State’s program director Sean Kelley. While the former prison’s programming typically isn’t geared to children younger than 7, this weekend is billed as “family-friendly” with lots of fun interactive activities. (Shiv-making presumably not among them.)

When I say that Americans are disconnected from the horrors of prisons, this is a classic example of what I mean.  As anti-prison activists, we have a massive re-education job to do so that the broader public realizes just how obscene this type of “entertainment” really is.  It’s worth taking a look at photographer Mark Murrmann’s meditation on prison tourism called Invitation to a Hanging. His work puts this whole issue in its proper context.

The average Black male
Live a third of his life in a jail cell
Cause the world is controlled by the white male
And the people don’t never get justice
And the women don’t never get respected
And the problems don’t never get solved
And the jobs don’t never pay enough
So the rent always be late; can you relate?
We livin in a police state
— Dead Prez (Police State)

I would like to attest to the fact that the vast majority of young men of color that I work with consistently experience police harassment. This is often a source of a lot of emotional and psychic violence. It contributes to the already significant amounts of daily stressors and trauma that young people of color experience.

ColorLines has produced a short video that addresses itself to this racial profiling by law enforcement. I would like to add a little context to this issue of police harassment and the toll that it takes on black youth. I argue that is a major source of urban trauma that is often overlooked or misunderstood.

MEE Productions Inc. has just published a new community participatory action research study that focuses on the issue of mental wellness among black youth. One of the key findings of their study suggests that:

Dealing with police officers can cause contant stress for young Black men, even if they are “doing what you’re supposed to do.” Interactions with police were cited as stressful because, “you can be chillin’ and you come up as someone’s target.” An Oakland male agreed, “Hell yeah, it’s a stressor. They [the police] just killed my homeboy. They handcuffed him and shot him in the back three times. That’s stressful.” Participants said that police “mess with” the wrong people and that even innocent residents can be targeted by “crooked cops” who take the law into their own hands…They also complain the residents in their community don’t feel protected or served when they are victims of crime and call the police for help.

This quote points to the ambivalent relationship that some young black people have with the police. On the one hand, the police are mistrusted and seen as harassers; and on the other, there is frustration with the fact that the police are not responsive when they are in fact needed. All in all, my experience of working and collaborating with black youth supports this finding. We do not look at the trauma that black youth experience at the hands of oppressive systems like law enforcement. This is often minimized or even normalized. The Prison Industrial Complex is manifest in society but it also greatly impacts our mental and emotional wellness. This must always be underscored.

I think that Colorlines has done those of us who work with youth a great favor by producing the following video which I plan to include in my popular education toolkit.

Read more about this project here.

I think that one of the ways that those of us who want to see prisons abolished have to make our case is by emphasizing the high budgetary cost of incarceration. I have tried in this blog to document these economic costs in a variety of ways.

Prisoner health care costs have been a topic of interest for me for some time. In fact, during the recent Congressional health care reform debate, I researched the costs of prisoner health care and found some interesting numbers.

Highest Average Annual Expenditure Per Prisoner for Health Care
Washington $7,773
Massachusetts $7,389
Wyoming $7,257
Minnesota $6,800
Nebraska $6,462
Oregon $6,021
New Jersey $5,508
Source: Corrections Compendium, Winter 2009

Earlier this week, I posted information about the states with the highest percentages of prisoners over 55 years old. It seems that the correlation between having a high percentage of older inmates and paying higher health care costs per prisoner is not strong. Only Minnesota and Nebraska appear on both lists.

I then wanted to investigate whether states that spent a high percentage of their total department of corrections’ budget for prisoner care also appear to have a high percentage of aging inmates. The correlation there is also not strong. Only Alabama which spends about 30% of its total budget on prison health care costs appears also on the list of states with the highest percentage of inmates over 55.

I noticed while attending the ACA Conference that many of the exhibitors were heath care-related and pharmaceutical companies.  Aetna can obviously make a whole lot of money in this racket and so can many other companies.  Another example of the prison industrial complex at work.

I have nothing intelligent to write about the topic of prison “reality shows” like Lockup which seems to constantly be playing on MSNBC. I just know that I really hate these shows because they are exploitative and almost never illuminating in any way. They do not catalyze mass movements of people mobilizing to abolish or even reform these penal institutions. I have watched exactly two episodes of Lockup and found both episodes to be uninformative and sensational. Apparently there are other “reality” prison shows airing on MSNBC that have names like the Squeeze.

Now I read that there is a new “reality” show about prison police called “the Squad.” And according to the review, this show follows in the footsteps of other previously uninspiring, voyeuristic, and perhaps detrimental prison “reality” shows in being a basic waste of time.