These eight words are the most important ones that you will utter if you are stopped by the police. If you work with young people, you need to drill these words into their heads.

“I will not talk, I want my lawyer.”

I read an article last week about some groups in Pennsylvania who partnered to offer a forum for young black men about what to do if they are stopped by the police. They offered these “10 Rules for Survival When Stopped by the Police:”

1. Be polite and respectful. It is important to make police feel that they are not in a threatening environment.
2. Stay calm and remain in control. You may be scared, but it is important for you to relax. Watch your words, body language and emotions.
3. Do not, under any circumstances, get into an argument with the police.
4. Always remember that anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law.
5. Keep your hands in plain sight and make sure the police can see your hands at all times. This means you keep your hands out of your pockets and avoid any hand motions or gestures that may be viewed as aggressive.
6. Avoid physical contact with the police. Do not brush against the police in any manner.
7. Do not run from the police even if you are afraid.
8. Even if you believe that you are innocent, do not resist arrest.
9. Do not make any statements about the incident until you are able to meet with your parents, guardian, a lawyer or a public defender.
10. Remember that your goal is to get home safely. Use the above rules to help you navigate a police stop. If you feel that your rights have been violated, you and your parents have the right to file a formal complaint with your local police jurisdiction.

These tips may save a life but they are not a guarantee. Many will find it extraordinarily sad that such a forum even needs to be organized. However the reality is that youth of color, particularly African American young men, are the disproportionately targets of the police. I briefly raised this issue again last week in my post about “dorm room drug dealers.” The reality is that these young people need to be trained in how to interact with the police since they are most likely to come into contact with law enforcement.

My friend Cait has put together this incredibly helpful and valuable two page street law handout for those who live in Chicago in English and Spanish.

“I will not talk, I want my lawyer.” Spread the word…

I had the pleasure of hearing Michelle Alexander talk about her book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” again last night at Roosevelt University. I had already heard her speak a couple of times before. She is always impressive. Frankly, however, I am not her target audience. I was glad to see that the room was packed with hundreds of people and that many of them seemed to have been shocked and appalled by the information that she was sharing about mass incarceration in 21st century America. One can only hope that even ten percent of those in the room will commit to joining the movement to dismantle mass incarceration.

As I watched Michelle speak, my mind wandered to thinking about some of the fabulous, fierce, and fearless women of color that I admire in history and in the present. One such woman is Lucy Parsons who was an anarchist, feminist, union organizer, and anti-prison activist in the late 19th century through the early 1940s. I have been fascinated by Parsons ever since I received as a gift, a book of her speeches and writings.

Parsons is not well-known today and when people do write about her it is usually as the wife and defender of Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons. Recently, her contributions are coming into fuller view and she is being recognized as the true revolutionary that she was. Robin D. G. Kelley has written that she was “the most prominent black woman radical of the late 19th century.” Yet very little is known about Parsons’s origins because during her lifetime she resisted talking about her biography usually suggesting that the “cause” is always greater than the “individual.” So we are left then with only one book about her life written thirty years ago; a book which has been criticized as overly “simplistic” and “relying too much on hearsay.”

During her lifetime, Parsons was regularly harassed and jailed by authorities. She once remarked that “Every jail on the Pacific coast knows me.” The Chicago Police famously dubbed her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” When she died, law enforcement officials burned many of her personal writings and artifacts. Thankfully some of her words and thoughts have been recovered and anthologized. For that we should all be grateful.

In an article that she published in the Liberator in 1906, Parsons made the case for a focus on alternatives to prison. She wrote:

“When society has grown wise enough to supplant the prison with the schoolhouse, the teacher for the hangman and kind treatment for punishment and substituting justice and kindness for brutality, we will hear very little more about ‘crime and criminals’.”

Alexander was basically making the same point in her speech last night that Parsons had made over 100 years earlier. There is an unbroken line of agitation and critique about prisons, though the context has markedly changed over the years. I don’t believe that Parsons could have imagined that the U.S. would have over 2 million people behind bars in the 21st century. Well perhaps I underestimate Parsons’s prescience and I should know better…

I had to put together a short list of useful readings about the current criminalization of youth (particularly black and brown youth) in the U.S. for one of my former students.

I think that some of these readings might be of interest to readers of this blog so I am sharing them here. There are a mix of academic and popular articles and essays. The list is not exhaustive but I have used these texts in my teaching and have found them very good.

L. Janelle Dance (2002) Fear of the Dark: the Villification of Urban Students in Tough Fronts: The Impact of Street Culture on Schooling. [This chapter explains how racial stereotyping negatively impacts young black men. Essential reading to understand the symbolic violence that many urban (black and brown) students have to overcome.]

Bernadine Dohrn (2000) “Look Out, Kid, It’s Something You Did:” The Criminalization of Children in The Public Assault on America’s Children: Poverty, Violence and Juvenile Injustice. Edited by Valerie Polakow. [This essay is a must read to understand the evolution of zero tolerance policies. Bernadine does a great job of clearly laying out how youth have been increasingly criminalized in multiple contexts including in schools, the child welfare system, the courts, etc…]

Henry A. Giroux (2009) Locked Up: Education and the Youth Crime Complex in Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability. [This chapter is not an easy read but it is essential to understanding the process of the school to prison pipeline. Giroux does a terrific job of explaining the genesis of the ‘punishing state’ and how this intersects with the institution of schooling.]

Lynnell Hancock (2000) Framing Children in the News: The Face and Color of Youth Crime in America in The Public Assault on America’s Children: Poverty, Violence and Juvenile Injustice. Edited by Valerie Polakow. [This essay takes on the news media and its role in shaping the public’s fear of children (particularly black and brown youth). Hancock squarely addresses the role of race and racism in media coverage about youth.]

Paul Hirschfield (2008) Preparing for Prison: The Criminalization of School Discipline in the USA in Theoretical Criminology. [Paul and I went to graduate school together but this is not why I am recommending this excellent article. He does a masterful job of laying out the evolution of zero tolerance policies and places these policies within a historical and sociological context. A must-read for those who want to have a better understanding of the context for the modern emergence of the school to prison pipeline.]

William Julius Wilson (2008) The Economic Plight of Inner-City Black Males in Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male. Edited by Elijah Anderson. [I am including this essay on this list because I think that it does a very good job of explaining the impact that deindustrialization has had on communities of color in the U.S. I do not think that one can understand the criminalization of black and brown young people without assessing the impact that unemployment and a lack of economic opportunities has had on them.]

Chicago Reporter Series About Youth Tried and Sentenced as Adults: Stolen Futures.

I have been meaning to write about this for the past few months but never got to it. I read a terrific book last year called Dorm Room Drug Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class by Rafik Mohamed & Erik Fritsvold and it has really stayed with me. Let me say up front that the book is in hardcover and is expensive so I would suggest getting it from your local library at this point or waiting for the paperback to be released.

If you are a student of sociology, you will appreciate this ethnographic study about the world of drug trading that involves wealthy and overwhelmingly white students. The book is based on 6 years of fieldwork on college campuses in southern California. It also includes interviews with nearly 50 informants who were current and former dorm room dealers. Most of the drugs that were sold and consumed were marijuana, cocaine, prescription drugs and other party drugs.

Some of the most interesting anecdotes in the book involve the dorm room dealers’ beliefs about themselves and about their trade. Most of them suggest that their social status as white young men protect them from being targeted and caught. Since they do not fit the stereotype of a “typical” street drug dealer (young, male, poor, and of color), they escape the scrutiny of law enforcement. The authors of the book characterize these dorm room dealers as “anti-targets.” Because of their race and class privilege, dorm room dealers were never really concerned about the police or being caught for their activities. In fact, many of them did not consider what they were doing as particularly harmful. Those dealers who sold marijuana did not consider it to be a drug. Those who traded in prescription drugs were even less likely to see their actions as being criminal or as transgressing the law.

Another interesting point in the book is that a majority of the dorm room dealers were business majors who saw themselves as participating in the capitalist marketplace. They were trying to make money so that they could indulge in fun activities and purchase items of interest. For most of them, the drug dealing provided additional disposable income. Dealing was not a matter of economic survival for most of them. Many of the dorm room dealers were also drug users and they relied on the income generated from their activities to also feed their own habits.

This book is so incredibly fascinating because it clearly documents how differently society addresses drug use and sales depending on who is doing the using and who is doing the selling. It is really a must read for anyone interested in criminal legal issues. The authors end their book with a chapter about a case involving dorm room dealers at San Diego State University and frankly if you only read that chapter of the book, you will have learned something. I am going to end with a quote from the book that I think is important and instructive.

“It is not our intention to have this study serve as a call to arms to wage a war on our college campuses. On the contrary, it is our sincere hope that this ethnograhic investigation of affluent collegiate drug dealers contributes in some small way to dispelling the myth that participation in substantial drug crimes is reserved exclusively for the marginalized, minority, poor, and undereducated members of our society. And we further hope that our work can spark a conversation about a more reasonable, equitable, and balanced set of domestic drug policies as we move forward in the new millenium (p.182.).”

There is no better case study to underscore the injustice of the current “War on Drugs” and the disproportionate targeting of people of color than this book. While the so-called “War on Drugs” increasingly criminalizes women and people of color, it leaves affluent young white people to their own devices. This is instructive and suggests that decriminalizing drug usage and dealing FOR EVERYONE would benefit the entire society. Why should only wealthy young white men be shielded from the ravages of involvement in the criminal legal system? What’s good for them should be good for everyone else.

A couple of years ago, Time Magazine published an article titled “Why Juvenile Detention Makes Teens Worse (August 7, 2009).”

The author, Maia Szalavitz, wrote about a study of juvenile detention in Montreal which found “that rather than rehabilitating young delinquents, juvenile detention – which lumps troubled kids in with other troubled kids – appeared to worsen their behavior problems.”

Szalavitz was referencing a 20 year study by researchers Uberto Gatti, Richard Tremblay, and Frank Vitaro which followed 779 low-income youth in Montreal with annual interviews from age 10 to age 17 then tracked their arrest records in adulthood. The researchers’ findings suggest that compared to other kids with a similar history of bad behavior, those who entered the juvenile-justice system were nearly seven times more likely to be arrested for crimes as adults.

Further, those who ended up being sentenced to juvenile prison were 37 times more likely to be arrested again as adults, compared with similarly misbehaved kids who were either not caught or not put into the system. Kids who entered the juvenile-justice system even briefly – for example, being sentenced to community service or other penance, with limited exposure to other troubled kids – were twice as likely to be arrested as adults, compared with kids with the same behavior problems who remained outside the system. Being put on probation, which involves more contact with misbehaving peers, in counseling groups or even in waiting rooms at probation offices, raised teens’ odds of adult arrest by a factor of 14.

Research consistently demonstrates that locking juveniles up doesn’t work – incarceration is no more effective than community-based supervision for youth with serious offenses, and incarceration raises the level of offending for low-level youth offenders, according to seven years of longitudinal research by the MacArthur Foundation. Additionally incarceration is an expensive option that produces terrible results for young people.

Just recently, I came across a very interesting paper by Fagan and Kupchick (which I unfortunately cannot cite from) which concludes that because of the trauma and negative outcomes associated with youth incarceration, it should be used as a last resort. The evidence is clear: Locking youth up is counter-productive, immoral and dumb.

I sometimes like to show a film called Prison Town, USA when I am doing popular education workshops about the prison industrial complex. The film is set in Susanville, California and tells the story of a small town that tries to revive its economic fortunes by building a prison. It is a complex portrait of the impact of this prison on Susanville. To me, the best part of the film is the searing and poignant portrayal of the people who want to work and/or currently work at the prison. The film does a particularly good job at exploring these individuals’ motives and motivations. Here is a trailer from the film:

Kelsey Kauffman has written that “prisons are perhaps the most racially divisive institutions in America today.” I think that this is certainly true. Anyone who has spent any time on the inside can attest to the very strong racial animus between prisoners and also between prisoners and guards. This racial hatred does not stay within the walls of the prison; it seeps outside as well. The prison is also a racially divisive institution because of its disproportionate impact on people of color (both those who ends up behind bars and those of us who don’t).

I have posted a couple of poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca (one of my favorite writers) in the past few days. I really love his writing. I am posting another poem of his today. This particular poem “There Are Black” has an interesting take on the racial divisions among guards and prisoners. Baca writes about the phenomenon of people of color working in prison to oversee prisoners of color. The poem captures the contradictions and complexities of this role. Additionally, the poem speaks to the overall dehumanization of all who come into contact with the prison – the incarcerated and the guards. You have to linger over Baca’s words to understand their implication. We pay billions of dollars each year to run “correctional” institutions that leave the people who go through them – prisoners and guards — worse off than when they first went in. This is a simple and profound reality. Things have to change.

There Are Black
by Jimmy Santiago Baca

There are black guards slamming cell gates
on black men,
And brown guards saying hello to brown men
with numbers on their backs,
And white guards laughing with white cons,
and red guards, few, say nothing
to red inmates as they walk by to chow and cells.

There you have it, the little antpile . . .
convicts marching in straight lines, guards flying
on badged wings, permits to sting, to glut themselves
at the cost of secluding themselves from their people . .
Turning off their minds like watertaps
wrapped in gunnysacks that insulate the pipes
carrying the pale weak water to their hearts.

It gets bad when you see these same guards
carrying buckets of blood out of cells,
see them puking at the smell, the people,
their own people slashing their wrists,
hanging themselves with belts from light outlets;
it gets bad to see them clean up the mess,
carry the blue cold body out under sheets,
and then retake their places in guard cages,
watching their people maul and mangle themselves,

And over this blood-rutted land,
the sun shines, the guards talk of horses and guns,
go to the store and buy new boots,
and the longer they work here the more powerful they become,
taking on the presence of some ancient mummy,
down in the dungeons of prison, a mummy
that will not listen, but has a strange power
in this dark world, to be so utterly disgusting in ignorance,
and yet so proudly command so many men. . . .

And the convicts themselves, at the mummy’s
feet, blood-splattered leather, at this one’s feet,
they become cobras sucking life out of their brothers,
they fight for rings and money and drugs,
in this pit of pain their teeth bare fangs,
to fight for what morsels they can. . . .

And the other convicts, guilty
of nothing but their born color, guilty of being innocent,
they slowly turn to dust in the nightly winds here,
flying in the wind back to their farms and cities.
From the gash in their hearts, sand flies up spraying
over houses and through trees,

look at the sand blow over this deserted place,
you are looking at them.

This has been long in coming and might have the feel of rant. It is not.

Over the past 8 month that I have been writing this blog, I’ve received numerous e-mails requesting that I put together a list of readings that I would suggest for someone who wanted to learn about mass/hyper-incarceration. I responded to one particular young woman’s request some months ago by putting together a list of what I think are some essential readings for students of mass incarceration. Well, you might think that people would get off my back after that :). You would be wrong.

Every couple of weeks, I get at least one e-mail from someone who chastises me for the fact that books are expensive and also accuses me of basically being at best an elitist or at worst a tool of THE MAN. While it is very true that I spent an inordinate amount of time in school, it is also true that I have devoted most of my life to making information and knowledge accessible to as many people as possible. This is why fostering popular education in a variety of spaces is such a passion of mine.

One particularly irate person wrote an e-mail using mostly CAPITAL LETTERS to tell me that college students are not the only ones who need an understanding of the PIC. I could go on and on about this point but will spare you the pain… Here’s the important fact though, while I have gotten annoying e-mails from some jerks, I have also been getting lovely ones from other people who have been really nice about asking that I provide a list of articles or essays instead of books.

Because of the jerks, I have resisted providing such a list since when people get on my nerves I never give in to their demands of me. Yet I did want to be responsive to the nice people. So I made a deal with myself; I would provide a list based solely on articles or essays that I already had copies of on my computer or could find online. This way I could fulfill the requests of the kind people while not feeling like I have gone out of my way to satisfy the demands of the jackasses. Additionally, I have limited the list to only six articles/essays and made sure to provide the full readings for downloading [one has to guard against being called a tool of the man after all!]. I will no doubt get criticism from someone who will tell me that it is expensive to print out pages… There is no way to win.

So for my decent and respectful readers, here is a list of some useful articles and essays for better understanding mass/hyper-incarceration. Please keep in mind that this list is severely limited by the fact that I only included pieces that I already had access to or could find copies of online. In addition, I only included articles or essays that provide a theoretical basis for understanding mass incarceration. Still I think that the list is a good start for those who want an introductory survey of mass incarceration (without reading any books).

Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex by Angela Davis

Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition by Angela Davis

The New Jim Crow “Introduction” by Michelle Alexander

The Racialization of Crime and Punishment: Criminal Justice, Color-Blind Racism, and the Political Economy of the Prison Industrial Complex by Rose Brewer and Nancy Heitzeg

The New ‘Peculiar Institution’: On the Prison as Surrogate Ghetto by Loic Wacquant

Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

P.S. Please do not write to me to point out that there are no articles about this or that topic (I really mean it…resist the urge). The list is by no means exhaustive and is not intended to be. I hope that others will take the time to put together a list of the definitive texts about mass incarceration (yes I am looking at you Jules :)).

Ignore the fact that this video reminds you of “Let’s Get Physical” by Olivia Newton-John and just close your eyes and jam to the song in your living room at full blast…

In West Virginia, the Monroe County Jail has implemented a new plan.

The county jail will start charging inmates for the cost of their confinement. This is being called the “pay to stay” plan:

This plan only applies to convicted individuals serving out sentences, and the amount paid is determined according to the incarcerated person’s income. After a sentencing and completion of paperwork, the individuals are advised of the amount owed for the time of incarceration.

Black said no major problems have been encountered yet, but if payment isn’t made, civil action will be taken.

If the individual is housed in a jail outside the county, that person has to pay full restitution for the amount charged to Monroe County. The jail in Monroe County is a 12-day facility.

Black told county commissioners this week about the pay to stay plan, noting that $1,440 had been received for the first month and that amount will be higher since some people affected are still in jail.

The sheriff described it as “a worthwhile, paying project.”

Everything old is new again. It might surprise readers to know that in colonial America and even earlier than that in England, jail inmates were required to cover the costs of their imprisonment.

Starting in the early 1600s, a new Act in England made prisoners liable for the cost of their own transportation to the gaol (or jail). Newly arrived inmates were then required to pay a number of fees to the gaol keeper, which varied according to their rank and to the level of comfort they wanted to enjoy during their incarceration. This was the original “pay to stay” plan.

“At the Fleet prison, a schedule of 1561 records that the admission fee for giving ‘the liberty of the house’ (and so avoid being put in leg irons) ranged from 10 pounds for an archbishop, down to 13 shilling 4 pennies for a yeoman. At the Tower of London, the constable of the Tower required a similar payment: 20 pounds for a duke; 20 marks for an earl; 10 pounds for a baron; and 100 shillings for a knight.

The prisoner might also have to stump up for a bond to guarantee his good behaviour and regular outgoings during his stay, a fee to the clerk who drew up the bond, another fee for being entered in the prison register, various tips to the gaoler, chamberlain and porter, and finally a round of drinks for all concerned.

At the end of their stay, the final charge demanded of all prisoners was a discharge fee. At Newgate, the scale of charges began at eightpence, rising to 2 shillings for felons. At the Fleet, generally reckoned to be the most expensive of London’s gaols, the cost of discharge ranged from 3 pounds 5 shillings down to a minimum of 2 shillings 4 pennies — which even the totally destitute were required to pay or else remain in prison indefinitely.

On top of these ‘administrative’ fees came various other ongoing charges levied by the keeper, in 1431, for example, Newgate made a charge of fourpence a week toward the running costs of the prison lamps. In 1488, the price for prison-supplied beds at Newgate was set at a penny per week for a bed with sheets, blankets and a coverlet, and a penny per week for a couch. Alternatively, prisoners could bring in their own beds…Although the city authorities made periodic efforts to regulate these charges, they were the source of regular abuse. At Ludgate, one prisoner, who had brought in his own bed, bedding and clothes, was obliged to pay for their use by the gaoler John Bottisham. There were also instances of bedding, and lights donated from charitable sources being charged for, although this practice was prohibited in London prisons from 1463.

From 1729, the costs of admission, discharge, and so on, could become even more expensive after judges ruled that someone committed to prison for several different offences was liable to pay separate sets of fees for each of them.

On top of the various fees and charges taken by the gaoler, additional payments in the form of ‘garnish’ and ‘chummage’ were exacted from new inmates by the prisoners already in residence. At Marshalsea, the garnish comprised a flat payment on arrival by new prisoners of 8 shillings for men and 5 shillings 6 pennies for women, regardless of their standing. Payment of the money allowed access to the common room, use of boiling water from the fire, the cooking of food and the reading of newspapers..”[Higginbotham, Peter (2010) pp.28-29]

FYI — 1 shilling = 12 pennies; 1 pound = 20 shillings.
In terms of its purchasing power 1 pound in the year 1750 would in 2009 be worth around 139 pounds or $223 in U.S. dollars. In 1850, 1 pound would now be worth around 83 pounds or $133. This will give you a sense of just how expensive the cost of confinement was for jail inmates in England.

Courtesy of the Sacramento Bee:

Individuals who are wrongly convicted and incarcerated in California are entitled to receive restitution from the Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board.

But an analysis of such cases by California Watch found only that of the 132 people who filed claims since 2000, only 11 have been compensated. 56 claims have been rejected without a hearing. Others are either waiting for a hearing or waiting for a decision after a hearing.

California is one of 27 states which pays restitution for the wrongly imprisoned. But according to CW, it’s not enough for a judge to declare a inmate innocent. He must prove three things: “that they did not intentionally contribute to their own arrest by ‘voluntarily’ or ‘knowingly’ pleading guilty to the crime; and that they experienced financial losses as a result of their incarceration.” Advocates for the wrongly accused say these requirements are often impossible to meet.

This is why I really resent having to call the system — the criminal JUSTICE system.  I usually call it the criminal LEGAL system…  After reading the post cited above, I was reminded of Taryn Simon’s powerful photographic series called the “Innocents.”  Simon has photographed people who were exonerated from Death Row.  Below are some of her amazing photographs which I hope help to literally put a face to the people who have been “exonerated “and are still being screwed by the criminal legal system.

Here is a statement about the “Innocents:”

The Innocents documents the stories of individuals who served time in prison for violent crimes they did not commit. At issue is the question of photography’s function as a credible eyewitness and arbiter of justice.

The primary cause of wrongful conviction is mistaken identification. A victim or eyewitness identifies a suspected perpetrator through law enforcement’s use of photographs and lineups. This procedure relies on the assumption of precise visual memory. But, through exposure to composite sketches, mugshots, Polaroids, and lineups, eyewitness memory can change. In the history of these cases, photography offered the criminal justice system a tool that transformed innocent citizens into criminals. Photographs assisted officers in obtaining eyewitness identifications and aided prosecutors in securing convictions.

Simon photographed these men at sites that had particular significance to their illegitimate conviction: the scene of misidentification, the scene of arrest, the scene of the crime or the scene of the alibi. All of these locations hold contradictory meanings for the subjects. The scene of arrest marks the starting point of a reality based in fiction. The scene of the crime is at once arbitrary and crucial: this place, to which they have never been, changed their lives forever. In these photographs Simon confronts photography’s ability to blur truth and fiction-an ambiguity that can have severe, even lethal consequences.

By Taryn Simon

Ronald Jones Scene of arrest, South Side, Chicago, Illinois
Served 8 years of a death sentence for Rape and Murder, 2002

Calvin Washinton C&E Motel, Room No. 24, Waco, Texas
Where an informant claimed to have heard Washington confess
Served 13 years of a Life sentence for Capital Murder, 2002

By Taryn Simon

Clyde Charles Terrebonne Criminal Justice Complex, Houma, Louisiana
Where Clyde’s brother Marlo is being held
Clyde was held here and convicted of the same crime as Marlo
Served 17 years of a Life sentence for Aggravated Rape, 2002

By Taryn Simon

Jeffrey Pierce Lake Huron, Port Huron, Michigan, Served 15 years of a 65-year sentence for Rape and Robbery, 2002