 Source: www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html
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POLICE REFORM
"If the police of any South American country were killing civilians in the streets in anywhere near the comparative numbers as is happening here, we would have invaded them already." |
CITIZEN OVERSIGHT OF POLICE :: THE SPOKANE MODEL
I propose federal funding via the use of grants to seed civilian efforts to create civilian oversight programs and protocols, based on the best practices developed by cities such as Spokane.
Responding to the urgent call by the residents of Spokane, the Center for Justice was instrumental in passing a ballot issue creating a system of Civilian Oversight of Police Accountability.
There are other models to study, and there is even a National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement to provide resources and guidance about best practices in Civilian oversight. See NACOLE.ORG.
PRISON AND JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM
"If our general population growth had kept up with our prison population growth, we would now outnumber the Chinese.
Our criminal justice system, from police to the courts to our prisons, aggressively handles, and massively, disproportionately arrests and incarcerates people of color. Too often, community policing disproportionately impacts people of color, and there are far too many times where innocent civilians are poorly treated at best, killed at worst, for failures to comply or simply for asking for respect of their civil and human rights by law enforcement.
That's not an indictment of all of our law enforcement officers, attorneys, and judges. Most people are good at heart, and most law enforcement officers are good. They operate, though, in a system that historically has acted as an extension of a power structure that was traditionally used to achieve a social order that subordinates people of color.
Today we face a crisis in a police and legal system culture that still too often employs a system of community policing and cooperation for white Americans, and implements conditions of intimidation and violence against people of color and minorities. Too many of our children on the streets of this country become the victims of violence at the hands of both offenders in the community and law enforcement.
This has to stop. We need to de-militarize our police forces, re-engage positive community policing, and help local, state, and federal agencies re-educate officers to end the generational issues in their culture that prop up discriminatory policing.
Likewise, we have to enforce existing law, and create new law that disincentivizes local, state, and federal attorneys from using criminal cases to improve their employment or ambitions, and focus on the fair and equitable administration of justice. Sentencing laws have to be structured to provide guidance to judges and alternatives, for non-violent offenses such as drug abuse, to sentence people to treatment and not straight incarceration.
My father was named Warden of a US federal penitentiary system in the former US territory of the Panama Canal Zone, at a time when the entire US federal inmate population hovered around 200,000 -- compared to over 2,000,000 today. Like my Dad, I am a champion for the concepts of rehabilitation and redemption.
He administered an organization with a culture focused on the human dignity of those received as wards to his care, offering academic and vocational training opportunities, as well as teaching the values of sports (more importantly sportsmanship), and general and denominational counseling for those who chose to participate.
We focus far more on punishment, and far less on rehabilitation, in the post-Reagan era of the criminal justice system. This has to stop.
Further, jails and prisons should not operate as profit centers. This isn't a mission that should be abdicated to any private for-profit corporation, often with underpaid, unprofessionalized guards and security practices that are about the bottom line, not rehabilitation or even safety for guards or inmates.
It is a solemn duty of the state to provide pathways for people to re-emerge into society and function as productive law-abiding citizens, rather than set low expectations and spin the revolving door of recidivism.
At the time of my father's tenure, the vast majority of inmates were not incarcerated for simple and non-violent drug offenses, as is the case today.
I had personal experience with the juvenile justice system. A young family member was ripped from her life as a good 13 year old student. Liked by her teachers, she was making good grades when the State of Georgia wrongfully misconstrued some normal developmental exploration and experimentation between several consenting teenagers. She was ultimately charged with harshly overblown allegations that resulted in her incarceration for the remainder of her adolescence. This deeply and personally affected me, and brought home the idea that too often the legal system is a game that benefits some at the expense of others, and not a system of justice.
There are many people who enter our justice system because mental illness, a taboo subject poorly treated by the legal system, still does not have any grey areas for dealing with persons who are minimally competent and/or end up losing their ability to function if they go off of their medications. I would push for more aid for programs that treat and provide shelter and support rather than bouncing those least able to help themselves back and forth between mental health facilities for people who are dangerous to themselves and/or others, or the dangers of homelessness on our streets.
We have to recalculate our laws at every level to stop the criminalization of being black or brown, or LGBT, or poor or homeless or mentally ill in this country. We have to commit resources to re-education and re-design of our legal process that takes into account what experts and educators have learned about the human brain. We need to hire better educated, better trained law enforcement officers who are equipped to use that training to improve their performance and their standing in all of the communities that they protect and serve."
-- Mike
NATIONAL POLICE REFORM :: #BLACK LIVES MATTER
Visit BlackLivesMatter.com to better understand the perspectives of affected communities.
(Click on Image for direct Link.)
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"We cannot continue to ignore the scourge of extrajudicial killings by police on the streets of America. In the same period as the Iraq war, over 5000 civilians were killed during police encounters on the streets of the nation -- less than the number of soldiers killed in the Iraq war itself. |
EXCERPT :: "We find that for every dollar in corrections costs, incarceration generates an additional $10 in social costs," said Pettus-Davis, director of the Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice and co-director of the Smart Decarceration Initiative.
"More than half of the costs are borne by families, children and community members who have committed no crime," she said.
The scale of incarceration in the U.S. over the past 40 years is unprecedented, Pettus-Davis said. The prison population grew seven-fold as this country became the world leader in incarceration."
"More than half of the costs are borne by families, children and community members who have committed no crime," she said.
The scale of incarceration in the U.S. over the past 40 years is unprecedented, Pettus-Davis said. The prison population grew seven-fold as this country became the world leader in incarceration."
Say Their Names
For a comprehensive list of those killed by police in the USA, visit KilledbyPolice.net