Ujamaa. Ujamaa. This is Dontie S. Mitchell, better known as Mfalme Sikivu reporting to you from Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York.
In New York State alone, it costs hundreds of millions of tax dollars to keep the 50,000 or so prisoners incarcerated. A substantial number of those prisoners are repeat offenders. The conservative viewpoint on this, which many moderate and so-called progressives buy into, is that these repeat offenders are just incorrigible, that they just make individually bad decisions instead of doing the right thing.
There has been this kind of reactionary thinking influencing the criminal justice system for the last 50-60 years, which has led to the boom in prison construction across the country in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. All of this was fueled by fear mongering, by politicians and law enforcement officials who had a vested interest in creating a massive prison industrial complex, an easy solution to replace lost manufacturing jobs in rural communities and to control unruly Black, Hispanic, and poor white populations. The public is always so easily manipulated by the fear mongering and oversimplify arguments about public safety.
Let us remember, in the late 1960s even Martin Luther King Jr. was beginning to speak out against economic injustice. Next thing you know, prisons are being filled up by poor people as politicians manipulated the public into believing there was this proliferation of violent crime and drugs, which extended into the 80s. What they didn’t tell you is that it was the United States government that flooded Black communities with drugs and weapons.
The point I’m trying to make is that the mass incarceration is the result of very deliberate social and economic policies designed to control poor people, mostly those of color, while providing jobs to mostly rural whites. But now, mass incarceration is becoming unsustainable and becoming an international embarrassment for our country, which is fond of criticizing other countries for human rights violations. So now, politicians are touting criminal justice reform but are still kowtowing to law enforcement hawks and correction guard unions who make a living off the ignorance and criminalization of Blacks, Hispanics and poor whites.
There’s more to criminal justice reform than just giving nonviolent offenders second chances, or abolishing cash bail or stopping unfair parole and probation violations. Criminal justice reform means nothing without addressing the need for comprehensive rehabilitated treatment for all offenders and the need to invest more in crime prevention measures like education, vocational training, jobs, business development, more after school programs and youth mentoring programs, such as the kind UFD [United Fraternal Dynasty] offers.
Such investments must be heavily made in high crime areas, especially in inner cities, in partnership with the private and public sector, and coupled with community policing. Businesses should be given tax breaks for providing job training and jobs to at-risk youth and ex-offenders. And ex-offenders should be trained to be mentors for at-risk youth. This is the kind of mentoring program UFD has in mind. Doing things like this will lower crime and prison recidivism, which will in turn benefit the economy. Instead of paying $60 to $70,000 a year to incarcerate a prisoner, not to mention the cost to detect, investigate and prosecute crimes, the state needs to focus on rehabilitating offenders and preventing crime. This will add workers to our economy who will pay taxes; people who will otherwise end up in prison, draining state resources that can go towards education or economic development in upstate communities. This is the kind of innovating thinking I was talking about in my last commentary. The question, however, is whether Governor Cuomo will commit to this. Tune in next time for more. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram @freedontiemitchell, share your questions and comments. Thank you for listening and God bless.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
