Why Our Criminal Justice System OBVIOUSLY Has Nothing to do with Justice

The irony and counter-intuitiveness of our prison industrial complex and criminal processing system is overwhelming now, more than ever. And now, more than ever, I am convinced that the only way we will ever escape the demons we are creating and learn to look each other in the eye and treat each other like HUMAN BEINGS is complete and total prison abolition. A new start, a new way of understanding ourselves, understanding the word 'community' and understanding how to love and respect one another.

Today, hundreds of California inmates rioted (for ELEVEN HOURS) in the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino. No one was killed but hundreds were wounded and those wounded were disproportionately Black and Latino. Guess what our government is gonna do? CHARGE THEM WITH ADDITIONAL CRIMES... lengthen their sentences. Yea, that makes sense... how??? Read the full NYTimes article here (Of course, it isn't easy getting out either with unemployment being what it is - the latest on unemployment from Racewire here.)

Another article that made me cry was about a sixteen-year-old mentally ill boy named Donald, who has been locked up for two years because of a breaking-and-entering charge despite his diagnosis of several serious mental health disorders. They put him in juvie because they thought he'd get the best treatment there, but have KEPT him there because of violence he has inflicted on himself, on animals, and his attempt to fight a guard. Can anyone not understand that these are clear indications that a violent padded cell is SO CLEARLY not working for this ill PERSON?!? Sorry for the caps but it is just so obvious... and frustrating. And disappointing. And typical. The NYTimes reports:

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Juvenile prisons have been the caretaker of last resort for troubled children since the 1980s, but mental health experts say the system is in crisis, facing a soaring number of inmates reliant on multiple — and powerful — psychotropic drugs and a shortage of therapists.

In California’s state system, one of the most violent and poorly managed juvenile systems in the country, according to federal investigators, three dozen youth offenders seriously injured themselves or attempted suicide in the last year — a sign, state juvenile justice experts say, of neglect and poor safety protocols.

In Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist, approved a 34 percent reduction in community-based mental health services to reduce a budget deficit, Thomas J. Stickrath, the director of the Department of Youth Services, said continuing cuts would swell his youth offender population.

“I’m hearing from a lot of judges saying, ‘I’m sorry I’m sending so-and-so to you, but at least I know that he’ll get the treatment he can’t get in his community,’ ” Mr. Stickrath said.

But youths are often subjected to neglect and violence in juvenile prisons, and studies show that mental illnesses can become worse there.

This trap that we're put into - this epistemological resignation, leads us to think that more legislation and more criminalization are the only way. Racewire recently did a great writeup of how hate crime legislation does not effectively counter hate crimes at all and rather contributes to the expansion of the prison and police systems. We need something else. And we need it now.

Non-support of the Gender Employment Non-Discrimination Act

My dear friend Lex sent this to me - a coalition of New York organizations came together to issue a statement of "Non-support of the Gender Employment Non-Discrimination Act." It gave me a lot to think about because it reminded me how much we have to re-train our minds to imagine a world beyond the institutions upon which we are so dependent. The full thing can be read here but I liked the parts that Lex picked out:

The hate crimes portion of this law may expose our communities to more danger—from prejudiced institutions far more powerful and pervasive than individual bigots.
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By supporting longer periods of incarceration and putting a more threatening weapon in the state’s hands, this kind of legislation places an enormous amount of faith in our deeply flawed, transphobic, and racist criminal legal system.
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Hate crime laws are an easy way for the government to act like it is on our communities’ side while continuing to discriminate against us....Hate crime laws foreground a single accused individual as the “cause” of racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, or any number of other oppressive prejudices. They encourage us to lay blame and focus our vengeful hostility on one person instead of paying attention to institutional prejudice that fuels police violence, encourages bureaucratic systems to ignore trans people’s needs or actively discriminate against us, and denies our communities health care, identification, and so much more.
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These [most marginalized members of our community who are most likely to end up in prison] are the same people our community must mourn every year at the Trans Day of Remembrance. Can we really continue to shed tears and flowers for the dead if we eagerly hand the state more power to crush the same people?
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When thinking about responding to hate violence, we believe the most important question is not “who is the perpetrator and how can we punish them?” Rather, we want to ask “how can we help the survivor(s) and the community heal from this violence? How can we prevent it from happening again?”