Start Here: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration

   Berman and Alder compare the US incarceration policies unfavorably to those of Asia and Europe. According to their sources (mostly from policy institutes) there are 3000 prisoners in Norway’s prisons and 50,000 detainees in the LA County Jail. There are obvious reasons; Norway has no teen pregnancies and they never had a crack epidemic. On the flip side, my research shows that there are a lot of Norwegians who should be in prison, but thanks to Norway’s liberal pacifism, they aren’t.

   The authors provide examples of programs that can keep people out of jail, while at the same time reducing the crime that sends them there. For starters, there’s Brownsville, Brooklyn, an area that deserves its terrible reputation, where the programs are seeking to change the local norms. Efforts are made to discourage the cult of easily avenged honor and violent revenge, which was the subject of the 1995 book All God’s Children. Do young people know that shooting someone over an insult is not allowed? Do they understand that they’re setting themselves up for 15 years in prison if they do it? Then there are nonprofit organizations like Harlem Children’s Zone, which tries to keep kids off the streets (at least until they’re 18) by providing activities. It has a program called The Baby College, which teaches parenting skills as a way to discourage neglect and child abuse.

    One of the problems with poor communities (not just Black areas of Brooklyn, but also White ones like Southie) is that the parents handle meagre annoyances with mean looks, yells, and smacks. Those that read the recent memoir Hillbilly Elegy will see how the idea of “parenting through intimidation” is a problem in Appalachia, and it teaches children to handle everything through aggression. While spanking kids may have been the norm in the old days, most experts now agree that it only teaches “might makes right” and leads to kids handling problems the same way. I’ve had Black kids ask me why the White parents work so hard to discipline their kids (talking to them, time-outs, withholding privileges) while Black parents just slap the kid. My response is always “What are you going to do when the kid is too big to slap? What are you going to do if he’s bigger than the parent and slaps back?” These are the problems that Harlem Children’s Zone (among others) tries to address. They form a “bottoms-up” effort that focuses on the children, because they are the most susceptible to influences.

    Money is another problem in reducing mass incarceration. If a stupid kid punches a store clerk and gets a $250 fine and probation, what happens if the parent has no money? What happens f the kid lives in a foster home and nobody supervises him? He’ll start a long cycle of jail, and learn none of the life skills he needs for independent living. Similar problems were discussed in another recent nonfiction book titled On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, where Philadelphia’s poor are constantly evading police, thanks to unpaid fines and open warrants.

    A recent documentary on Wyoming’s one and only men’s prison shows the connection between crime and local norms. Given the tiny population of Wyoming, it makes sense for them to have only one prison. Out of the prison’s entire population, there’s one Black American (how many Black Americans are there in Wyoming?) and a lot of Native Americans, and I wonder if, at an earlier time, their crimes might have been part of tribal warfare? One of the prisoners, a man with a distinct Native American accent, looks like he has FAS, which might explain his lack of self-control. If so, then the reservations might benefit from the type of social program mentioned in this book, at least if they want to discourage alcoholism. Then there’s the geography angle; as long as Wyoming remains way out west, I doubt things will get worse, because not a lot of people migrate there. However, the shale gas drilling business is increasing in the area, and if thousands of men migrate there for work, then there will be trouble. You’ll have all the problems of a town with a large ratio of men-to-women; drinking, prostitution, gambling, and crime. More arrests will follow, and that will mean another prison.

Inside Private Prisons by Lauren-Brooke Eisen

    I, personally, don’t like the idea of private prisons. I think they’re an excuse to pawn off government responsibility to people who aren’t qualified. They of the Brady Bunch episode where Bobby gets appointed (not elected) to be the school hall monitor and proceeds to play policeman. We had the same thing when I was in grade school, and it annoyed me silly for a whole bunch of reasons. First, I wasn’t going to take orders from a little kid, and second, why would the principal appoint a little kid to rat out other kids? Isn’t it the principal’s job to take care of discipline? I see a similar thing happen in a lot of wealthy families; the parents hire someone else to make their children behave, usually a nanny from Latin American or the West Indies. All over the USA, parents are subcontracting their duties to other people, and now the same thing is happening with government service. What happens if the government subcontracts law enforcement and prisons? Will it be effective, or will the lunatics run the asylum? Private prisons (henceforth referred to as PP) are increasing in the USA, and this book explores their use, importance, and their prospects for the future.

    In the book’s introduction, Reik Raemusch becomes head of corrections for the state of Colorado and tries out the solitary confinement cell. It’s horrible, he goes crazy after 23 hours, and he wants to end the practice. Next, the author cites experienced correction officers who dislike private prison, for reasons that include mass incarceration or the possibility of mass layoffs. Eastern State Penitentiary is also discussed here, because for many years the prison used solitude and prohibited speech. The program made the prisoners worse, with no chance of living a crime-free life on the outside. Then the War on Drugs tripled the number of prisoners, and the prison systems were on the lookout for a cheap solution (just like the parents looking for a quick fix.)

   Eisen points out some benefits to privatization, like the homeowner associations who take responsibility for their block, and that has benefits. Privatization happens in the legal profession too, where lawyers can hire a judge to settle the case quickly and split the fee. I’ve also seen Air National Guard bases that hire private security because there aren’t enough full-time personnel. In the business of logistics, you can use the USPS or pay for fast shipping with UPS, FedEx, or DHL. But what happens when the government hires a private company to manage a prison? It’s one thing to hire contractors to maintain police cars and handle the repairs, but here we’re talking about privatizing public safety.

    Several chapters of this book are devoted to the profit motive (known as the Prison Industrial Complex), where an entire town may depend on prison jobs. We have “prison products” like special pens that can’t be used to stab, or the toilets that don’t have seats, or showers that run on timers. One of the reasons for the huge profits in the PP is that they can hire the unqualified and pay them less (even felons). Phone companies can charge prisoners four times the usual rate, and PP can even charge visitors for the security checks, parking, and package screening. The prison commissary can charge huge markups for the junk food and toiletries, and since the prisoners can be paid less than minimum wage, local businesses can profit too. All the while, the correction officers in the private prisons make a crap wage. They can be recruited from all the applicants who were rejected by the state’s corrections department. More common in the Midwest, thanks to industry loss – also covered in this book – having a prison in the town means money;  jobs in corrections, more business for local food suppliers, visiting relatives staying at local motels, and you can charge them for parking. The future is bright for the operators; private prisons are now being used as immigrant detention centers.

    I expect private prisons to increase, unless state legislatures vote against them. Ever since the early 80’s, you’ve had industries shutting down and whole towns out of work. It’s hard to attract technology to your town when you lack skilled people, and prisons don’t require much in the way of skill. Training a correction officer is easier than training a police officer, and far easier than training a technician. As for the issues like fair wages, unionization, and civil rights, there are plenty of job-desperate red states whose politicians couldn’t care less.

Street Warrior: The True Story of the NYPD's Most Decorated Detective

   

Ralph Friedman holds the record number of combat awards for a NYC cop for two reasons; the South Bronx of the 1970’s was a war zone, and Friedman was nuts. During his wild career as an undercover drug cop he jumps across rooftops, jumps out windows, gets dragged by cars, and has daily gun battles with armed suspects. Starting his post-high-school life as a trucker and finding it boring (no argument there) he opts for the NYPD. Now before we go further, let me warn you (as all other cop memoirs will) that in the early 1970’s, nobody, absolutely nobody, wanted to be a NYC cop! The issue wasn’t the pay (schoolteachers didn’t make much either) or the hours (lots of jobs require night shifts) but the hazards. Cops were getting shot all the time, and the Black Liberation Army was using cops for target practice. Cars full of off-duty cops were following the radio cars, armed with semi-automatic rifles. For Friedman, the attraction was the fighting.

    Street Warrior gives an account of not only the violence of the NYPD in the Bronx, but also the way collars and booking were done. Cops who wanted to get into the detectives or get promoted needed lots of collars, and that could only be done according to convenience. Friedman had an advantage of working in the Bronx over Manhattan; there was less auto traffic and the courts were faster. You could grab a perp on the street, drive him back to the station in ten minutes, book him, be back out on the street in half an hour, and make more arrests. The next morning you drive to court, testify, and be back on the street by lunchtime and make more arrests. On the one occasion that he has to go to Manhattan’s courts, he gets stuck in traffic all day. He’s like “how the hell did the Manhattan cops make more than one collar a week, when the traffic took all day and the courts took all week?” He has a greater dislike for Manhattan traffic than he does for the injuries he gets.

    Unlike a lot of the self-serving cop memoirs, Friedman admits to failed cases, particularly one with the Fraunce’s Tavern bombing.  He gets a tip from a drug dealing informer about the bombers, but just as they’re about to go into a wedding venue to identify the suspect, the dealer brags that he has a gun. Goodbye to the whole operation, it now has to be called off! Friedman regrets it all to this day, it would’ve been the one chance that anyone had of catching the bombers.  

    It seems like it’s not that hard to become a detective when you work in narcotics. Most of Friedman’s work involves stalking around the neighborhood in scruffy clothes, with plenty of shooting and punching.  I imagine that being a homicide detective would involve a lot more patience; knocking on every door, checking dozens of numbers, spending cold nights in a car and watching for a suspect who might, just might, come out of a building. Those who read The French Connection know that the famous drug bust involved spending nights in hotel lobbies, fueled by coffee and dirty water hot dogs, waiting for the suspect to exit the hotel. One word – boring! But Friedman’s career is a lot more exciting and has a lot less of the waiting. In 1970’s South Bronx, you could find an armed thief every ten paces.

    Would I have wanted to be a cop in NYC in the 1970’s? The answer is yes! What other jobs were there anyway? My mother hated being a teacher in private Jewish schools (those people didn’t need any help) and wouldn’t dare teach in the public schools (might as well be a cop, no?) . Then there was my father’s career in Chase Manhattan Plaza, and I doubt he liked the long commute or the expensive suits he had to pay for (this was back in the day when the subway had no air conditioning.) If you’re a cop, you can wear what you like to work, get free parking space, change into your uniform when you get to work, and best of all, get an instant gun-carry license. The gun license was no small asset in 1970’s NYC.

    Friedman’s co-writer is Patrick Picarelli, the same writer who did Jimmy the Wags, another NYC cop memoir that I thoroughly enjoyed. The storytelling is straightforward, nobody tries to wax poetic or put on airs. But I won’t say that I like Ralph Friedman, and I won’t call him brave or tough. Anybody can shoot, kick, and punch, especially if they’re empowered to do it legally. Given, not everyone wants to risk getting shot but this guy wasn’t married and he had no kids, so it wasn’t like he had anything to worry about. I also doubt that anything the police did at the time made much of a difference, if the South Bronx was as hopeless as he portrays it. Still, it’s a fun read, and gives an uncompromising story of policing in the 1970’s.