Pubdate: Sun, 29 Jun 2008
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Contact: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/letters/sendletter.html
Website: http://www.ajc.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Author: Cynthia Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

JUST FILLING PRISONS WON'T MAKE US SAFER

In several speeches, Barack Obama has used an easy, if imprecise, 
formulation to express his despair over the high incarceration rate 
of young black men. "I don't want to wake up four years from now and 
discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in 
college," he said at a rally last year, repeating, more or less, a 
line used frequently by critics of the criminal justice system.

But it's not accurate. If you were to check with academic and 
criminal justice sources, you'd find, happily, that there are far 
more young black men in college -- about 530,000, ages 18 to 24 -- 
than in prison -- about 106,000 in the same age group.

Still, Obama's count expresses a larger truth. If you counted black 
men under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system -- on 
probation, in prison or on parole -- you'd find that their numbers 
are higher than those pursuing a college degree. And, on any given 
day, about one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 (more 
than 475,000) are locked up in city or county jails or state or 
federal prisons, according to The Sentencing Project, a 
Washington-based group that advocates alternatives to incarceration.

Not all those black men behind bars are hardened criminals. Many have 
done something dumb -- written a bad check, failed to pay child 
support, bought a $5 bag of crack. But they haven't robbed or maimed 
or murdered. Still, they've ended up with criminal records that are 
likely to haunt them for the rest of their lives, limiting their 
chances at decent employment.

Unfortunately, Obama hasn't made the nation's soaring prison 
population -- more than one in a hundred American adults is behind 
bars -- a major theme of his campaign. He probably believes he can't 
afford to. Democrats have long been burdened by the perception that 
they are "soft on crime," so a black Democrat would be even less 
likely than a white Democrat to linger on the subject of black men in prison.

John McCain is not going to make an issue of it, either. And that's too bad.

The harsh sentences imposed over the past few decades, especially for 
drug offenses, have contributed to the much-discussed decline of the 
black family, taking black men away from their children, stigmatizing 
them with criminal records and locking them up with hard-core lifers. 
It's no wonder many of them remain marginalized -- indeed, commit 
other crimes -- after they are released.

Certainly, many offenders belong behind bars, especially those who 
are violent. I hold no brief for those who have chosen to live 
outside the bounds of civilized society, whether gangbangers who rape 
girls in savage "initiations" or carjackers who stick a gun in your 
face to steal your SUV. Research suggests that most violent crimes 
are committed by a small group of predators. And law-abiding black 
Americans are disproportionately the victims of those thugs.

But we don't keep streets safer with draconian policies that lock up 
petty offenders. While many Americans believe that the stark decline 
in crime during the past decade is a result of harsh sentencing laws, 
experts say the evidence doesn't bear that out. "About 25 percent of 
the decline in violent crime can be attributed to increased 
incarceration," according to The Sentencing Project.

Of all the misguided criminal justice policies, the failed "war on 
drugs" has been the most destructive. It has swept up legions of 
black men whose biggest crime was being poor and buying their drugs 
on ghetto street corners, making them easy targets of police officers 
who swoop down and make busts to boost their arrest numbers. If the 
same drug users were more affluent, they could buy their drugs 
discreetly and avoid arrest. And if they were caught, they'd likely 
serve a sentence in a pricey drug rehab unit rather than a prison cell.

No one wants to see violent crime climb back to the levels of the 
1970s and '80s, when many urban neighborhoods were under siege. The 
drop in crime has eased tensions between black and white Americans 
and fostered the revitalization of inner cities.

But not every dumb kid with dope in his car will become a career 
criminal. Most of them won't. Unless we lock them up with career 
criminals for 10 years and give them an advanced degree in villainy.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake