The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

From: The Truth [the.bookrelease@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 5:38 PM

Established in Washington, D.C., in 1865, The Bourbon Institute has promoted a "southern strategy" for the social, economic and governance problems confronting the nation. The Institute has advanced the careers of more white men (and a few white women) then we can accurately count at this time.

The Bourbon Institute disseminates its research findings through redundant, repeated, costly, very expensive, wasteful and usually unnecessary conferences funded by the Our Superior Intellect (OSI) Foundation. In this way, the limited social justice funding available for community-based organizations actually doing the work on the ground, is used instead to discuss and analyze urban problems and colored people. I am thankful to the Institute, and its Board of Directors, for publishing all of my books and research, when no one else would. As a member of the dominant privileged class in America, I thought I could have had my work published anywhere, but America has changed. White privilege just ain't what it used to be.

Preface

In the spring of 1999, U.S. Attorney General Janice Rio caught me coming out of the men's room in the U.S. Department of Justice. She noticed that I had failed to zip up my pants and mentioned it several times. This started me to thinking about how embarrassing it must be for ex-offenders on parole to be sent back to prison for simple violations, like not zipping your fly. It occurred to me, also, that the majority of those affected were Black men -hence the title of my latest and greatest book, "But .They All Come Black."
Immediately, I called Sally Turner at the Our Superior Intellect (OSI) Foundation and Rich Crank at the FRET Foundation [Rich resides in one of the richest counties in the United States and surrounds himself in African art and sculptures to reinforce his public image as a trustworthy liberal do-gooder-meanwhile, he supports the criminal justice system by granting the Kansas Department of Corrections 4.5 million dollars and calling it the key to policy reform] to request a planning grant of $300 million dollars, to convene a series of daily conferences from now until the year 2065. By that time my son-little Travesty-will have retired from his work succeeding me as the most esteemed conference giver in the world. I was worried that these grant makers would not be responsive, since their mission is to spend millions of dollars funding the ideas of people who are directly affected by the criminal justice system. However, I prevailed.

As you know, I created the term "ReEntry" to mean go back, as in re-enter. I actually took the term from Juan Irving, who first used it in his book in 1970, yet I claim full credit for creating it and have relegated Irving to a minor historical footnote so that I would not be accused of outright stealing or plagiarizing. This appropriation of intellectual property is a
major part of the way we do business at the Bourbon Institute and is the cornerstone of my career and that of my colleagues. The term "reentry" has since come to mean "recidivism," which was my original intent although no one picked up on it at the time.

In the fall of 1999, while still at the National Institute of Justice, I wrote a paper that proposed creating "reentry courts" as the new managers of the reentry-recidivism process. By creating this new entity, located in the community, to oversee all community supervision, we could easily realize all of the goals that the initial incarceration may or may not have accomplished, namely keeping prison populations at maximum capacity, foolishly spending taxpayer dollars and, of course, maintaining the economic/employment status quo at equilibrium for ourselves. I have come to believe that these functions are best lodged in the judicial branch of government, in the form of a "re-entry court." Briefly stated, there are
three outstanding reasons: (1) such a court would add another useless yet thick layer of government bureaucracy to an already over burdened court system, (2) the enormous expense created by this court will create more jobs and contracts (not to mention patronage) thus strengthening the economy and (3) the realities that such a court is totally unnecessary, a waste of time and perhaps even counterproductive to successful transition from prison to community, are all consistent with the other innovative recommendations I have made over the years. With this new alignment of responsibilities for overseeing the reentry process, we stand a better chance of promoting "real" reentry success as described above.

Introduction

The title of my book, "But .They All Come Black," reflects the fact that Blacks commit more crimes than whites. That's a fact that Joan and I discovered several years ago. Once we made this research public, at a series of weekly conferences we held from 2001 - 2003, we were both richly rewarded. Actually, I became the president of a very prestigious college
for cops and Joan became a cop. Both she and I have been acknowledged as experts ever since, even though neither of us have ever actually spoken directly to anyone in prison.

Throughout the book I use terms that I have either created, made up, formulated myself or otherwise produced. I deeply resent the many groups and individuals who have implied that the terminology I use is misleading, inaccurate and racist. I am conscious of the language. While I continue to use the term negro and colored to describe people of African descent, I
only do so because its alternative, African American, is somewhat unwieldy, particularly in written text. Occasionally (and only in private and among my very best friends) I resort to using the "n" word - but only for emphasis. Perhaps, someday our language will accommodate this complicated reality.

In choosing the title of the book, I was extremely sensitive to the idea that it would probably sell much, much more if I could manage to demonstrate, using the available research, that indeed Blacks were responsible not only for committing more crime then anyone else, but also that they planned the 9/11 attacks on our precious nation, the 2004 tsunami
in the Indian Ocean, Hurricane Katrina, created and funded Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Mafia. Also, they were responsible for the untimely demise of Manuel Noriega and the dismal failure of the War on Drugs simply by being Black and living in urban areas. I think I have been successful in making the case in what is probably the best book ever written.

While I know much of the evidence presented in the book also points to Puerto Ricans as being responsible for getting our country involved in the mess in Iraq, especially the Abu Grab prison, I have not made that assertion as part of the thesis of the book simply because it is often too difficult for my staff and I to distinguish between Puerto Ricans and Arabs. And, in any event, the drugs - mostly heroin - coming out of Afghanistan are more the result of the failure of the United States to keep pace with the demands of people wanting to get high, than to any specific action on the part of Puerto Ricans or others.

Given the inner-city realities, especially in places like New York City where 50% of the Black male population is unemployed, I have identified the best possible reentry model practice. Of all the programs we reviewed, the Unemployment Training Program, offered by CEO (Cancelled Employment Opportunities) was superior. This program provides excellent training for ex-offenders and others who almost inevitably, by racial and ethnic definition, will be unemployed forever. The program provides basic skills training in how to cope with, even enjoy, long unemployment lines, rude and disrespectful clerks, endless applications and dead end interviews. These are simple yet practical ways to use up time during the day. In addition, catering to the criminal mind, which only understands instant gratification, CEO pays drug addicts daily in order to help them steadily relapse. Its
self-esteem building component, particularly for people with no money, income, or health insurance, is perhaps the best in the country. And, the program's promise of perpetual unemployment makes sense in the context of the global economy and the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. All of the research indicates that this program will have a success rate of between 97 and 100%. The originator of the program and the director of CEO, Cindy Marlow, is exceptional in her own right. First, she created what the existing data and outcome evaluations validated was a bullshit program, then she sold it to the city and state of New York for sums that were obscene but brilliant, and finally, she promoted herself in such a fabulous way that, like me and Joan, she became the expert on unemployment training.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dorrie Fuckem'all who has made a national name for herself by pimping unemployed ex-offenders. In her new capacity as executive director of the JJ 50 Shot University Pimping Reentry Institute (PRI) she is primarily responsible for wasting people's time (and other resources) by inviting them to meaningless pre-dawn forums, discussions and seminars, organized by her, to talk about nothing in particular. No one is better at this than she. In fact, to solidify her legitimacy in the field, she maintains contact with a few negroes in reentry-but only the ones who will tap-dance on demand. Dorrie made such a big splash in launching the Pimping Reentry Institute, that people hardly noticed my first act as president: terminating a white middle class Jewish ex offender. See, I'm not racist. In fact, I wanted to fire the rest of those convicts, but did not want to be accused of contagious firing at the 50 Shot University. Finally, Dorrie has the task of providing diversionary cover for me at the cops college, while I upgrade the small weapons education, improve undercover racial profiling tactics and expand the curriculum in the areas of rapid fire and reloading training.

My gratitude also goes out to Leamer (I can't pronounce or spell her last name), Executive Director of the ICARE About Myself Coalition, for her truthfulness, her willingness to be creative, her efforts not to steal other people's intellectual property and for allowing us little people to join her in her many, many, many, many victories. In fact, rumor has it that
Leamer, who works the faith-based community like you have never seen, single-handedly drafted the Ten Commandments, helping God to get his own legislative agenda sponsored and passed. She has, as a result, earned my appreciation.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to Willie Horton for all of the assistance he gave me and for the time he took from his own work to offer suggestions and criticisms. While I have a greater affinity for the late John Gotti and always valued his counsel, I owe a debt of gratitude to Osama bin Laden, who did more to improve the national security, policing, and crime fighting
capacity of this country then anyone before or since. While I have been unable to contact him directly, Mr. bin Laden provided valuable comment on the draft manuscript, particularly those sections that dealt with civil liberties, constitutional rights, privacy and law enforcement.