The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

It would have made the national folks downtown proud. Too bad none of them accepted invitations from the inmates. They missed not only a moving performance, but also a chance to raise the issue of how African Americans are affected by the nation's race to incarcerate.

U.S. prisons are a $60-billion growth industry. With the world's highest incarceration rate, the United States locks up more than 2 million people, half of them African Americans. In Michigan, which has one of the nation's highest lockup rates, African Americans make up 14% of the population but more than half of the state's 51,000 inmates.

These trends have reshaped the struggle for a just and equitable society. Despite the gains African Americans have made on many fronts, the number of black men in prison has increased five-fold in the last 20 years, with rippling effects. More than 1 million black men cannot vote after leaving prison because of state laws that disenfranchise felons. One in 14 black children have an incarcerated parent, greatly increasing the chances that they, too, will go to prison.

The men I watched perform at Ryan Correctional Facility Saturday were not pointing fingers. No one was excusing or glorifying crime. Their message to each other was to rise up, take responsibility for your actions, and love your communities instead of victimizing them through crime and self-hatred.

But the problem, unlike what many whites believe, is deeper than individual pathology. Uneven drug laws and policies, racial profiling and other biases in the criminal justice system are real. African Americans make up a minority of drug users, for example, but a majority of those in prison for drug possession. Legal representation for poor people of any color generally mocks the constitutional right to an adequate defense. The lack of educational and employment opportunities for many urban youths has created a sense of hopelessness that can approach nihilism.

"When I grew up here, I had hope that if I did the right things it would pay off," Michigan State University Professor Carl Taylor told me. He's a nationally known activist-scholar who, during the 1960s, grew up in a working class neighborhood on Detroit's west side. "Now, there's a lot of hopelessness," he said. "It's really every dog for itself, which reflects the culture of corporate America."

NAACP officials have not ignored these problems. They've scheduled workshops on criminal justice issues during this week's convention. They have supported federal "Second Chance" re-entry legislation that would provide more assistance to the 650,000 Americans released from prison each year. They have stressed self-help and empowerment. The Detroit branch, under its president, the Rev. Wendell Anthony, and executive director Heaster Wheeler, has shown real leadership, most recently with its "And Justice for All" campaign to reform Michigan's criminal justice system.

But, as the nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NAACP must take an even stronger lead. Nowhere is the nation's inability to solve its problems of race and class more glaring than inside the steel gates of its prisons.

Those failures are costing billions of dollars that could be used for education, health care and transportation needs that would benefit everyone. They're also costing something far more valuable: the priceless potential of so many people, especially young African-American men, to contribute to their communities and country.

JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer.

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