In the midst of Amerika’s soaring prison and jail population, quite
possibly the country’s only real growth industry, what is often
overlooked is the destruction it is wreaking on family and community.
For all their polemics about “family values,” no Republican or
Democratic presidential candidate bothered to address, or even “spin”
the subject on any level. This alone should be enough to alert any
person of good conscience to the fact that something is afoot and to the
distinct probability that these acts of omissions add up to a purposed
agenda of the state and the powers it represents.
As of June 30, 2006, there were 2,245,189 persons incarcerated in the
united $tates. That is 1 out of every 133 Amerikans and the highest per
capita incarceration rates in history. This is a 2.8% increase over the
previous year, and this rising incarceration rate has been rapidly
accelerating since the 1960s. This trend is accompanied by an increasing
racial disparity, with 4.8% of all Black men, 1.8% of all Hispanic men,
and .7% of all white men in the united $tates incarcerated. Most
alarming, however, is the 4.8% increase in the incarceration rate of
women, as compared to 2.7% for men, for a total of 111,403 in prison as
of June 30, 2006, with Black women incarcerated at nearly 4 times the
rate of white women and more than twice the rate of Hispanic women. (See
Bureau of Justice Statistics, [ul]Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear
2006[/ul], NCJ217675 (June 2007)).
Moreover, the Washington DC-based Public Safety Performance Project
(PSPP) statistically analyzed prison population trends in all 50 states
and the Federal Bureau of Prisons and projected the total prison
population, not including jail, will increase by 192,023 to 1.7 million
between 2007 and 2011. That’s three times the growth of the u$
population and an overall increase of 13%, comprised of 12% for men and
16% for women. (See PSPP, [ul]Public Safety, Public Spending,
Forecasting Amerika’s Prison Population 2007-2011[/ul]).
As shown by these statistics and projections, ’07 through ’11 are going
to be lucky years for the prison industry but not for the persons
included in and affected by them, particularly, women and their
families. To argue that these numbers point to some accidental anomaly
would strain the bonds of credulity past the breaking point, as they
represent nothing less than the achieved goal of state repression of
so-called minority communities in Amerika, with said goal encompassing
the destruction of family as well. “Minorities” first, then everyone
else.
These statistics serve to reveal and confirm the long-term pattern of
intentional destruction of community and family in the ghettos and
barrios of Amerika that already struggle for existence under a virtual
police siege and occupation. The state has come to recognize that, with
most of the men incarcerated, the women, our mothers and daughters, are
still carrying on - the glue holding family and community together - so
it has set about to eliminate them via incarceration. The final stage in
the planned destruction of women’s continued ability to resist the
state’s destruction of their families and communities.
This plan includes redlining by insurance companies and a direct attack
on home ownership by refusing to offer reasonable mortgages in
“minority” communities and, instead, offering subprime and adjustable
rate mortgages, with women much more likely to be saddled with a bad
mortgage than men, a good credit rating not withstanding. Further, with
only starvation-wage employment available to them, many of these women
are forced to subsist on welfare. The December 1, 2007, New York Times
reported that almost half the states refuse to pass on the money
collected for child support to the families on welfare, with most of the
remaining states only passing along $50 per month, in spite of studies
done of a Wisconsin experiment that showed “when support payments were
fully passed along to mothers, more fathers came forward and paid…and
were more likely to establish lasting patterns of payment and connection
with their children.” Of course, incarcerated parents are usually unable
to pay any child support.
Families have little chance to survive intact with the men locked-up and
the women financially hamstrung. However, chance has been removed from
the equation by the state-administered death blow of locking up women
wholesale for minor drug and property crimes. Imagine, if you can, that
you are an oppressed nation woman trying to survive and hold a family
together in the face of this flagrant state repression. Pretty scary,
yes? And even scarier if you are one of the 12 million immigrants trying
to do so. Patriarchy and white privilege uber alles! The state keeps its
foot on our necks by using the age-old tactic of divide and conquer.
Divide the community, then divide the family and all that is left are
isolated individuals whose existence is completely state-mediated.
With family and community in the advanced stages of disintegration, all
that remains are the children - alienated and utterly deprived of
meaningful family and community upbringing. Children with fathers, and
now mothers, in jail or prison. Children driven into foster “homes,”
juvenile detention facilities and even adult jails and prisons. Children
rendered functionally illiterate by an educational system that is
steadily being pried from the hands of our communities and handed over
to state control. Children born and bred in a world where the driving
premise is everyone for themselves and devil take the hindmost. Children
artfully molded to “be all they can be,” which sadly amounts to the
brainwashed cannon-fodder of the Amerikan imperialist dream-death
machine.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade is right that
imprisonment of men is a direct blow to families, particularly oppressed
nation families, and that the incarceration of increasing numbers of
wimmin means increasing devastation to families. It is true that the
imprisonment rate of wimmin is rising faster than that for men, but in
absolute numbers there are still far more men locked up every year and
prisons are still primarily used to target oppressed nation men within
U.$. borders. Also of note, for the first time since the penitentiary
replaced the poor houses over a century ago, we are seeing whole
families locked up in detention centers along the border with Mexico.
Migrant men, wimmin and even children are probably the fastest growing
group in u$ prisons.
There are issues specifically relevant to wimmin prisoners, most obvious
is placement of children in foster systems because wimmin are typically
the primary caregivers for children. While men may be able to rely on
their wives to care for their children when they are locked up, and
single men are unlikely to have custody of children, the reverse is not
true for wimmin. But the loss of connection to their families and
particular children has devastating effects on men and their children as
well.
Groups and individuals who claim to value family and community should be
working with us to stop the growth of prisons in Amerika and set up
programs for family contact where they do exist. These attacks on
families are some of the reasons we can still talk about oppressed
nations existing within u$ borders. As long as these conditions exist
there will be groups of people whose existence demands the end to
imperialism and white power in this country.
