Incarceration & Addiction Treatment Reform Mega-Site

2019-12-22T23:29:00.006-06:00

https://www.amazon.com/Get-Tough-Smart-Winning-Addiction-ebook/dp/B07YXGRHX1

Get Tough & Smart - How to Start Winning the War on Drug Addiction (2019)

How serious is the U.S. Opioid Crisis?

In 2012, cumulative American drug overdose deaths exceeded our deaths in the Second World War.[1] In 2017, there were 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the U.S.[2] By 2021, our total drug overdose deaths will exceed all U.S. war deaths.[3] Our current incarcerated population in American prisons and jails, many of whom are addicts or drug traffickers, is over three times all U.S. war deaths. American addiction is more deadly than war. Addict deaths represent fully wasted lives. “For every drug overdose that results in death, there are many more nonfatal overdoses, each one with its own emotional and economic toll.”[4] “In 2015, an estimated 547,543 emergency department visits occurred for all drug-related poisonings in the U.S.” and “rates were highest among persons aged 15–19.”[5]
“The overall mortality rate for unintentional drug poisonings in the United States grew exponentially from 1979 through 2016. This exponentially increasing mortality rate tracked along a remarkably smooth trajectory for at least 38 years. By contrast, the trajectories of mortality rates from individual drugs have not tracked along exponential trajectories.”[6] We focus much attention on the current Opioid Crisis, but it is a sub-epidemic. In the larger picture we see skyrocketing overdose mortality rates that transcend specific drugs, ages, races, time course and geographic distribution. Skyrocketing overdose mortality represents reckless overconsumption of illegal narcotics. The years from 1979 through 2016 saw the growth of massive incarceration.
We are losing or have already lost the old War on Drugs. American life expectancy has declined for three years in a row on account of increases in drug overdoses, chronic liver disease and suicide,[7] all three linked to drugs and alcohol. To avoid reversal of the American Dream, we must change strategy and tactics.
Overdose survivors sometimes have permanent brain injury due to oxygen deficiency during overdoses. “Approximately one quarter of those entering brain injury rehabilitation are there as a result of drugs or alcohol, while nearly 50 percent of people receiving treatment for substance misuse have a history of at least one brain injury.”[8] Skyrocketing drug overdoses over time produce even less intelligent and capable addicts. “The opioid epidemic has led to the creation of a new term: Toxic Brain Injury.”[9]

What caused it?

Here are some causes. We can fault the following situations, factors, people, tendencies, organizations and conditions for making our opioid crisis worse in the USA:

Illegal drug cartels who make, process, lucratively sell and distribute heroin, morphine, fentanyl, pain pills and opioids generally.

Declining prices for and increasing purity for heroin over the last few decades.

Total failure and sometimes back-firing of Just Say No!, D.A.R.E. and other drug prevention campaigns aimed at youth.

Inventors and manufacturers of the powerful opioids fentanyl and carfentanil … and all the other addictive opioid drugs, legal and illegal.

American influence in Afghanistan that has allowed Afghanistan to become the #1 supplier of opium and its derivatives.

Gateway drugs of alcohol, nicotine and marijuana.Workplace, sports and motor vehicle accident injuries leading to increased demand for opioid pain pills.

Chronic pain from whatever condition.Inability of addicts to know what they are taking, measure proper doses or know the effects of mixing two or more different drugs together.“

“Catch and Release” of overdosed addicts.

Resuscitating overdosed addicts and releasing them soon thereafter, without diverting them to drug abuse treatment, and the repeating of this process multiple times.

Toxic brain injury due to overdoses and consequent deprivation of oxygen as breathing slows or stops.

Addicts addicted to opioids.

Too many people who are depressed, have mental illnesses, are at low points in their lives, have addictive personalities, etc.

The super-strong psychological process of denial.

Addiction is a disorder or disease which causes the addict to deny they have a disorder or disease.

Pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma oversold opioid pain pills and misrepresented the likelihood of addiction.

Social Security Disability claimants used pain as one reason they sought disability … and then they had to stay in pain to continue benefits.

Treating pain as the 5th Vital Sign, including legislation requiring it to be assessed.

Overprescribing physicians and “pill mills.”

The FDA allowed OxyContin and other opioid pain pills to carry misleading labels.

The CDC withdrew pain medication from too many people and encouraged them to turn to heroin.

The DEA for making medication-assisted treatment too restrictive or cumbersome for physicians to qualify.

Dr. Mitchell Max and the American Pain Society.

The White House for appointing Drug Czars in a democracy where czars have no power, implying that the federal government had a handle on things.

American prosperity and disposable income.

Music lyrics over the last 50 years that extolled drugs and made them more enticing.

Freewheeling consumer culture that emphasizes doing what feels good.

Ineffective drug abuse treatments and therapies.

Drug abuse treatments misrepresented as to effectiveness.

Making “relapse” a dirty word in drug abuse treatment circles.

Societal and community disapproval of methadone clinics and prejudice against methadone.

Both stigma concerning drug addiction and the lack of stigma for certain aspects of drug addiction.

Outdated laws.

Handling of drug addiction through criminal legal actions to the near-exclusion of civil and administrative actions and remedies.

Loss of parental control over drug-addicted children when children reach age of majority.

The ever-increasing number and variety of drug analogs and new drugs.

Ignorance of initiates as to different ways and methods to become addicted (i.e. smoking, snorting, injecting or ingestion).

People and institutions enabling drug addicts.

People thinking they can try heroin, meth and cocaine once without getting addicted … or twice without getting addicted … or on an irregular basis without getting addicted.

Ignorance of addiction, warning signs, medication-assisted treatment, brain function, neurology, psychology, and of effective drug abuse treatment.

The pleasure-seeking portions of the human brain.

Failure to study or take note of the only democratic nation in the world to completely overcome their opioid problems: Singapore.

Failure to study or take note of the European nations who have approached addiction differently, namely Portugal and Switzerland.

Dirty needles that impart HIV and hepatitis C.

Extensive and porous borders and huge territory to police.

Chinese fentanyl manufacturers.

Inadequacy of incarceration as punishment or deterrence for drug offenses.

Propensity of released prisoners and addicts leaving residential treatment to overdose due to loss of tolerance to opioids.

Wage stagnation, automation and industries moving to low wage countries.

The decline of communities throughout the Rust Belt, Appalachia, the Deep South, Midwest and West.

Poverty making drug dealing more attractive and drug taking more exciting.

Drug traffickers operating in a private enterprise mode out-competing inefficient, slow, bureaucratic governments.

Bitcoin and Dark Web transactions enabling drug traffickers.

Mental problems making addiction more problematic and difficult to address successfully.

All of the social, family, genetic and personal problems and factors that make drug addiction more likely and problematic.

Exponential increase in overdose mortality since 1979, eventually leading to skyrocketing overdose mortality rate in the USA.

What is the solution?

Reform. I studied incarceration over the course of a decade, have written on the subject, and am dead-set against the massive inert incarceration we now have in the U.S. I already had behavior modification and work systems in mind when the Opioid Crisis hit. My ideas and proposals include ways to put prisoners and drug addicts to productive and profitable work and use substitute punishments in lieu of incarceration. The same punishments will help fight addiction and massive incarceration at the same time. Most opponents of massive incarceration tend to be on the liberal side, while I am a conservative. It is lonely far outside the box.
The United States has through various means increasingly subsidized its worst elements and now supports the largest group of full-time welfare recipients in the world, the U.S. prison and jail populations. Prisoners need to work, but special interest laws keep them inactive most of the time. Prisoners could labor for private manufacturers, not the monopolistic money-losing prison industries run by governments. If they made goods like light bulbs, stainless steel rebar, dress shirts, vending machines and toys that are now only made overseas, U.S. labor would benefit. To do this, I propose a safety-oriented laissez-faire business model, free of restrictions on prison-made goods and prison labor. Most federal and state statutes governing labor-management relations and most laws imposing liability against employers would need to exempt prison industries and labor. Over the last decades, others proposed similar reforms to get prisoners working, but we have not revitalized tiny prison industries or put many prisoners to productive labor in the private sector. I was just the latest voice advocating the revitalization and therefore privatization of prison industries and labor, but newer voices have picked up the refrain.
The multiple goals of this book are to decrease crime, drug addiction and incarceration. This means improving drug treatments, deterring teenagers from drugs and crime, boosting the American economy and encouraging legislative experimentation at the State and local levels. We should make punishments just, faster and more effective deterrents, less expensive and visible in the community. We have to attack the demand for addictive narcotics while we minimize the sources.
Drugs generally produced massive incarceration and drug addiction, which justifies studying the sick symbiotic connections and analyzing the gigantic problems together. Punishing crime supports the war on drug addiction and vice versa. As the Chief of the Bureau of Organized Crime in the Chicago Police Department put it, “So in Chicago, our violent crime is our drug problem, and our drug problem is our violent crime problem.”[1] I outline the many links and similarities between crime, drug addiction, criminals and addicts. We must hold addicts and offenders fully accountable over the course of years.
Drugs create addiction, and the old War on Drugs gave birth to massive incarceration. Below are multiple ways to accomplish the general goals of drastically reducing each of those social problems. Others will have new solutions, so my list is by no means exhaustive, exclusive or guaranteed. I propose we attack our problems in different ways in each State simultaneously. Some proposals could be implemented now because they are legal, practical or already in place. Most of the proposals would require legislation at the State or U.S. levels. The majority of my proposals can be implemented independently, although they strongly support each other. Some suggested reforms are very controversial, at least for now. Here are the more easily implemented reforms:
Decriminalization or De-Penalization. A State could establish a Dissuasion Commission to govern, control and work with addicts under its supervision. Being a civil not criminal process, a Dissuasion Commission might have authority to commit or confine addicts in the name of public health or send them to drug-free workplaces or other institutions, but not jail or prison. One State might de-penalize recreational possession of a drug, while preserving draconian punishment for drug traffickers. Singapore sends addicts to Singapore’s drug treatment centers, just so long as the quantity held by the addict is below their legal limits, above which the defendant is heavily presumed guilty of drug trafficking and faces the death penalty.
The States are already legislatively experimenting with marijuana legalization. Other States can move in the opposite direction to punish marijuana with renewed vigor, reduce illegal drug use with civil legal actions (those not involving charging people with crimes) or legalize older punishments. We should watch what foreign nations are doing, because there is an infinite variety of drugs and ways to handle legal consequences. We should get used to the idea of States trying different solutions, some opposed to each other, because we need legislative experimentation. Nobody has all the solutions, experience or knowledge. Those in authority are beginning to admit their helplessness.
Eliminate Bias Against Medicines & Educate. Medication-assisted treatment (“MAT”) refers to substitute drugs prescribed to overcome opioid addiction. Methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone are the most common medicines and are opioids themselves. Many oppose these drugs due to expense, diversion concerns, uneven results and the difficulties of administering them. A common prejudice holds that MAT simply substitutes one addictive drug for another. MAT medicines are the gold standard for treatment of opioid addiction, even though half of addicts on these medicines, under current procedures, relapse within six months.[2] They allow addicts to work productively and live fairly normal lives. On the flip-side, most non-MAT drug treatments lasting just 30 or 60 days and not followed with substantial aftercare and family or other support are ineffective except as temporary incapacitation. The public needs to know how ineffectual nearly all drug treatments can be, so that we do not continue to pour money into vessels that leak badly and so we can bolster all treatments.
Medication-Assisted Drug Treatment in Prison. Very few prisons provide MAT for their prisoners. We should increase medication-assisted drug abuse treatment (MAT) in prisons, especially in the 30 to 60 days before release. If on parole, opioid addicts should be required to take their methadone or buprenorphine dose regularly, without using recreational drugs.
Provide Standard Texts & Workbooks to Help Addicts and Their Supporters. Parents, grandparents, professionals and many others need education, because their drug-addicted children, grandchildren, clients and patients do not even think they have a problem. The confusing blizzard of debatable treatments, facilities, methods, websites, acronyms, brochures, theories and groups ought to be simplified for those who need a convenient and authoritative reference concerning each of the main drug addictions. From the perspective of the addict, there are enough shared principles, facts and local reference information for the addict and supporters to begin the process of recovery. Each State could authorize or issue such authoritative texts, revise them after input from interested parties, advance knowledge of drug addiction, drug laws and commence psychosocial and behavioral therapy in a rudimentary manner. The major theories and approaches could all be consolidated into factual guidelines, the best websites provided, computer-assisted treatment started, and the subjects of relapse, insurance, costs, resources, benefits, statistics and addiction-related diseases provided, without sugar-coating, bias, financial or hidden agendas. Recovery is not rocket science, despite an alphabet soup of acronyms, it is just extremely difficult to escape what addicts desire. Texts could list services for addicts and the homeless. Parents and families are entitled to know how high the relapse rates are before they spend retirement savings on expensive ineffective drug treatments.
The reforms stated above are already underway, easily accomplished or could be implemented in a year or less. Major or significant legislation will be required for the following proposals, because they change the rights, responsibilities, opportunities and options for offenders, prisoners, addicts, civil defendants and those who treat, employ, prosecute and sentence them:
New Legal Status. We should create the legal status of “addict,” attainable at various junctures such as overdose admissions to hospitals, conviction on drug-related charges or dangerous overt acts, admissions by addicts or parental designation. A new legal status will expedite and improve civil legal proceedings and mandatory drug treatment without prosecutions for crimes.
New Duty for Addicts. We should create a civil legal duty on the part of the addict to make reasonable progress toward abstinence. Methadone and buprenorphine maintenance participants could initiate this procedure, since those medications take away craving for opioids. Alcoholics convicted of their first or second DUI or alcohol-related offense have a drug to take away their craving for alcohol. Cocaine and methamphetamine addicts likewise should have a legal duty to recover, although different duties and sanctions might apply for separate recreational drugs depending upon the availability of medication-assisted treatments and other factors. Complete abstinence is a great goal, but most cannot achieve it without social, family, legal and financial support and accountability.
Expand Civil Remedies & Mandatory Treatment. In the name of public health, we should expand civil proceedings to bring more addicts involuntarily into outpatient or residential drug abuse treatment, therapeutic communities, recovery residences, employment or other controlled environments and keep them committed to recovery. We could hopefully develop drug-free employment, home or school environments through civil commitment in the name of public health, and can provide basic drug treatment or therapy in these drug-free environments. Civil commitment can expand to include multiple destinations, treatments and handling. We could confine addicts as a civil commitment in the interests of public health and force them to initiate methadone or buprenorphine maintenance therapy if they are addicted to opioids. In jail or detention initially for purposes of public health, a physician could establish their correct methadone or buprenorphine maintenance therapy doses to be administered in confinement. We could put Frequent Flyers[3] into mandatory treatment directly from the hospital, and could use jail cells for their civil commitment, all under existing U.S. Supreme Court rulings. “Patients who are opioid dependent and...commence methadone maintenance treatment do not require withdrawal maintenance; they can be commenced on methadone immediately.”[4]
After initial confinement, addicts could be referred to treatment, homes, facilities, Drug Courts, recovery residences and outpatient therapy while contact with addiction-related people and environments could be prohibited.
Addicts if below the age of 28 might be sent to the homes of their empowered responsible parents, grandparents, relatives or friends by raising on a very selected basis the age of majority for these addicts.
In view of the addicted population, the costs of residential drug treatments, and the greater number of months in residential treatment required for effectiveness, addicts might labor productively in drug-free work environments for multiple years in exchange for treatment, in something like indentured servitude, adding years to their lives.
Expand & Strengthen Drug Courts. Drug Courts have expanded into many jurisdictions but are selective in the offenders they accept. They act under criminal legal principles without effective sanctions or civil powers. We could strengthen Drug Courts with civil judicial powers by allowing them to order, control and supervise civil commitments to drug treatment, lengthy aftercare following treatment and application of more effective sanctions without incarceration. With civil legal actions, the Courts could coerce addicts to overcome their addictions.
Some proposed reforms will cost significant sums of money, major reworking of existing legislation or will generate enormous controversy while we in society debate. A very few geographically smaller States have already instituted a program to bring MAT to rural populations, and those programs would be more expensive in larger States.
Expand Hub & Spoke Program. States could adopt the Hub & Spoke program, as some smaller States already do. Mobile drug treatment vans could distribute methadone, buprenorphine and other medications in rural areas. Switzerland, Portugal and Singapore provide such services in their smaller nations. We should significantly improve mandatory and voluntary drug treatment availability, participation and results, over the objections of addicts, including expanded methadone and buprenorphine use and longer treatments. I think Drug Courts should punish the consumption of recreational drugs outside the prescription of the addicts’ physicians and generally enforce contracts or laws establishing abstinence goals.
Here is a reform I’ve been pushing along with many other persons interested in prison reform. I wrote a little-noticed law review article entitled How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs. This major reform will require substantial legislation at the U.S. and State levels. The interests previously blocking this reform can more easily assent to it now that much manufacturing has moved to low-wage countries like China and Vietnam:
Revitalize prison industries and create jobs for addicts. We could revitalize prison industries and labor under a laissez-faire model paying negotiated wages without the application of most employment related laws.[5] We must shield employers from the numerous lawsuits prisoners or addicts would file under laws regulating wages, hours, conditions of employment, discrimination of all types, and breach of contract, while preserving OSHA safety regulations, a form of workers’ compensation and other laws protecting people. Employers and prisoners would each have the right to terminate employment at will, sending the inmate back to the general prison population, subject to any written employment contracts. The American economy would receive a huge boost if we manufactured consumer and other goods now made exclusively overseas. This would include a surprising number of All-American brands now made in China and other countries,[6] including baseballs, blue jeans and Christmas lights.[7] Similar businesses are contemplated to employ drug addicts, although initially the work groups should be separated.
The Truth, the Ugly Truth. Our still-abstinent young people should see the whole truth regarding the fate of drug-addicted people. We should relax and modify privacy, confidentiality, police and paramedic policies, secrecy, medical record policies and non-disclosure laws enough to facilitate youth deterrence and prevention, help law enforcement and mandate compulsory treatment. We should subject addicts’ overdoses, faces, photographs, deaths, syringes, corpses, punishments and problems to much more photographic and video disclosure on the internet, in other media and in public. These awful things are the truth and families naturally want them concealed. Their full disclosure will surpass in effectiveness the multiple unsuccessful, expensive and counter-productive attempts to deter youth from initiating drug use. Emergency doctors should be able to talk to primary care physicians, and in other ways we need to enhance communication on drug topics.
Control Without Incarceration. We need to dramatically expand electronic GPS monitoring of offenders, beyond ankle bracelets, continue to develop advanced monitoring technology and develop a variety of new software, monitors, systems and devices to keep track of offenders and addicts. Remotely monitoring alcohol intake is highly advanced, but the same cannot be said of other drugs. Ankle bracelets are valuable tools, and in addition, we ought to have sturdier, more visible devices.
In lieu of designated periods of incarceration, re-incarceration, juvenile detention, continued addiction or expulsion from high school, we might allow defendants unable to make bail, juvenile delinquents, offenders, parolees, probationers, guilty criminal defendants and addicts to wear color-coded yokes or collars, with or without various electronic enhancements, adjusted in weight or removed according to the conduct, addiction or status of the offender.[8] States could adopt policies and punishments should a yoked or collared individual be found guilty of an offense or be out at night, in a proscribed place or with prohibited people. Cell phones and GPS technology would make enforcement of yoke control exponentially easier, since any bystander might call 911 to report an errant yoke-wearer. Removal of the yoke or collar could generally follow employment, sobriety, drug treatment or compliant school participation.
Most Controversial. The most controversial reforms I propose did not arise out of thin air, but instead were used throughout the world for centuries and millennia in the past. As a student of history, I found them in many places and discovered clear and powerful support in the scientific literature for their use. Great opposition to these controversial proposals arises from (1) lack of knowledge of their effectiveness, cost-efficiency, speed, publicity, portability, responsiveness and repeatability when administered in public with due process, judicial observation and two pre-determined limits, (2) the unknown and unsuspected preference of offenders for these punishments over incarceration, (3) their cessation in Western civilization for about the last four or five generations, (4) abuse in other cultures, circumstances and times, (5) their use to enforce values we condemn in Western civilization, (6) the isolating government-driven centralization of hidden punishment found in our current American incarceration regimes, (7) inaccurate and biased Hollywood and televised portrayal, (8) our freewheeling and relatively wealthy consumer culture, (9) Eurocentric bias and ignorance of Singapore’s triumphant success in defeating their opioid crises and achieving the lowest crime and addiction rates in the world, (10) unfamiliarity with or indifference to the twin disasters of massive incarceration and drug addiction, (11) the anomaly that the punishments are legal and sometimes harmfully administered to children but not legally to adults, (12) identification with abolished slavery without considering the worse modern slaveries of drug addiction and massive incarceration, (13) dealing with overdoses and addiction as a disease rather than as a behavior, to the exclusion of handling overdoses primarily as the reckless, senseless, suicidal overconsumption of illegal drugs, and (14) misperception as to which procedures are backed by science and which are not so supported.
In addition to the proven scientific principles of behavior modification, these controversial punishments came from or are sanctioned by the Old and New Testaments of the Bible together with American and world history. Ridding Singapore of opioids, addicts and drugs better than any other nation in the world ought to prove effectiveness scientifically, but Americans are still trying to get a grip on the situation without any reference to Singapore.
Knee-jerk opposition and a refusal to even discuss direct behavior modification in the Bible Belt show how much public opinion must change before some of the suggested reforms are adopted. Immediate opposition to new techniques represents a lack of urgency, ignorance or apathy concerning the sorry state of American addictions and massive incarceration. Confidence in persuading people now arises from skyrocketing drug overdose mortality, declining life expectancy in the U.S. for the last three years, monumental failures of drug treatments and punishments, Frequent Flyers, fentanyl, the power of criminal gangs and cartels, declining prices and increasing purity of illegal drugs, the continued invention and distribution of new illegal drugs, corruption produced in foreign countries and at home, and most of all our spectacular inability to deter and prevent young people from initiating drug use.

Selections & Reference: Get Tough & Smart: How to Start Winning the War on Drug Addiction (advocates more civil handling of drug problems, expanded Drug Courts, legal duty on addict to recover, mandatory treatments, work for addicts & prisoners, more MAT, punishments other than incarceration, less enabling, denormalizing recreational pharmacology, denial destruction, abstinence reinforcement, more publicity of worst aspects of addiction, less emphasis on NIDA brain disease paradigm, relaxation of some HIPPA requirements, etc.).

2019-11-02T20:20:00.001-05:00

Get Tough & Smart

How to Start Winning the War on Drug Addiction

John Dewar Gleissner

Now on Sale at Amazon.com:

Get Tough & Smart Ebook

2019-03-19T15:57:00.002-05:00

Outline of Proposals to Win the War on Drug Addiction

The War on Drugs was lost. Reforms are set forth in my new book, Get Tough & Smart - How to Start Winning the War on Drug Addiction (Get Tough & Smart - How to Start Winning the War on Drug Addiction). We must attack the demand for addictive drugs and fight crime. Punishing crime supports the War on Drug Addiction and vice versa. The Opioid Crisis is bringing matters to a head. Here is a list of new proposals:

· Create the legal status of “addict,” attainable at various junctures such as overdose admissions to hospitals, conviction of drug-related crime, parental designation, physician designation, etc.Government, annuity, workers’ compensation and other regular checks might be re-directed to support recovery rather than addiction.

· Relax privacy, confidentiality, secrecy and non-disclosure laws enough to facilitate law enforcement and forced recovery, such as requiring police to be notified when addicts are preparing to leave a hospital at the end of detox or rehab facility prematurely.

· Emphatically and graphically dissuade and deter teenagers from trying drugs, by subjecting addicts’ overdoses, problems and punishment, particularly PJCP, to much more photographic and video disclosure on the internet;

· Create a legal duty on the part of the addict to make reasonable progress towards abstinence; methadone and buprenorphine maintenance participants would be ideal for enforcing this procedure, since those medications take away craving for opioids;

· In the name of public health, expand civil commitment statutes and proceedings to bring more addicts into drug abuse treatment or other controlled environment involuntarily, for placement: (1) in the homes of their empowered parents; (2) in jail initially to start methadone and buprenorphine maintenance therapy; (3) in drug-free work environments to labor productively for multiple years in exchange for treatment (i.e. indentured servitude);

· Make addicts stay in evidence-based outpatient or residential treatment and make them complete that treatment on pain of punishment;

· If they fail to pass regular urine tests, subject methadone & buprenorphine maintenance patients to progressive discipline and punishment, civilly, administratively and/or criminally; and roll this procedure out to other addicts and addictions when successful;

· Reduce incarceration and drug addiction by allowing parolees and some drug addicts to wear color-coded metal collars, with or without various electronic enhancements, adjusted in weight according to the post-release conduct of the offender and abstinence of the recovering addict; adopt policies and punishments should a collared individual be found out at night or in a prohibited place;

· Increase medication-assisted drug abuse treatment in prisons, especially in the 30 days before release;

· Expand the State of Vermont’s Hub & Spoke program to other states, and use mobile drug treatment vans to distribute methadone and other medications in rural areas;

· Revitalize prison industries and labor under a laissez-fairemodel paying negotiated wages without application of laws applicable to regular citizens, even below minimum wages, in accordance with How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs;

· Punish many crimes with the progressive discipline and punishment of the stocks, pillory, tattoos/branding and ultimately public judicial corporal punishment (hereinafter referred to as “PJCP”) as set forth in Deuteronomy 25:1-3, in lieu of (or in addition to) incarceration, especially by employing PJCP on drug dealers, gang-related criminal offenders and thieves.

· If they re-offend on parole, instead of sending parolees back to prison, punish them with PJCP;

· To fight addiction after the addict has completed initial drug treatment, use credible abstinence reinforcers such as PJCP indefinitely for many years, rather than the trinkets, vouchers, cash and drawings we now call our abstinence reinforcers during the short time addicts are in treatment; destroy the addicts’ denial, if necessary, with these abstinence reinforcers;

· Collar, yoke, surgically castrate or brand rapists and child molesters.

2019-01-02T11:21:00.001-06:00

Dr. Robert DuPont says to fight the drug epidemic we need a "credible baseball bat," a bottom addicts hit before entering treatment. Somebody usually has a baseball bat to the addict's head making them enter treatment. Eureka! Judicial corporal punishment or the threat of it is needed to fight the opioid epidemic.

Please read my book Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison @ https://www.amazon.com/Prison-Slavery-John-Dewar-Gleissner/dp/1432753835

or law review articles: @

https://www.academia.edu/10171334/Prison_Overcrowding_Cure_Judicial_Corporal_Punishment_of_Adults &
https://vanderbilt.academia.edu/JohnGleissner

2018-12-07T16:35:00.001-06:00

Answer to Question: Why do some Americans like to call the United States of America, "The greatest country on earth"?

Answer by John Dewar Gleissner

Because some of us believe it’s true. We’ve got:

(1) The world’s oldest written constitution that enshrines and guarantees basic rights, federalism and the rule of law, that has provided for free elections every two years for over 228 years, always moved in the direction of inclusiveness, and which has been a model for other nations.

(2) A history of defeating colonialism, fascism, dictatorships, diseases, the slave trade, slavery, legal racism and communism. The world looks to the USA and its strong allies for leadership when it is time to oppose evil forces.

(3) A history of leadership in inventing or developing the lightning rod, light bulb, telephone, telegraph, the airplane, manufacturing, television, missiles and rockets, the computer, lifesaving medicines and medical devices, agricultural innovations, nuclear power, satellite communications, hydroelectric dams, ships, bridges, aircraft, spacecraft, the transistor and a host of different products and services; and leadership in numerous scientific disciplines.

(4) A history of creativity in literature, art, films, television, computers, engineering, aerospace, science, athletics, business, the humanities and music.

(5) The strongest economy and military in the world and a safe haven for investments from all over the world.

(6) Great universities, the most Nobel Prize winners and an attractive destination for leading thinkers and innovators from all over the world.

(7) The headquarters of the United Nations.

(8) A country many others in the world long to enter.

(9) A motto: In God We Trust. Providence blessed the USA with tremendous natural resources and a terrific geographic position in the world.

(10) A two-party system reducing special interests to the smallest number of political parties while preserving an adversary political dynamic so necessary for free elections.

(11) Liberty, a diverse and talented population, opportunities and freedom.

2018-05-23T14:11:00.000-05:00

If you were given complete power to reform the US prison system, including sentencing, what would you do?

First, I would institute judicial corporal punishment in lieu of incarceration for many prisoners. This solution is straight out of the Bible, Deuteronomy 25:1–3 and was favored by all the presidents carved into Mt. Rushmore. It is inexpensive, repeatable, proven to work and starts rehabilitation without removing the offender from the community. This might cut the prison population in half. Prison Overcrowding Cure: Judicial Corporal Punishment of Adults

Second, to keep kids in school or on the job, eliminate immediate incarceration of offenders, warn the public and shame offenders, I would fit offenders with a metallic collar, with or without electronic enhancement, color-coded per the crime and made heavier or lighter according to the ongoing behavior of the offender. For example, green for crimes of property, yellow for sex offenders, red for violent offenders, purple for drug offenses, etc. Like judicial corporal punishment, this would also be a community punishment, which many reformers want.

Third, for those who remained in prison, I would privatize and re-vitalize prison industries by removing almost all government subsidies, regulations and laws, except for OSHA safety regulations, and allow private employers to hire prisoners on an employment-at-will, laissez faire basis for whatever they could negotiate. Prisoners need to work, want to work and should work; and this would allow them to build a nest egg as well as paying restitution, court costs, some incarceration costs and money to the state. The USA could compete with the Chinese and Vietnamese — perhaps only making goods now made exclusively overseas. Read: How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs

These three main ideas are explained in the publications shown in my Profile: Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison (Kindle $4.75 Amazon.com: Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison eBook: John Dewar Gleissner: Kindle Store); “How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs,” Tennessee Journal of Law & Policy; “Prison Overcrowding Cure: Judicial Corporal Punishment of Adults” (The Criminal Law Bulletin, 2013); articles at Academia.edu, in Corrections.com, EzineArticles.com, Digital Journal and other locations. Host: Incarceration Reform Mega-Site(incarcerationreform.blogspot.com).

Please write your state legislator, governor and/or U.S. Congress representative that you want one, two or three of the above things done!

2018-05-23T14:04:00.003-05:00

What does it mean when people say, 'Prisons are for profit in America'?

That refers to the private prison industry, which makes money from the warehousing function prisons provide. It does not refer to prison industries, most of which are government-run, lose money, do not provide jobs for all prisoners, and do not allow much private enterprise to operate freely. Prisoners are not entitled to all the employment protection and minimum wages of the free world in the USA, so we ought to return to laissez-faire employment in prisons, allowing private enterprises to pay prisoners a negotiated wage for 60-hour work weeks. Prisoners could make a nest egg, learn how to work a tough job, there would be more money for victims, child support and the state, and everybody could win. Please read How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs and then write a letter to your Congressman! [If prisons made products now exclusively made overseas, organized labor would benefit, too!]

2018-02-03T18:04:00.002-06:00

Deuteronomy 25:1-3

"When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes. If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes."

By ignoring the Bible, and in its place putting our own ideas about incarceration, we have created New Age slavery.

2018-01-14T20:32:00.002-06:00

It is true that American slavery comes in for more scrutiny and condemnation than slavery in other regions and epochs. This is because our American media and liberal politicians and academics use the abolitionist-inspired history of American slavery almost exclusively to condemn the South, slavery, the effects of slavery, sometimes the whole USA, etc., in an effort to serve political ends today. The most extreme elements demand monetary reparations for slavery; others seek preferential college admissions, quotas, affirmative action, political correctness, election of Democrats, black contractors for urban projects, etc.

In truth, the United States was the best place in the world to be a slave, especially after 1808, when the slave trade was outlawed as soon as it could be under the terms of the U.S. Constitution. Booker T. Washington wrote that, “The ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.” Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison: John Dewar Gleissner: 9781432753832: Amazon.com: Books (proves American slavery far from the worst, that cruelty was exaggerated and any happiness of slaves fully denied).

While there is much indignation about the events of over 150 years ago, a new form of slavery, New Age Slavery, mass incarceration, has crept in to ruin many lives, destroy communities and overburden American taxpayers while the “slaves” themselves sit around most of the time, without performing much useful or truly profitable work. Liberal media, politicians and academics cannot bring themselves to admit that techniques from the antebellum era provide the workable, economical, time-tested solutions to mass incarceration, but instead cling to the incarceration regime as the only thing they know. . How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs. Incarceration Reform Mega-Site. They’d rather allow New Age Slavery before they are willing to consider or even discuss old procedures and private enterprise techniques on a race-neutral basis today.

2017-12-21T22:41:00.000-06:00

Why is slavery in the Arab world not discussed much in the media?

The slave ship below was photographed in 1896. The group of young boys may have been destined for castration to serve as eunuchs.

The media and academia have selective moral outrage. Moral outrage against U.S. slavery serves political ends. Moral outrage against Islamic culture doesn’t serve political ends. The slaves photographed above were headed to a Muslim country well after the American Civil War. In fact, slavery in the United States was a good bit more humane than slavery in the Arab world.

“Terrible Aspects of Slavery in the Arab World. The Arabs’ treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. Arab Muslims began extracting millions of black African slaves centuries before Christian nations did. Arab slave traders removed slaves from Africa for about 13 centuries, compared to three centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves making the Middle Passage to the New World by ship. Slaves invariably died within five years if they worked in the Ottoman Empire’s Sahara salt mines. Black Africans did not enjoy immunity to many of the diseases found in the Arab world, which also resulted in high death rates.

Slaveholders in the Muslim world often castrated black African male slaves to serve as harem guards. This is a prime reason there are not many communities of blacks living in the non-African Muslim world today, despite the millions of black African slaves sold into the Muslim world. Many African boys did not survive their castration surgery. As late as 1903, there were still 194 African eunuchs in service to the Ottoman ruling family.

African women were enslaved by Arabs more than African men. Few black slave children survived in the Muslim world. In 1860, when 3,000 black female slaves were set free in Zanzibar, only 5% of them had children. Because under Islamic law a concubine bearing the child of the master could become a wife and her children would then share in the inheritance, Middle Eastern wives and children of masters had a strong incentive to interfere with the sex lives of female slaves and cause brutal abortions. Islamic jurisprudence historically allowed abortions in the first four months of pregnancy, long before the West allowed it. Islamic tradition supports the view that the soul enters the fetus at 120 days. If a concubine had the only son, the threat to the wife was even greater. The Koran allowed Muslim men to have as many concubines as they could afford, in addition to four wives.

The Arab history of anti-black racism predates European anti-black racism by several centuries. The early Islamic empire exhibited all the characteristics of anti-black racism, and blacks suffered the lowest form of bondage. By 869 A.D., black African slaves in southern Iraq, the despised Zanj, launched an extended slave revolt that threatened Baghdad until 883 A.D. The main reasons we have not heard more about the horrors of slavery in the Muslim world are that Muslims did not express moral outrage against slavery and wrote no abolitionist literature against the institution of slavery. Dr. Thomas Sowell characterizes the moral indignation against New World slavery, and the lack of any such indignation against the Muslim or non-Western world, as “selective moral indignation.” The moral outrage against slavery was and is, in the grand historical context, a European-inspired cause gaining significant traction only in the 1760s. Europeans took photographs of chained black African slaves in Arab slave-trading vessels on the East Coast of Africa in the 1880s. Slavery persisted openly in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries in the latter half of the twentieth century, 100 years after slavery was abolished in the United States. As late as 1960, African Muslims still sold slaves when they arrived on pilgrimages, as a way to finance their pilgrimages. Arab nations lagged far behind the rest of the world in abolishing slavery: Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, United Arab Emirates in 1963, Oman in 1970 and Mauritania officially in 1981. Today, according to U.S. State Department figures, Muslim nations condone international human trafficking more than Western countries do.

David Livingstone observed in Africa the horrendous slave trading practices of Arab and pagan slave traders, decades after Great Britain had begun to suppress the international slave trade, and almost a century after Lord Mansfield, with the stroke of a pen, freed slaves in England. The Ottoman Empire resisted British efforts to suppress slavery and the slave trade. Over the course of 70 years, 2,000 British sailors died to free 160,000 slaves. While Islam urged improved treatment of slaves in some ways, the rapid expansion of the Muslim empire rapidly increased the number of slaves, leading to crueler treatment. Africa and the Middle East never developed the moral abolitionist fervor seen in Western nations. Slavery is now most prominent in Africa.

From the time of the Crusades until the early 1800’s, Barbary pirates or corsairs from Muslim North Africa raided European coasts and waters, selling captive Europeans as slaves in North African ports and Istanbul. Barbary corsairs attacked shipping in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, raiding the coasts of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Britain, Ireland, and Africa for slaves. Some Mediterranean islands and coasts in Spain and Italy were abandoned due to the threat of Barbary slave raiding. The United States initially paid tribute to the Barbary pirates to obtain the return of American captives. After building ships, the United States fought the First and Second Barbary Wars to stop this slave trading and piracy. In fact, the desire to defend American shipping and sailors from Barbary piracy gave re-birth to the U.S. Navy. The Marine Hymn refers to the Battle of Derne on “the shores of Tripoli.” The traditional Mameluke sword worn by Marine officers today is based on the one given Marine First Lt. Presley O’Bannon by Prince Hamet of Tripoli.”

Excerpt from https://www.amazon.com/Prison-Slavery-John-Dewar-Gleissner/dp/1432753835 Amazon.com: Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison eBook: John Dewar Gleissner ($4.75 Kindle Store)(statements above footnoted in book; The Look Inside feature allows you to read much of the book for free.).

With reference to the comparison between slavery in the USA and slavery in the Muslim world, I would like to quote a truly great educator from my home state of Alabama:

“The ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.” – Booker T. Washington

2017-11-05T17:13:00.002-06:00

There is a curious relationship between incarceration and prison, which is the subject of Prison & Slavery - A Surprising Comparison:

Prologue

Prisoners are the least popular segment of society and prison the most disreputable place. As a result, few think or talk about prisons or prisoners. Most of us never see the inside of a prison or talk with anyone who readily admits to having lived there. Offenders deserve punishment, so why should we care?

The United States now has over 7,300,000 people in its correctional population, an economically and socially debilitating number of convicts and offenders. With only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25% of its prisoners. If the correctional population were a state, it would be America’s thirteenth largest state by population. Grossly inefficient state slavery, which is what incarceration amounts to, is worse than people think, and is bad for the public, taxpayers, crime victims, prisoners, the economy and the families of the victimized and incarcerated. We can reduce the number of Americans in prison and fight crime at the same time, but our tactics need to change. History and science will reveal a different way of thinking.

Antebellum slavery succeeded in a number of ways and was less gruesome than failed “new age slavery,” a name for mass incarceration or state slavery. The plantation regime did not incarcerate antebellum slaves. Colonial officials disciplined whites with methods other than incarceration, too. Antebellum slaves had more virtue than is recognized today. Slaves were usually non-violent, hard working, polite, sober, spiritual and safe: the opposite of criminals today. Antebellum slaves created and lived in a much better private enterprise world than new age slaves. We should admit our modern failures and pay proper attention to American history.

Because the institution of slavery did not meet American standards of constitutional liberty, and because a racist rationalization pervaded most writings saying anything positive about antebellum slavery, we ignored and repudiated the antebellum methods of promoting work and keeping people out of prison. This book asserts racial equality and proves race and crime are not truly related.

From a strident moral perspective, the absolute condemnation of antebellum slavery holds that antebellum slavery had no humane aspects. You will hear from 400 slaves and ex-slaves, original sources, whose names are in bold. The ex-slaves quoted in this book do not say what politically correct modern experts want them to say, but those who endured slavery are the real experts. After stripping away the multiple and opposing biases, political agendas, contradictions, myths and exaggerations about the subject of antebellum slavery, we can see antebellum life from a new perspective. Isolating the positive aspects of slave life allows us to see methods that will be of value today.

No one can deny the inhumane side of slavery. I do not advocate resurrecting any unjust aspects of antebellum slavery. My burden of proof is low. All I have to prove is that American antebellum slavery was more productive, benign and comfortable than modern mass incarceration – and without question, in most instances, it was. Antebellum slavery was inhumane and humane at the same time, but profoundly unfair. What if we could fairly apply its methods? Instead of applying procedures to oppressed slaves on a racial basis, what if we applied those same methods in a racially neutral way, to those who deserved it? Justice for a change.

Many think we abolished slavery, but it survived in grotesque forms. Antebellum slavery first relapsed into a brutal convict leasing system and much later into what we have today: state slavery through mass incarceration. Numerous modern slaves of the state, prisoners of all races, live horrendous lives compared to white colonial offenders and antebellum slaves. Twenty-first century state slaves fare worse than privately held antebellum slaves did, for the same reasons free enterprise triumphed over communism. Millions of Americans caught up in slavery today need better direction. The United States pays a very steep price for new age slavery and cannot ignore the workable solutions in this book.

By no means is this book an effort to “bring back slavery” – just the opposite. New age slavery is already here – big-time – and it’s growing. Over 2,300,000 Americans are now incarcerated slaves of the state, more prisoners in absolute numbers and as a percentage of our population than any other nation in the world. The number of living Americans in the U.S. correctional population, including those on probation and parole, far exceeds the American slave population in 1860. America’s wasteful penitentiaries subject forgotten prisoners to concealed punishment, an ineffective crime deterrent. This time around, slaves stay inactive, sleep, scheme with their gangs and watch TV more than they work, are isolated from family and friends and cost their slaveholders billions of dollars. In the last five years, California’s budget for corrections shot way ahead of their spending for higher education, and California is still in a crisis while spending 45% more on prisons than universities. After prison, prisoners enter a lower caste of convicted felons and face what some now call a New Jim Crow regime. Most of us do not equate prison life with antebellum slavery, but the words of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery do. The Thirteenth Amendment did not really abolish slavery, but merely restricted “involuntary servitude” to convicted criminals: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

I never set out to be an advocate for prison reform. It was the surprising consequence of historical research into colonial and antebellum practices. The reforms suggested in this book would increase public safety, save billions of dollars for government at all levels, compensate crime victims, reduce the prison population, improve the lives of prisoners, weaken gangs and boost the American economy. This book is a way forward to solve the current prison crisis, by keeping younger people out of prison, providing hard labor for prisoners and teaching felons how to work. Only through private enterprise and a work orientation will prison reform achieve political and economic viability. Leaders have issued calls for frank debate about race, mass incarceration, reparations and our criminal justice and prison systems. This book is just such a discussion.

Successful societies over time eventually find economically viable ways to punish their criminals. After over a century of failure, change is coming. What we are doing now does not make sense. We can fundamentally change our criminal justice and penal systems in ways that will help the United States preserve its exceptional place in the world.

Chapter I – New Age Slavery, Mass Incarceration

We humans often delude ourselves with the idea of progress while continuing to make the same mistakes. We developed advanced technology and then fought the most destructive and cruel war in the history of the world, the Second World War. We invented chemicals and drugs, but not always the wisdom to use them. Our species became prosperous and then destroyed its families. People, organizations and societies are often inept at making the best decisions. Our wars, upheavals, environmental problems and financial crises display the persistent follies of the human species. “Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule.”

The longest delusion of the twentieth century grew out of the idealistic desire to stop the exploitation of labor, free oppressed workers and peasants, abolish capitalism, stop wars and create a workers’ paradise while the state and religion gradually withered away. Instead of creating better conditions, the Russian Revolution of 1917 ushered in massive oppression, turmoil and famine. Within 40 years, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin created the largest system of slave labor in history. Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn brilliantly described this state slavery, including the personal selection of naked female slave laborers as bedmates for Soviet Interior Ministry slave buyers and their associates. Slaves of the Soviet state received far worse treatment than did slaves in the Old South. For exposing the tragedy, horror and cruelty of Soviet slave labor camps in books like One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in 1970. Slave labor systems arose in other communist nations, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Eastern European communist regimes and Red China. Many millions of Chinese died in forced labor camps under Mao, who numerically surpassed the slave holdings of Stalin and Hitler.

During a 12-year delusion, Nazi Germany created millions of state slaves. Like the Soviets, the Nazis worked “enemies of the people” as slaves and intentionally worked many to death. The Germans executed those unfit to work early in the process. For the Hebrew people, this was at least their third enslavement after two earlier enslavements described in the Bible. Historians know more about the Nazi slave labor system than we do the Soviet counterpart, because the Allies defeated Nazi Germany, physically discovered their work and death camps and learned much from Holocaust survivors, who were then free to speak. While Stalin let up on mass arrests and deportations during the Second World War, Hitler insanely killed more workers during Germany’s acute wartime labor shortage. Soviet and Nazi slave laborers were abused as punishment for political, religious, racial, military and ethnic status, not utilized efficiently or with complete dedication to economic production. The Soviet, Nazi and Red Chinese slave labor systems each enslaved over 10,000,000 people. Twentieth century dictatorships did not value the lives of their state slaves.

Today, China incarcerates with or without trial some three to five million dissidents, slackers and criminals in a vast network of reform-through-labor or Laogai camps. Despite international agreements barring prison-made goods from entering the United States, products made by unpaid forced labor find their way here. Product components made in Laogai camps pass undetected. Many internet sales conducted in English link to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. According to the Laogai Research Foundation, prisons produce large profits for the Chinese government.

The world abolished the international slave trade once and now sees it resurrected under the euphemistic name of “human trafficking.” “Trafficking in persons is modern-day slavery. Every year, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders. Millions more are enslaved in their own countries, especially in south Asia. The common denominator in all trafficking scenarios is the use of force, fraud or coercion to exploit a person for commercial sex or for subjecting a victim to involuntary servitude, debt bondage or forced labor. The use of force or coercion can be direct and violent or psychological.” The International Labor Organization estimates there are at least 12.3 million people in forced labor, bonded labor and commercial sexual servitude worldwide. By some estimates, there are 27 million enslaved people in the world. E. Benjamin Skinner, author of A Crime So Monstrous, spent four years visiting a dozen countries where this ugly species of modern day slavery flourishes. Skinner contends, “a slave is someone who is forced to work, through fraud or threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence.” More U.S. states now specifically prohibit human trafficking. Prosecutions are on the increase in the United States and elsewhere in the world. The U.S. State Department, through its Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, now formally “names and shames” other nations who practice and condone the modern day slavery of human trafficking. While the United States points the finger of blame at other nations regarding human trafficking, it keeps a record number of its very own new age slaves.

Slavery dies hard and re-appears in different forms through time. That’s because it’s more than a single institution. Societies develop from the equality of hunter-gatherers to organized social stratification, inequality. Human civilization always results in wealth and power differentials. Disparities in political, legal, financial and military power allow the strong to dominate or enslave the weak through various means and for different reasons.

Slavery and criminal punishment have many things in common. Each keeps people in low social strata. Criminal punishment in various cultures resulted in forms of slavery. In different Western legal systems throughout history, the punishments used to control slaves eventually made their way into criminal laws applicable to everyone. Penal servitude and slavery were in some cultures practically indistinguishable. Chattel slavery was usually milder than galley slavery, penal servitude and convict leasing, because the slaveholder had a direct investment in the life of the slave rather than merely the use of labor for some years.

A delusion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, originating as a humanitarian movement, was the idea that people would get better with time if placed in cages or cells. This misconception brought about yet another form of slavery, which is now more prevalent in the United States than in any other country. We have not reached the final chapter of American slavery. We abolished slavery, we thought, and then developed a new form of slavery. Antebellum chattel slavery is gone, but new age American slavery, mass incarceration, is much worse. We are not accustomed to thinking of prisoners as “slaves,” but in all the basic ways, they are state slaves. Although not strictly chattel, prisoners owe absolute obedience, have no physical freedom and little status, enjoy few rights and remain subjugated or abused for many years, in prison and after their release. The United States has gone from an agrarian, paternalistic, personal form of private enterprise slavery to the socialized, impersonal, institutional, mass state slavery through incarceration inside hard surfaces, directed from Washington, D.C. and 50 state capitals. The twisted world of modern mass incarceration, state slavery, is new age slavery. New age slaves deserve their bondage, but do not “work like slaves.”

[footnotes omitted; only part of Chapter I shown].

An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force

2016-07-17T17:50:00.001-05:00

Roland G. Fryer, Jr. is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University and faculty director of the Education Innovation Laboratory (EdLabs). Fryer's research combines economic theory, empirical evidence, and randomized experiments to help design more effective government policies. His work on education, inequality, and race has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony.

Professor Fryer was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and the John Bates Clark Medal -- given by the American Economic Association to the best American Economist under age 40. Among other honors, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the Calvó-Armengol Prize and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. At age 30, he became the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard.

His current research focuses on education reform, social interactions, and police use of force. In July of 2016, he released a working paper, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force” and published it on a Harvard University website, http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force.

Here is a key excerpt from “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force”:

“In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, we find no racial differences in officer-involved shootings on either the extensive or intensive margins. Using data from Houston, Texas – where we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified – we find, in the raw data, that blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites. Hispanics are 8.5 percent less likely. Both coefficients are statistically insignificant. Adding controls for civilian demographics, officer demographics, encounter characteristics, type of weapon civilian was carrying, and year fixed effects, the black (resp. Hispanic) coefficient is 0.924 (0.417) (resp. 1.256 (0.595)). These coefficients are remarkably robust across alternative empirical specifications and subsets of the data. Partitioning the data in myriad ways, we find no evidence of racial discrimination in officer-involved shootings. Investigating the intensive margin – the timing of shootings or how many bullets were discharged in the endeavor – there are no detectable racial differences.”

2016-07-13T10:10:00.002-05:00

A Simple Solution to the Problem of Police Shootings of African Americans

Justice is sought with regard to individual slayings of African Americans, most recently Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. When President Obama mentions those particular slayings, he at the same time mentions systemic disparate treatment of African Americans in the American legal system. Plenty of statistics show police stops, arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and incarceration are pretty tough on African Americans. What’s not clear is whether this is due to systemic racism or higher rates of offending by African Americans. Each side in this debate marshals its own statistics. Progressives typically refer to Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, which unfortunately does not contain any solutions. Conservatives prefer the simple statement of Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr. when he recommends that we, “Stop trying to fix the police – Fix the ghetto!” Fixing the ghetto has proven almost impossible, and the War on Poverty made things worse.

The critical interface between suspects and the police generates the most publicity, especially when African Americans are shot by white police officers. This publicized interaction in cases over the last several years represents only the first juncture in the legal system. There are multiple later stages of the criminal justice system under criticism. Police shootings generate controversy which then includes all the later stages of the system. Discussion of perceived injustice in later stages of the criminal justice system makes the statistical analysis impossibly complex for any use with the problem of police shootings based upon split-second decisions. As a result, critics place discontent of the entire system upon these split-second decisions. The slayings of African Americans becomes the mascot for all the perceived discrimination in the entire criminal justice system … and sometimes American economy. Uncertainty surrounds recent shootings until investigations, grand juries, trials and even sentencing conclude.

Lately, some have departed from the non-violence preached by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. With these great complicated questions under discussion, addressing the problem of police shootings has a simpler solution than the larger controversies make us believe.

Most of the publicized police shootings in the last few years might have been prevented had citizens obeyed all of the following accepted rules when stopped or approached by police officers:

Obey the instructions and orders of the police – it’s the law.

Do not interfere with, or obstruct the police, as you can be arrested for it.

Think carefully about your words, movement, body language, and emotions.

Do not get into an argument with the police.

Keep your hands where the police can see them.

Do not run. Do not touch any police officer.

Do not resist even if you believe you are innocent.

Out of respect for law enforcement and all lives, our leaders should educate the public about these common sense rules. This is what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have us do now.

2016-07-10T14:37:00.003-05:00

Most of the police shootings in the last few years might have been prevented had citizens obeyed the following accepted rules when stopped or approached by police officers:

Obey the instructions and orders of the police – it’s the law.

Do not interfere with, or obstruct the police, as you can be arrested for it.

Think carefully about your words, movement, body language, and emotions.

Do not get into an argument with the police.

Keep your hands where the police can see them.

Do not run. Do not touch any police officer.

Do not resist even if you believe you are innocent.

Out of respect for law enforcement and all lives, our leaders should educate the public about these common sense rules.

2016-01-25T23:18:00.002-06:00

Please check out the following prison-related articles @ https://vanderbilt.academia.edu/JohnGleissner:

Prison Is Worse Than Slavery

We accept the incarceration regime because it is all we know. Incarceration looks bad compared to antebellum slavery in the United States. History reveals a way to reduce incarceration.

Everyone is for Prison Reform

Everyone is for prison reform ... they just don't know it yet. From every perspective, the current incarceration regime needs shrinking, improvement and relief.

Root Cause Cop-Out & Impediments to Prison Reform

Faulting the root causes of crime and mass incarceration does not advance the cause of lessening incarceration very much. More immediate causes and alternatives must be found. We cannot wait for the root causes to be eliminated.

Research Proposal

Research that has never been performed could be accomplished at almost no cost by interviewing prisoners concerning their punishment preferences.

The Thirteenth Amendment Today

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution permits involuntary servitude. Today, we have a record number of prisoners subject to this form of servitude. Incarceration today is harmful; changes are needed.

Model Judicial Corporal Punishment Statute

With minor statutory changes, judicial corporal punishment could be constitutionally re-instituted as an effective, budget-friendly method of reducing incarceration and its ill effects on society and offenders.

The Current Prison Crisis

Our prisons are in disaster mode. The futility of prison reform is reflected in recidivism rates. A paradigm shift is needed.

Paradigm Shift Away from Big Government Needed for Prisons

Big government has morphed into, among other things, mass incarceration. Federal, state and local prisons and jails maintain near-absolute control over prisoners -- at great expense to the taxpayer. Prisons do not rehabilitate. We should, we can, we must, and we will shift from the failed paradigm.

Prison Overcrowding Cure: Judicial Corporal Punishment of Adults

All the presidents carved into Mt. Rushmore favored traditional judicial corporal punishment of adults, a punishment technique that has always been held constitutional.

How the American Prison Population Grew - A Short Outline

The American prison and jail populations have grown markedly, for a variety of reasons.

Futility in Criminal Justice & Prison Reform - An Essay

Many of the issues discussed in conjunction with prison reform reflect the futility of making incarceration better. Incarceration doesn't work very well for deterrence and rehabilitation.

The Myth That Prisoners Have It Easy

The public sometimes harbors the idea that prisoners have it easy. This is a myth.

California Prison Crisis Cure - A Practical Guide

Strong measures could solve California's prison crisis. It won't be easy, immediately popular or politically correct.

The Waste of Solitary Confinement

Solitary confinement is wasteful, harmful to prisoners and expensive. There are better ways to work, punish and discipline modern prisoners.

How to Create American Manufacturing Jobs

To create American manufacturing jobs and boost the economy generally, the U.S. and individual states should eliminate most labor-related regulation of prison industries and prison labor.

A Surprising Comparison Between Prison & Slavery

It's no use wondering whether people are trying to re-institute slavery. They already have. It's worse than before.

Who Is Biased Against Prison Reform?

Almost everyone has a bias against mass incarceration, if they think about it at all.

How to Curtail Gang Activity in Prison

Better than solitary confinement as prison punishment or discipline is traditional judicial corporal punishment. Due process must be accorded prisoners, of course.

How to Curtail Gang Activity

Traditional judicial corporal punishment, with all due process guarantees, and even offender choice, is the answer to the problem of criminal gangs involving young people.

2016-01-25T22:18:00.000-06:00

Obama Bans Solitary Confinement for Juveniles in Federal Prisons

Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post

Available @ http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/obama-bans-solitary-confinement-for-juveniles-in-federal-prisons/ar-BBoGRXH?ocid=spartandhp

President Obama on Monday announced a ban on solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in the federal prison system, saying the practice is overused and has the potential for devastating psychological consequences.

In an op-ed that appears in Tuesday editions of The Washington Post, the president outlines a series of executive actions that also prohibit federal corrections officials from punishing prisoners who commit “low-level infractions” with solitary confinement. The new rules also call for expanding treatment for mentally ill prisoners.

The president’s reforms are expected to affect about 10,000 inmates.

The reforms come six months after Obama, as part of a broader criminal-justice reform push, ordered the Justice Department to study how solitary confinement was being used by the federal Bureau of Prisons.

The move is another example of the extent to which the nation’s first African American president now seems willing to tackle delicate questions of race and criminal justice as he closes out his presidency. Obama has also been focused on trying to put in place programs to help ex-offenders reintegrate into society once they have left prison.

“How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people?” the president wrote in his op-ed. “It doesn’t make us safer. It’s an affront to our common humanity.”

He said he hoped his reforms at the federal level will serve as a model for states to rethink their rules on the issue.

At least a dozen states have taken steps in the past two years to curtail the use of solitary confinement, either in response to lawsuits or through legislative and administrative changes. An increasing number of studies show a connection between isolating prisoners and higher rates of recidivism.

In recent weeks, Illinois and Oregon, in response to lawsuits, have announced they will exclude seriously mentally ill inmates from solitary confinement, and last month New York state reached a five-year, $62 million settlement with the New York Civil Liberties Union in which it pledged to significantly cut the number of prisoners in solitary as well as the maximum time they could stay there. California reached a settlement in September, pledging to overhaul the way it treats almost 3,000 inmates who are frequently kept alone for more than 22 hours a day in their cells.

Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the group’s Stop Solitary Campaign, said in an interview that the Bureau of Prisons “has lagged behind a number of the states in reforming solitary confinement and in restricting its use and abuse.”

“It’s absolutely huge,” Fettig said of Obama’s decision to change the way the federal system isolated inmates. “We rarely have presidents take notice of prison conditions.”

While Obama is leaving the details of policy implementation to agency officials, the Justice Department's report includes “50 guiding principles” that all federal correctional facilities must now follow. They include increasing the amount of time inmates placed in solitary can spend outside of their cells, housing prisoners in the “least restrictive setting necessary” to ensure their safety and those of others, putting inmates who need to be in protective custody in less-restrictive settings, and developing policies to discourage putting inmates in solitary during the last 180 days of their terms.

A congressionally mandated audit of restrictive housing in federal prisons, published last year by the Center for Naval Analyses, found that roughly 60 percent of the inmates whose solitary cases were reviewed had serious underdiagnosed or untreated mental illnesses. That study also found that many individuals put in protective custody for their own safety, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender prisoners and those who are disabled, were regularly placed in solitary confinement.

Some of the states that championed reforms early, including Washington state, have found that prisoners placed in restrictive housing — especially just before their release — are more likely to be repeat offenders. One study found that Washington state prisoners who were confined in solitary had a 20 to 25 percent higher recidivism rate than those in less-restrictive housing, and that those who spent time in solitary directly before reentering society were more likely to commit violent crimes.

Inimai M. Chettiar, who directs the Justice Program at New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, said in an interview that many Americans historically have not been focused on how inmates are punished or treated once they’re in jail.

“People think, ‘Okay, that’s prisoners, who cares?’ ” she said. “In recent years it has come to light that not only is solitary confinement not good for prisoners, but it has really negative effects on both recidivism and the crime rate.”

Kevin Ring, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, served 15 months in federal prison on fraud charges in connection with a scandal surrounding Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He spent two days in solitary in October because of a scabies outbreak in a Cumberland, Md., facility. Although the isolation was not designed to punish the inmates, Ring said guards took away all his possessions — including paper and pen — and put in a small cell with just a metal bed, shower and small window. The lack of human contact was the most disorienting part, he said, since guards pushed a tray of food through a slot at assigned meal times and he could “only hear voices down the hall” for the entire period.

“I don’t know how people do it. I’m not solitary material,” Ring said, adding that it should be used only “as a last resort.”

As many as 100,000 state and federal prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the United States at any given time, according to the White House, and several states have taken steps recently to curtail its practice.

The president begin his op-ed by recounting the story of 16-year-old Bronx resident Kalief Browder, who was sent to Rikers Island in 2010 to await trail after stealing a backpack. He “spent nearly two years in solitary confinement,” Obama wrote. Browder was released in 2013 but committed suicide at 22.

“Today, it’s increasingly overused on people like Kalief, with heartbreaking results — which is why my administration is taking steps to address this problem,” Obama wrote. “In America, we believe in redemption.”

*******

Commentary by John Dewar Gleissner, Esquire

I have to agree with President Obama's actions concerning solitary confinement, and note he is following several states, which is something we federalists like. These are reasonable and humane steps to take if incarceration is still the method of punishment. Lack of solitary confinement will make prisons and jails more difficult to control, but confinement can be handled without it, especially with regard to juveniles. The goal is to reduce recidivism. Separate but adjoining cells, separated only by prison bars or barriers, but allowing conversation, is one way to do it.

But the underlying structural problems of incarceration remain:

1. The Rikers Island Jail referred to above costs New York City about $160,000 per year per prisoner. Almost two years of Kalief Browder's torture cost the City of New York over about $250,000. For what? For whom?

2. Suicide rates for prisoners are higher than the national average whether they are placed in solitary confinement or the general prison or jail population.

3. It takes a long time for some jail inmates to reach a trial, plea deal or case disposition.

4. Offenses still carry a punishment of incarceration, and incarceration in the meantime is the fate of folks who cannot or will not make bail.

5. Prisons and jails must administer punishment to maintain discipline and safety in confinement, and this punishment, however administered, controls the jail/prison behavior of the inmate, not the crime for which the prisoner is confined in jail or prison. There is a disconnect between the crime and the effective or real punishment inflicted.

If you are familiar with this blog, you know what traditional, proven, Bible-based, cost-efficient practical steps can be taken to shrink the incarceration paradigm and give many inmates a preferred route out of their confinement by accepting responsibility. Thinking outside the box is necessary, and unfortunately, few are willing to escape the all-powerful mindset of incarceration as the only thing we know. Change is slow, particularly with prison systems and methods of punishment. Experiments like incarceration itself, mandatory sentences, three-strikes laws and war against illegal drugs take decades or centuries to run their course.

I do not have a dog in this fight! What motivates me are (1) the stupidity of what we are doing now, (2) the intransigence of most, and (3) the desire to make the legal system and therefore the United States of American better, more efficient, wealthier and happier.

Deuteronomy 25:1-3

The Vicious Cycle of Incarceration

2015-11-24T22:53:00.002-06:00

My son-in-law says that incarceration creates a vicious cycle:

The prime correlate of incarceration is whether a young person grew up in a family with a father present or absent.

When a father is absent, the youth is more likely by far to wind up in prison.

Gangs supply some of the paternal functions, but in a sick way.

When fathers are incarcerated, they leave whatever family structure exists. Incarcerated dads are not in a very good moral position to tell their children to obey the law.

The sons and daughters of the incarcerated are then more likely to be incarcerated themselves, because they grew up in a family without a father present.

The vicious cycle continues ...

PLEASE STOP HELPING US - How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed - A Review

2015-11-10T20:05:00.001-06:00

Author Jason L. Riley, an African American, wrote a scathing book about the counter-productive effects of left-wing social policies. PLEASE STOP HELPING US - How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (Encounter Books, 2014) outlines the major problems caused by liberal policies such as minimum wage laws, affirmative action and welfare dependency. Mr. Riley contends "that efforts to help blacks have had more pernicious and lasting effects on black attitudes and habits than either slavery or segregation." PLEASE STOP HELPING US criticizes Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow of ignoring the much higher crime rates of African American males and the harm African American criminals do to other African Americans. Mr. Riley's 2014 book opposes the characterization of criminals as victims of discrimination and takes on other liberal agendas such as gun control that avoid the obvious problem of black behavior. Incarceration helps law-abiding African Americans, per Mr. Riley. He believes the civil rights movement has become an industry "and that industry has no vested interest in realistic assessments of black pathology."

Mr. Riley recites Don Lemon's 5 suggestions for black self-improvement: pull up your pants, finish high school, stop using the n-word, take better care of your communities, and stop having children out of wedlock; and quotes William Comanor and Llad Phillips, who, after extensive study, found as follows: "The most critical factor affecting the prospect that a male youth will encounter the criminal justice system is the presence of his father in the home."

Obama's Tragic Let 'em Out Fantasy - A Review

2015-10-29T23:01:00.001-05:00

We are indebted to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute for her excellent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, October 24, 2015, which serves as a warning against the planned one-time release of 6,000 federal prisoners. She excoriates President Obama for his "preposterous conceit" in equating his own casual drug use with the offenses committed by federal prisoners. Ms. Mac Donald sets the record straight, with statistics and facts:

The U.S. has much higher crime rates than European nations.
Drug treatment programs do not prevent probationers and parolees from committing crimes.
Violent criminals and serial thieves make up a large percentage of prison inmates, contrary to one de-incarceration myth.
Hispanics, not African Americans, are more likely arrested for drug crimes.
Aggressive policing is more likely to reduce crime, but nearly every police and prosecutorial practice is under fire from the left.
Demonizing the police is counter-productive and needs to stop.
The role of incarceration in reducing American crime will be tested with the release of thousands of federal prisoners.
Ms. Mac Donald believes, "We are playing with fire."

According to some research, crime rates go up when a court-ordered release puts many prisoners at once back out on the street. This largest one-time release of 6,000 federal prisoners ought to provide an excellent experiment ... let's see what we learn, and whether we as a society have to learn the hard way.

2015-09-14T20:37:00.002-05:00

"Perhaps the most significant improvement in the field of corrections over the last several decades has been the advancement and routinization of risk and risk–need assessment instruments within justice agencies (Andrews, Bonta, and Wormith, 2006; Bonta, 2002). Actuarial risk-prediction instruments can tell us which offenders are most likely to reoffend as well as whom among the offender population we might want to target for more intensive rehabilitative programming.1 Adhering to the risk principle by targeting higher risk offenders and matching the intensity of controls and services to risk levels has been found to improve the effectiveness of correctional interventions (Andrews and Bonta, 2010; Dowden and Andrews, 1999a, 1999b; Landenberger and Lipsey, 2005; Lowenkamp and Latessa, 2005; Lowenkamp, Latessa, and Holsinger, 2006)."

From Vol. 14, Issue 1, Criminality & Public Policy, "Risk Tells Us Who, But Not What or How - Empirical Assessment of the Complexity of Criminogenic Needs to Inform Correctional Programming (Feb. 2015) by Faye S. Taxman & Michael S. Caudy.

In other words, the bad boys need to be targeted for "intensive rehabilitative programming." The "intensity of controls" needs to match the higher risks of high-risk offenders.

Authors

Why Columbia and Mexico?

2015-09-13T15:55:00.000-05:00

Why is it that we point the finger of blame at other countries instead of our own? Isn't U.S. demand for illegal drugs the source of the problem? Sure, the drugs themselves often originate south of the Mexican border, but the drug epidemic starts here in the U.S., which is where the money starts to fund the traffic. Every time we point a finger of blame at another country for our drug and crime problems, there are three fingers pointing back at the U.S.

Please take note, Mr. Trump.

Sober Up, America !!

2015-09-01T15:28:00.001-05:00

Over the last 20 years, the average price of cocaine has declined. Over the last 20 years, the average price of heroin has declined. The supply of methamphetamine ("meth") has increased markedly over the last 20 years. Our efforts to eliminate the supply of cocaine in South America have failed. Our efforts to eliminate the supply of heroin from various places in the world have similarly failed. Meth has always been fairly easy to obtain. In fact, from its origins as a cottage industry made in makeshift rural locations, methamphetamine is now produced on an industrial scale in Mexico and brought to the United States and sold in very pure quantities as "crystal meth." Nothing we do stops the supply of illegal drugs. There are plenty of up-and-coming drug dealers to replace the drug dealers who are incarcerated or killed. It is little consolation that capitalistic drug cartels and distribution networks are running rings around the government at all levels.

America is confronted with two choices: legalize narcotics or punish domestic consumption. The punishment of domestic consumption will cut down the demand for illegal drugs. Until one crashes, illegal drugs make people feel better, and that's the reason they consume those drugs. The drug "high" is a pleasurable sensation for some hours, and even the hangovers, loss of sleep, adverse medical effects and social aberrations do not immediately cause people to sober up. Illegal drugs are personal to an individual's mind and body. Things outside of the mind and body tend to be ignored in favor of the pleasurable effects of illegal drug use.

It is generally understood that addicts need to "hit bottom" before they sober up. Providing that bottom sooner rather than later is one of the main reforms advocated on this website.

Continuing on the path we've chosen in the War on Drugs is not the way to win the war. It is amazing how long humans can continue to take the same path because it is all they know.

President Obama's College Plan for Inmates

2015-08-04T21:18:00.002-05:00

President Obama recently demonstrated his appreciation of America’s incarceration crisis by visiting a prison, the first U.S. president to do so, and by announcing he will try to provide funding for college courses to some prison inmates. This will add to the ongoing criticism of attempts to circumvent Congress with executive orders. Congress and most state legislatures perennially disallow amenities, benefits and privileges to America’s least popular class. The public insists that prison life be no better than the life of the poorest law-abiding citizens. This is the all-powerful principle of less eligibility. It will strongly reassert itself against Obama’s plans when a chorus of law-abiding people complain that they have to take out loans for what the president plans to give prison inmates.

Our president’s concern for the incarcerated is fully justified. Incarceration is in many respects a failed social experiment of the last 200 years. We see this most clearly in recidivism rates, rising social and economic costs, and misleading unemployment statistics that do not count prisoners as unemployed. The high school level GED coursework allowed to prisoners is one of the few unreservedly good things that prisons can do. But the college-level plan is an elitist solution to a working class problem. Less than half of prisoners are college-level material. Many prisoners are high school dropouts; a good number are functionally illiterate. Most prisoners do not have enough time left on their sentences to complete four years of college.

But the biggest problem with Obama’s plan is that it utilizes the disastrously failed and nearly bankrupt big government welfare approach, when return to laissez-faire free enterprise would help prisoners, the American economy, revitalized prison industries and fully strapped state and federal budgets. Incarcerating about 2.2 million largely able-bodied Americans who are not allowed to work much, except to run the prison or jail itself or in money-losing state-owned prison industries, harms American productivity and busts budgets. Prisoners picking up trash by the side of the road is an inefficient way to make the public smile.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives to the state the right to work prisoners involuntarily. The public owns the value of their labor. In the 19th century, a number of prison systems were self-supporting with manufacturing profits. The legislative and regulatory environment that inhibits prison industries and labor goes back over 100 years to the wooden barrel manufacturers and their employees who could not compete against wooden barrels made in prison by unpaid or poorly paid inmates. Depression-era laws prohibited or restricted the interstate shipment of prison-made goods; many states banned their sale. Prison reformers and advocates always insisted that prisoners should work for their own benefit as well as the benefit of society, but today only a small fraction work productively. The current incarceration regime is big welfare government writ large: total control over the lives of 2.2 million Americans and the duty to provide all of their food, clothing, shelter and healthcare. Incarcerated Americans do not have to be the largest group of full-ride welfare recipients in the world, but they are. One inmate at Riker’s Island Jail in New York City costs taxpayers over $160,000 per year.

Private prisons now simply replicate the warehousing function of state prisons; they do no privatize prison labor or industries or provide many jobs. We still need to cut the number of incarcerated Americans in half, a goal of mine that the ACLU has now adopted. We can reduce our prison and jail populations with a host of community punishments, some of them traditional and painful. It helps to study what our Founders and best presidents favored.

Instead of throwing money at the problem, money we have to borrow, our prison systems ought to allow prisoners to earn their own money and education, which unquestionably is the best preparation for a new life outside prison. To do this, the federal government could wipe out nearly all employment-related legislation and regulation as it relates to prisoners, including wage and hour laws, preempt state laws, provide immunity to private employers, and allow private employers to hire, fire and negotiate contracts with prisoners and prison systems. Manufacturers could operate private manufacturing concerns on prison premises or on separate secure campuses. Organized labor would oppose these changes, at first, but unions will be better off if we limit these prison industries to manufacturing goods now made exclusively overseas. We could compete with overseas manufacturers. Most prisoners would leap at the chance to work a manufacturing job, build a nest egg for their release, learn to show up for work every day, and work in a private enterprise environment far surpassing what they have now. Incarcerated Americans need to re-experience the powerful employment-at-will discipline we have largely surrendered for a host of legal restrictions. Prisoners would conform to the employer’s rules or quickly return to the general prison population.

This is how to create American manufacturing jobs, reduce actual unemployment and rehabilitate. Everybody can win except foreign manufacturers.

2015-07-26T19:22:00.000-05:00

Judge Orders U.S. to Release Immigrant Women & Children

The impractical dimensions of incarceration are on public display again ... as always ... transcending politics, race, the public versus private prison debate, and motivation. This display, the 23,479th such display since 2010 by our reckoning, is a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California requiring the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to release detained immigrant children from one public and two private detention facilities. It seems those agencies had been detaining all female-headed families of Central American origin under a "no-release" policy in an effort to contain the surge of Central Americans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Despite ultimate motivation to help the new arrivals while a determination of their right to stay in the U.S. is decided, the children and their mothers were subjected to terrible conditions. The U.S. government argued the immigrants had amenities: meals, medical & dental services, recreational opportunities and education for the children. That was the original intention. The illegal immigrants showed otherwise, and complained of cold, unsanitary conditions, zero or inadequate mattresses, and that sometimes it is was so crowded the children had to sleep standing up. The judge found that the government was not providing "safe and sanitary" holding cells per a 1997 consent agreement. The original lawsuit about these conditions was first filed in 1985, THIRTY YEARS AGO.

It's the same old story: despite the best of intentions at the higher levels, we find overcrowding, inadequate conditions and resulting mental injuries, in this case to children. The first-named defendant is Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, a distinguished attorney. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under presidents George W. Bush and Obama, said that Jeh Johnson "proved to be the finest lawyer I ever worked with in government—a straightforward, plain-speaking man of great integrity, with common sense to burn and a good sense of humor" and that he "trusted and respected him like no other lawyer I had ever worked with." We must admit that something happens between the very top of the bureaucracy and the detention centers. Always has, and always will. Something bad usually happens when refugees or any people are detained on relatively short notice. These Central Americans were told in many instances that they were not wanted in the U.S. This stated dislike is also correlated with bad conditions.

This is not to say that the children involved should be released, deported, allowed to stay or handled in any other manner. The point is that incarceration as invariably practiced has inevitable logistic, human rights, funding and other major systemic problems that we need to consider when judging alternatives to incarceration or detention. The more one studies incarceration, the better alternatives look.

[Jenny L. Flores, et al. v. Jeh Johnson, et al., CV 85-4544-DMG-AGR, available at s3.amazonaws.com; quoted material about Jeh Johnson from Wikipedia.]