New 2013 Proposed Budget Grows and Increase Prison Funding

We are all aware of the massive debt that has been accrued over the past six executive administrations. Likewise that a lot of it is either wasted for stuff I can’t figure out like $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay or giving one Alaska Airlines $500,000 "to paint a Chinook salmon" on the side of a Boeing 737 or given away massive loot to countries like Israel that don’t have or serve our best political interest as a nation.

As Africa Americans we expect this since historically no one I Washington seemed to care about us unless we were rioting or making folk loss money via protest. However, I am concerned about the recent budget (rather for show or actual) by President Obama. We all know about the racial disparity regarding incarceration and that disproportionately impact African Americans, especially males and how most of the crimes are economic in nature and are based on a small amount of cocaine and/or marijuana.

Even republican led stats like Georgia are trying to respond to this issue. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal is trying to reduce state corrections spending by softening sentencing laws. Last year the state’s GOP-led House of Representatives introduced legislation that calls for special courts to steer drug users into rehab, which Deal says is cheaper than a jail sentence. Georgia has the nation’s highest rate of correctional control with, one in 13 residents is locked up or on probation or parole and it spends 7 percent of its $15.9 billion budget on prisons.

Although many states are following Georgia’s led, the Obama administration is not and instead is increasing the funding of federal prisons. According to an analysis by the Federal Times. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is seeking a 4.2 percent increase, one of the largest of any federal agency, which would bring its total budget to more than $6.9 billion. According to Obama's new budget, four new federal prisons will open including in Mississippi and West Virginia.

Since less than 10 percent of Federal prisoners are locked up for violent crimes according to the Sentencing Project, more than half are drug offenders (federal prosecutions for drug offenses more than doubled between 1984 and 2005). Not to mention these funds will also be allocated to private prison which now holds around 20 percent of all federal prisoners.

Over the years, the federal prison population grew more than eight times. Between 1980 to 2010 the federal inmate population grew from 25,000 to more than 210,000 based on data from the Association of State Correctional Administrators.

Although while on the campaign Trail in fund-raiser in Harlem, NY, Nov. 29, 2007 Obama said, “I don’t want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college,” it seems the President policy for increasing prison funding, will more likely insure more young black males are incarcerated than less. Sounds like chain gangs are backn in style and here to stay under the Obama budget as all budgets before his.