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.

Shocking facts On American Prisons -VIDEO

New Research Shows Black Women With Lighter Skin, Have Lighter Prison Sentence Than Women With Dark Skin

Many African Americans are familiar with the incessant discussion regarding light versus dark skin and the supposed advantages one may have over the other. Ever since Nella Larsen’s novella “Passing,”, in which the main character, Irene Redfield, a light-skinned African American woman passing for white, reveals the hidden implications regarding race, with respect to the perception that being white is better than black and inferior.

A new study just published in in The Social Science Journal (Volume: 48, Issue: 1, Pages: 258-250) called “The impact of light skin on prison time for black female offenders,” may add some evidence supporting the affirmation of Larsen’s premise. The study, conducted by Jill Viglione, Lance Hannon, and Robert DeFina, are researchers at Villanova University. provides strong evidence that lighter skin color is significantly correlated with a lighter prison sentence.

Based on data, collected from the records of 12,158 women incarcerated in North Carolina prisons between 1995 and 2009., inclusive of information regarding inmate hair color, eye color, height, weight, body type and skin tone (light skin tone is assigned a code of 1, and dark skin tone is assigned a code of 0), revealed that with respect to prison sentences, women noted to be of light skin were sentenced to 12% less time behind bars than their darker skinned confederates.

This finding was consistent even when controlling for prior history of incarceration, conviction date, prison misconduct, and body type. Moreover researchers also controlled for if the woman was convicted of homicide or robbery – crimes that have longer sentences. Upon which they also observed that having light skin reduces the actual time served by approximately 11%.

According to the authors as presented in the abstract, “The present analysis extends this line of inquiry by examining how perceived skin tone (assessed by correctional officers) is related to maximum prison sentence and actual time served,” and that their findings “indicated that black women deemed to have a lighter skin tone received more lenient prison sentences and served less time behind bars.”

contours of a tragedy

Point of Order: 1] Somebody inform Jones how he can correct an error in Wikapedia. Suggesting that Euclid was Greek when he was born in Africa, died in Africa, and never left the continent a day in his life.

2] Shouts out to my folk at Just Kiss N make-up for giving me the Kreative Blogger award.

I hate to do this but I am gonna leave the pestilence of politics for a moment to dive into an area I love greatly, well two really, history and math. I was reading someone’s blog yesterday and I am sorry I cannot provide the link. But in essence they were talking about the incarceration rates in NYC. I was taken back by their conclusion for although true, they were some what fatuous in their implications. In addition, they seemed to just be thrown out into the blogosphere for no other reason than that (my opinion) but it was a good read.

Without a firm historical presentation, the numbers in social research seem to, really often end up meaning nothing. For me, through the Euclidian structure of how I visualize thought, it is possible to decussate axioms of outcomes, both in time and practice. And I use Euclidian for it references the understanding of relationships with respect to distance (history) and angles in both planes and space. This is constant regardless of geography, region or time if space is seen as the constant. For this it says that prison and slavery are one in the same.

In the blog post, the author seemed amazed. But one should not be if a descent purview of history and thought is held in command. The Spanish government for example started out with the prohibition of having to many male slaves and in 1503, around the start of the Spanish Caribbean Empire, they enacted by philosophy and math a design that would approximate one slave for every three free white men. This was under the reign of Emperor Charles V. Other countries desired an even higher ration of white me (one African slave for every four free white men).

These actions tended to dictate not only population and how slave institutions (including prisons) functioned numerically, but also the philosophical beliefs that would maintain such disparities as evinced currently with prison populations. From David Hume, the supposedly noted philosopher to Thomas Jefferson, we can see how such transpired. Especially if you read Hume’s essay “Of National Character” (1754) or Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia” (1781). Both claim the natural inferiority of the African with Jefferson even suggesting that Africans were barely above the level of thought of narration. Both said a lot more foul shit but I will not venture any further while attempting to make my point that the numbers we see are the result of historical practices and have been consistent since the days of Alexis DeToqville.

Moreover, such has been manifest by views as the previous to the extent that the belief in natural inferiority and dimness of Africans obviously would mean that education would be impossible and that a system of education, based on the liberal arts (European culture and history) would result in what I wrote in a blog post in February 2006:

If more than 50% of students drop out from high school generally, speaking, how many do you think will be coming from our schools in our neighborhoods? Take it a step farther, if 80 percent of high school drop outs end up in prison and 40 percent of all inmates are darker people, yet these people make only 13 percent of the population, what kind of educated populous will remain to do battle, represent and demand that what we put in we should get back?

There will be none for they will be enslaved, this time in prison. In actuality, I astonished myself at how simplistic the trigonometry regarding these angles connect. So in summary, this is why we see the numbers we do regarding black males in prison; this is why we should not be astonished; this is why we should not be amazed when we see more of us in prison than graduating high schools or attending college. These unfortunately are the contours of a tragedy from a Euclidian perspective, for prison is the higher education in many respects in the US for men of African descent. For with prison, they can maintain a 1 to 3, or even 1 to 4 ratio - for we outside the walls may as well be slaves too. vote

Still U.S. ing

For those of you who don’t know, I used to teach ancient African History. Although it was supposed to start from 200 B.C.E. (before Christian Europe) to 1100 A.C.E. (after Christian Europe), I started it during the time of the Djebel Ouenat carvings in Libya during the Upper Paleolithic age as well with a brief introduction of the Gloger Law. If you are not familiar with the latter, simply stated it postulates that warm-blooded animals need to be pigmented in hot climates. This means as a primer, folk started the class with a brief overview of the origin of man from homo habilis to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens.

I did this although my main interest in history was during the periods of colonialism and slaver (of which a lot seems to over lap). Slavery for me holds both emotion and disdain. I was even asked and authored several historical pieces for the World Enclycopedia of slavery. Particularly on the punishment of slaves , the Kansas Nebrask Act and Church Schisms Slavery. I can’t see for the life of me how a group of folk can be so lazy and evil to place another (with or without their assistance) in bondage. It just confuses the shit out of me. Moreover, it really trips me out how some may suggest that it was not “that” bad, or that it is over and happened hundreds of years ago. Such a position pisses me the fuck off too.

It is as if they don’t see capitalism and racism as being the same thing as formulated in slavery. It is as if they don’t see how years of perpetual servitude without profit can have a devastating impact on the psyche, soul and more importantly pocket of the one enslaved. I really would love to see someone today work for Sears, or Wachovia or U.S. Steel for their entire life and not receive a penny, get am benefit or pension from said years of effort.

The way I see it, the proclamation announced by Lincoln really did not free the descendants of Africa. Sure it enabled them to move away from pimps called slave masters, but it was not freedom. For freedom has to be pursued aggressively. It is like Julius K. Nyerere said “Freedom to many means immediate betterment, as if by magic. Unless I can meet at least some of these aspirations, my support will wane and my head will roll just as surely as the tickbird follows the rhino.”

It was really, as Douglass Blackmon called it a new time and more so the start of the “Age of Neoslavery.” A period where folks could still enjoy slave labor without the title of “slavery” attached. Just as the Jim Crow laws or the Black Code statutes passed to maintain white control after the Civil War, today, the same form of slavery exist except with out the chains, torture and punishment. Just as then, current laws are designed and put in place to intimidate African Americans, namely males because they were able to do rigorous free labor.

Yes I am talking about prison, and really since the freedom of slaves. But this is not important, because it is over and it had no impact on the current condition of Africans in America today. But I bet if you asked U.S. Steel, Tennessee Coal (Pratt Coal & Coke Co.), the Georgia and Alabama Railroad, U.S. Pipe & Foundry (Jim Walter Corp/ Walter Industries) or Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co among a lot of other major corporations that I won’t name, they aint willing to give back the money they stacked as a function of free labor. But then again it was prison labor; labor not protected by the Fair Labor-Standards Act. Just as today, a many folk end up in prison due to stupid shit that is exacerbated by ridiculous sentences and ridiculous fines. It just seems that it is deliberately directed mathematically disprotinatelly to African Americans, and it amazes me how folks can even say that the insidious legacy of racism called slavery doesn't reverberates today.

Yep, convict leasing is still really real, but no longer in the South, as in days of old but rather nation wide. They don’t keep records anymore, but back in the day it was estimated that the Alabama's forced-labor system made $17 million for the state government alone (about 250 million in today's dollars).

My thing is this, if it was not cool for Hitler to force Jews to work in a similar form, and they were awarded loot for making German corporations rich, why the double standard? As far as I am concernd, U.S. Steel is still using us, i mean they still making profit of tha loot, aint they, like the others. I’m through.

anal pore of the week - robert lindsey

yo, another foul saltine has forgotten to take his oxycotin no doubt. saying its time to take back the word nigger. Not to mention, its spelled with an "a" not "r". Hit him up and let him know how u feel folk.

PS: He also wrote that PRISON IS GOOD FOR BLACK MEN.






on a [positive note, we got a new book out BLOGGERS DELIGHT. Get it.

far from the truth

A while back, Tocqueville and an associate of his Gustave de Beaumont obtained permission to travel to the United States to examine their newly developed prison system. In 1835, Tocqueville published his famous work Democracy in America, which a significant part spoke of the elucidation of his views on crime and punishment. From his observations, conditions have not altered much from the times of the mass storage of mostly males of color for industrial benefit and without some type of rehabilitation.

The prison system has become an industrial complex, but it still has remained the same way in which Tocqueville described what he saw in the America South when he wrote that by imprisonment Anobody thinks of rendering them better, but only taming their malice; they are put in chains like ferocious beasts; and instead of being corrected, they are rendered brutal.

This difference is evident in the caustic environment in which men at even younger ages are castigated and left without opportunity. There is nothing good about going to prison unless you are making money from cheap labor or you like becoming a more hardened criminal by learning from the masters in the game. Then there are other risk, death, rape and maybe even contracting infectious disease.

Of the over 2 million inmates in the United States, it has been estimated that about one in 10 has been raped. One study conducted in Nebraska reported that 22 percent of male inmates had sex against their will. The rates of infectious disease are well higher in prisons than the general public. It is estimated for example, that about 2.5 percent of al inmates in America have HIV nationally according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. In addition, the chances of contracting the virus are 5 to 6 timers higher for inmates than the general public.

Still many US prison systems do not attempt to protect inmates via condom distribution. In 1991, the World Health Organization reported that 23 of 52 prison systems surveyed around the globe allowed promoted condom distribution. Condoms have been available in Canadian federal prisons for 10 years. In the US, five jail systems, in Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, and two prison systems, in Vermont and Mississippi, make condoms available to their inmates. The excuses provided for why most don’t include condoms being used as weapons, to hide contraband and that it would suggest that sex is acceptable while incarcerated.


What makes this problem more insidious is that men can go into prison for three the five years and come out with problems ranging from mental illness to practicing homosexual acts, yet do not acknowledged the situational sex that occurs in prison as being. Some state prison systems attempt to avoid this by allowing conjugal visits. In Mississippi only legal marriages are acceptable for conjugal visit privileges. Inmates can qualify for conjugal visits are those that at minimum custody levels and display good behavior. Inmates that may transmit sexually transmitted disease are not eligible for conjugal visits. Visits are normally an hour long and come with soap, condoms, sheets, pillowcase and towels. The inmate and spouse are searched before and after each visit for security reasons. The Federal Bureau of Prisons does not permit conjugal visits.

Prison in America has not changed since the travels of Tocqueville and still have no benefit to the incarcerated, the community other than generating a criminal and uneducated segment of society that tend to be male and African American. Although many in the so-called hip-hop generation promote a culture that places incarceration on a pedestal, such is far from the truth.