Senator Jim Webb continues to press the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009, which he first announced in Parade Magazine in an article Why we must fix our prisons.
* "We cannot arrest our way out of these problems, including the national gang crime explosion."
* The war on Drugs must be replaced by a treatment and interdiction-oriented approach.
* We must abandon the policy of jailing the mentally ill.
Bratton is the man who deserves the credit claimed by Rudy Giuliani for reversing the crime rate in New York City. Bratton replaced random, reactive patrols with targeted-community-based preventive police work. The result: reducing the jail population in New York City's Rikers Island from 22,000 to 11,000.
The hearings were held in support of Senator Jim Webb's proposal to overhaul our criminal justice system. We hold 25% of the world's prisoners, yet have only 5% of the world's population. We imprison more people, longer, and in more harsh conditions. Our relentless "get tough" policies have done and are doing enormous damage to minority communities, as Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree testified:
As overall numbers of individuals imprisoned or monitored by the government have grown, so have racial disparities among this population. African Americans make up only 13 percent of the overall population, and Latinos 15 percent. However, 40 percent of the prison population is African American and 20 percent is Latino.
One in every 8 black males in their twenties is in prison or jail on any given day, as compared with 1 in 26 Latinos, and 1 in 59 white males. Black males have a 1 in 3 chance of serving time in prison, and Latinos 1 in 5, as compared with 3 in 50 for white males.
According to Harvard sociologist Bruce Western, the U.S. penal system has become ubiquitous in the lives of low-education African American men, and is becoming an important feature of a uniquely American system of social inequality.
These large disparities are due to a constellation of complex and interrelated factors that include poverty, high rates of joblessness, low levels of education, and the clustering of African Americans and Latinos in concentrated urban areas. They are also related to very deep, systemic flaws within the criminal justice system.
These large disparities are due to a constellation of complex and interrelated factors that include poverty, high rates of joblessness, low levels of education, and the clustering of African Americans and Latinos in concentrated urban areas. They are also related to very deep, systemic flaws within the criminal justice system.
The testimony and webcast of the Senate hearings can be found here.
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