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The US spends a lot on jails, and many jails charge cities and states a minimum occupancy penalty if they're not filled. Seriously. And then Covid dropped the prison population by 157,000 people.
https://eji.org/news/private-prison-quotas-drive-mass-incarceration/
I've told you before that Black folk mainly get pulled over for systemic racism, not interpersonal. Court fee revenues are a lot, and traffic ticket revenues are approx $14B a year.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/five-facts-about-fines-and-fees-revenues
Some small cities like Ferguson Missouri get 23% of their city revenue from these tickets and fines. This doesn't only happen to Black drivers, but it disproportionately happens to Black drivers.
Many of these local criminal justice departments and city governments nationwide were worried that they were about to go bankrupt during the pandemic, because there was so little traffic, and so few Black motorists and families to prey upon, that their revenues dropped. Just like public transportation revenues dropped. And bar and restaurant revenue dropped. And drug store revenues dropped.
https://www.dcfpi.org/all/raising-revenue-through-fines-and-fees-is-unsound-and-unsafe/
The thing that Biden rescued most with his "American Rescue Plan," cop fund diversion stunt, is this awful, racist, predatory criminal justice system. This money covered these local government budget shortfalls, as well as expansion of more policing.
As we can see now, the "crime spike" was a lie. And they knew it was a lie at the time. Like Black folk have said, police don't do what you think they do. By time, by number of arrests, most of what police do (~80%) is giving tickets and fines to poor people, disproportionately Black, and arresting them for low level offenses, creating court fees and prison revenue.
We keep up the pretense of crime waves, to keep this wealth extraction from Black folk going. Because local governments are financially dependent on it. Because they don't want to tax rich people.
You might think that "Biden had no control over local governments." But Biden himself, even as a senator, bragged about how much control he had over how local governments spend their criminal justice money, and set policy, even though it was on paper only a federal bill. So please don't argue with me on this point. Argue with Biden himself.
I know this feels like an invitation to debate, but I promise you it's not. I'm tired, and will be muting people on this.
This is not an invitation to debate. It's just another futile attempt to try to get people to see what Biden looks like from the perspective of someone who lives on the other side of his criminal justice policies.
It's not "
Black men don't know all the good that Biden did like I know it! He rescued the economy! Why don't they get that? I know more about his policies than they do!"
It's "I don't know the horrific scale of what Biden policies have done. I don't know anyone that has had their life savings stolen by asset forfeiture, or who has been shot by police, or who is innocent and in jail at the moment. These things aren't real to me."
It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with Black men who are disappointed in Biden. But you should at least *understand* why. You should at least know the *specific policies* that Black voters are upset at.
https://theappeal.org/covid-funds-police-prisons-arpa/
Because as I said before, Dems cannot win an election without the Black voting block. For any Dem candidate: If you do not create sufficient distance from these Biden policies, you will lose.
@mekkaokereke Something utterly appalling about America that I learnt in the past week.
Yes, it's a tangent, but it has everything to do with your core point.
Many of the firefighters that have been battling the bushfires in Los Angeles these past few days are prison inmates: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rwdjwglx2o
"Nearly 1,000 incarcerated men and women have joined the frontlines in a battle against record-breaking wildfires burning across southern California.
"The number deployed - now 939 - are part of a long-running volunteer programme led by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
"The state pays inmates a daily wage between $5.80 and $10.24 (£4.75 and £8.38), and an additional $1 per day when assigned to active emergencies."
In the richest country on Earth, making inmates put their lives at risk fighting bushfires for US$5.80 + US$1 a day?!
Genuine question: How do you allow that to happen?!
And in the supposedly liberal state of California!
As a foreigner, with all the crazy stuff that's happened in America recently, that managed to shock me.
In good conscience, how do you allow your nation's prison–industrial complex to get that bad?
And that's just one manifestation of it!
Any Democrat who calls themselves a "liberal" and enables it should hang their head in shame.
@ajsadauskas @mekkaokereke hey, don’t forget that they’re not allowed to become full fledged firefighters after they get out of prison and the state just voted overwhelmingly to keep involuntary servitude for prisoners (including firefighters).
As a California resident: the image most people have of a “liberal bastion” state is a lot less true than is portrayed. A lot of it is cosplay, and that often shows up when it’s important.
@sangster @ajsadauskas @mekkaokereke the 13th Amendment banning slavery had a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, which was an explicit exception for convicts. Exploitation of this became normalized almost immediately, not just in the former Confederacy, and it can even get framed as "rehabilitation".
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io@mattmcirvin @sangster @ajsadauskas
One of the best ways to close the gap between the way that most white Americans see criminal justice and mass incarceration, and most Black Americans see it, is to watch 13th by Ava Duvernay (Netflix movie, available to stream for free in many places)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8
The recent California fire fighter vote was shameful. By definition, if you trust someone to fight a wildfire, you trust them to be:
* Employed
* Out of prison / jail
* Unsupervised / under-supervised
* With dangerous weapons
* And plenty of opportunity to flee / overpower guards / escape
* Capable of working together for a common goal
* Capable of acting bravely in defense of others
In short, you need people that are incarcerated that probably shouldn't be incarcerated. A hardened career criminal, or unpredictable and violent person, or flight risk, or person incapable of working on a team, is not a good candidate for a fire team. Instead, for firefighters, you need to lock up people like this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8GJL11WaG2s
Years ago there was pushback on paroling non-violent inmates, because it would then be harder to recruit firefighters. The same thing happened during Covid.
@mekkaokereke @sangster @ajsadauskas My experience of talking to white Americans across the political spectrum about this is that there's a lot of instant resistance to almost anything that might make life better for convicts. "What? No, that's part of the punishment. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" etc. It's like we're frozen in the 1970s-80s-90s high-crime world where "get tough" was the universal prescription for a rise in crime nobody understood.
@mattmcirvin @mekkaokereke @sangster @ajsadauskas Cutting off their noses to spite our collective faces.
@mattmcirvin @mekkaokereke @sangster @ajsadauskas Cruelty, abuse and punishment is, unfortunately, a cherished part of white culture, maybe part of getting people emotionally prepared to support the horrors of colonialism and slavery, but a certain kind of toughness and callousness is recognized as a virtue. This is even more cruel when the violent crime of the last century has credible evidence of being caused by the rise of car-centric infrastructure and leaded gasoline causing widespread lead poisoning, something that an individual can do precious little about on their own, to the benefit of oil and automobile companies at the expense of public health. Much like LA these days, which is having problems due in no small part to the influence of oil and auto companies on policy.
@mattmcirvin @mekkaokereke @sangster @ajsadauskas In this case for incarcerated firefighting teams, the right answer is that volunteering (not enslavement which should be banned) service to the community, especially at risk to ones life, should count as paying back a substantial debt to the community caused by the crime in the first place (assuming in my magical perfect world that these people are even incarcerated for actually committing a crime that harmed anyone, when so many cops and prosecutors are full of shit in the real world). I can imagine that some people are just violently crazy and not safe to put on a fire team, or have done something so heinous that volunteering isn't enough, but those should be very exceptional circumstances, very very few people are like that.
Sometimes adults make mistakes that cause harm and need corrective consequences, the prison system shouldn't do anything to other people that one wouldn't do to discipline their own children (some parents though, yikes, maybe this is also a loophole you could drive a bus through), or foster an unsafe environment that one wouldn't feel comfortable putting their own children into. Sometimes adults just need a timeout too.
@mattmcirvin @mekkaokereke @sangster
My sense having followed corrections issues for a few decades is that politicians are very averse to the rare instance of someone released who has a new violent conviction. What is lost in the process is the positive impact of having so many fathers home supporting families, mothers educating children, taxes being paid, and having role models back in the community. Just look at Alabama, where about 85% of people recommended for parole are rejected!
@mattmcirvin @mekkaokereke @sangster @ajsadauskas
There is a block on anything that could help Black people.
The specific issue is irrelevant.
@mattmcirvin @mekkaokereke @sangster @ajsadauskas I think we're also bound by this Calvinist ideology that "bad things happen to bad people" and therefore the only purpose of incarceration is to punish and sequester, never rehabilitate.
The flip side of this toxic hypothesis is why we also don't treat the ultra-wealthy as an awful historical anomaly who destroy society if it benefits their wallets, because "good things happen to good people" and "God helps those who help themselves".
@mekkaokereke @mattmcirvin @sangster @ajsadauskas Thanks for the reminder!!!!
@mekkaokereke I showed that film to my child. She might have been a little young for it. “That’s Malcolm X.” “He did Old Town Road, right?”