Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program for June 25, 1999

Prisons populations may already be skyrocketting, but states are finding 
news ways to reincarcerate prisoners after their sentences are up.

Mumia Abu Jamal writes about ineffective defense attorneys

Supreme Court protects warrantless searches & 
Amerikan cops single out oppressed nationals

At the end of May, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in favor of
the "Sexually Dangerous Persons Act," a legislative amendment
allowing the state to commit so-called sex offenders in state
hospitals after their prison sentence ends. It is up to the
discretion of state-employed psychologists and
caseworkers to determine whether or not a persyn is dangerous
enough to warrant gaining what is obviously an extended prison
sentence by another name.(1) The Minnesota court ruled that the
act does not violate "due process" under either the United States
or Minnesota constitutions.

This reactionary decision follows an April move by Missouri's
house of representatives "to pass a bill that allows the Attorney
General's office to review the cases of violent sexual offenders
who have already been freed--and have them recommitted."(2) If
recommitted, they would be incarcerated within state prisons in
treatment programs run by the state Department of Mental Health.

Laws surrounding sex offenders are ostensibly based on "evidence"
of disproportionate recidivism for these crimes, and the
heinousness of sexually abusing a child. But using "Justice"
Department statistics, the National Center on Institutions and
Alternatives (NCIA) points out that persons convicted of sex
offenses have lower rates of recidivism than other crimes.(4) And
children (who these laws are supposed to protect) are at much
greater risk of sexual abuse from family members than from
strangers in their neighborhoods. The majority of the offenders,
especially if they are white and protected by middle class,
unrestrained parental power, are never caught. The patriarchal
family, and an imperialist culture that sexualizes children and
eroticizes power, is the real danger the public should be
notified about!

The first state to enact legislation committing sex offenders
past their prison sentences was Washington, in 1990. Throughout
the decade, other states have adopted similar measures. The US
Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of "indefinite 'civil'
commitment of sex offenders" in 1997, in Kansas v. Hendricks, if
it was for the purposes of treatment. Currently at least 18
states have these laws.(3)

Other state laws literally make it impossible for freed sex
offenders to leave prison at all. So-called community
notification laws--which force convicted sex offenders to
register with the police, have their names publicized in
neighborhoods, school districts, and increasingly on the
Internet--make it impossible to find safe housing. If landlords
will even agree to rent, notified "communities" can quickly
become lynch mobs. We read recently of a Wisconsin prisoner still
living in prison after his release date because no landlord would
rent him an apartment in the area!

Civil libertarians like the ACLU correctly oppose sex offender
registries and post-incarceration confinement as violations of
due process of law, and say that they open the door for the state
to air and publicize all past criminal acts in public. MIM
further opposes the psychologizing of gender oppression inherent
in sex offender-specific laws mandating "treatment," and
empowering psychologists to extend prison sentences in hospitals.
Such treatment, incorrectly based on the individual and not on
the social ill of child sexual abuse, is also used a tool of
lifelong state supervision and surveillance.

In a 1996 MIM Notes wrote about the proliferation of "Megan's
Laws" requiring sex offenders to register with the state. The article 
concluded:
 "All of this legislating and posturing will not stop the
abuse of children, a group highly sexualized in this society. In
a culture in which power is eroticized, children are common
victims of sexual violence since they are the most powerless
group in society. This sexualization of children is obvious in
pornography and general media representation. The sex offender
scare-tactics reinforce incorrect analyses of rape, including
rape of children. This use of gender to beef up the police state
is a trade mark of pseudo-feminism. Pseudo-feminists make gender
the principal contradiction and ignore the ramifications the
legislation they advocate has for oppressed national
minorities."(5)

If you want to stop crime, rape and child abuse, there is only one 
answer: It's not more police and prisons. It's a revolution to transform 
society./

Notes:
1. National Crime Victims Center
(http://www.ncvc.org/flash/in_news.htm)
2. Missouri Digital News (http://mdn.org/1999/STORIES/CIVIL.HTM)
3. Institute for Law and Justice
(http://www.ilj.org/sa/review_of_state_sexual_assault_l.htm)
4. National Center on Institutions and Alternatives
(http://www.igc.org/ncia/ cns.html)
6. MIM Notes 116.

Mumia Abu Jamal is a former Black Panther on death row in Pennsylvania. 
He was framed and put on death row becuase of his outspoken exposure of 
oppression of Black people. 

Next we will play an introduction by Judy Bari and then a commentary by 
Mumai Abu Jamal. Judy Bari an Earth First activist who was critically 
injured in a 1990 FBI bombing of the car she was driving.  She died in 
1997.  

Track 33 MAJ CD. Judy Bari]

[Track 10 MAJ CD. When Inneffective means effective]


Supreme Court protects warrantless searches & 
Amerikan cops single out oppressed nationals

With widespread exposure of "racial profiling" by police, 
the Supreme Court ruled in early April to expand warrantless
search in traffic stops. The ruling means that passengers and
their property can be subject to warrantless searches in routine
traffic stops, if the police find probable cause to search the car
based on suspicion of the driver. Even with the extensive powers
previously available to police to search a driver's car without a
warrant, the Supreme Court "had never [before] permitted the
search of personal items of a passenger who was suspected of no
wrongdoing."(1)

This decision pounds one more nail in the coffin of the 4th
Amendment, which is supposed to protect against unreasonable
searches and seizures.

In January, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court conviction in
WYOMING v HOUGHTON. This was a conviction of a womyn whose purse
was searched in a traffic stop, based on police suspicion that the
driver of the car had drugs. The Wyoming Supreme Court had earlier
reversed that conviction.

In its 6-3 decision, the US Supreme Court wrote, "Passengers, no
less than drivers, possess a reduced expectation of privacy with
regard to the property they transport in cars. ... In contrast to
the passenger's reduced privacy expectations, the governmental
interest in effective law enforcement would be appreciably
impaired without the ability to search the passenger's belongings,
since an automobile's ready mobility creates the risk that
evidence or contraband will be permanently lost while a warrant is
obtained ... since a passenger may have an interest in concealing
evidence of wrongdoing in a common enterprise with the driver, ...
and since a criminal might be able to hide contraband in a
passenger's belongings as readily as in other containers in the
car."(2)

The dissenting judges pointed out that by this ruling, "police
apparently could search a taxi passenger's briefcase if the
officer had reason to believe the driver had hidden a syringe
somewhere."(1) The dissenting judges argued the decision was an
erosion of a so-called "privacy right" previously enjoyed by
passengers in these situations.

But it is not the erosion of privacy that should have
revolutionaries concerned. Several states are now facing class
action law suits challenging racial profiling in traffic stops.
This practice -- discrimination against oppressed nation members -
- is rampant at every stage of the criminal injustice system. That
it is being recognized in court as a particular problem in traffic
stops is reason enough to oppose the expansion of police power in
these situations.

New Jersey is among the states facing these law suits. Kevin
Keenan of the New Jersey ACLU said, "These are black
professionals, these are black middle-class people, they are
stopped when they are going five miles over the speed limit or
have other minor infractions, or they are stopped for no reason at
all, and repeatedly."(3) RAIL knows that police stops are not
restricted to the Black petit-bourgeoisie. Oppressed nation
working class, lumpen and youth are pulled over disproportionately
without a legitimate traffic reason, and they are less likely to be able 
to find
adequate legal representation.

In February and April of this year, studies showed that "for
separate two-month periods in 1997, three of every four drivers
arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike were black or Hispanic."(4)

And in a classic good cop bad cop maneuver, as the High Court
expands the power of the state to search passengers, the other
branches of government make noise about investigating the problem
of 'racial profiling' in traffic and transit. But as the Governor
of New Jersey recently showed in a press conference acknowledging
the use of 'racial profiling' -- the investigations will focus on
the individual bad cops that make the rest of the force look bad.

The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is now
investigating cases of racial profiling in New Jersey, Michigan
and Florida; Attorney General Janet Reno is calling for more data
about whether such practices exist, and the U.$. Customs Service
has announced an "independent commission [to] review how its
agents at international airports process passengers, and whether
they have singled out a disproportionate number of racial
minorities for searches."(5)

The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League 
organizes against the injustice system as it is one of the
most ferocious tools of national oppression. We build increasing
opposition to the prison system in particular because of its
severity in Amerika. But we recognize that prisons exists as one
stage in a thoroughly rigged process of national oppression. We
call on progressive forces to oppose this latest expansion of
police powers as RAIL continues to build revolution forces to take
down the entire Amerikan system of injustice.

Notes:
1. "High Court Expands Car Search Authority: Passenger Property
May Be Examined, Joan Biskupic, April 6, 1999; Washington Post,
Page A01.
2..Wyoming v. Houghton,
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98- 184.ZS.html
3. Associated Press, 10 April 1999.
4. "Racial profiling controversy heats into a political pressure-
cooker" Associated Press. 10 April 1999.
5. The Detroit Free Press, 9 April 1999.