Prison boom rockets despite 'crime' drop

Mumia Abu Jamal discusses the death penalty

and a prisoner letter describes the new prison torture techniques



New u.$. government statistics show that incarceration continues
to skyrocket despite declining official crime rates. The Amerikan
prison system is part of imperialism's ever-growing system of
oppression and social control. MIM recognizes all imprisonment
under imperialism as political; it is the oppressed that are
locked up after being railroaded within the settler nation's
bourgeois INjustice system. Imperialism and its allies commit the
most horrendous crimes; these crimes go unpunished because it is
the bourgeoisie that creates the laws and controls the courts.

Bourgeois accounting of crime does not include multi-national
corporations murdering peasants to build golf courses or banana
plantations. Bourgeois accounting of crime does not include
devastating malnutrition, preventable disease, and environmental
contamination resulting from imperialist wars. Bourgeois
accounting of crime is extremely suspect because crime itself is
politically defined according to what class and national interests
are represented within the government.

It's no surprise that Amerika excludes imperialist crimes from the
official crime rates. But typically, white nation pigs and
bureaucrats have used official crime rates to justify the
proliferation of pig departments and prisons. Recent reports prove
what MIM has said repeatedly: increased imprisonment and
repression is primarily a result of Amerika's attempts to maintain
control, not of increased official crime rates.

Despite the continued decline in official crime rates, the U.$.
prison population grew 4.8% in 1998. The government estimates that
at the end of 1998, there were 1.8 million people were in jail or prison. The 
total rate of imprisonment
rose was also up since the 1990, from 461 [pause] to 672 per 100,000 
residents.(1)

There were fewer officially-defined crimes committed in 1998 than
there were the year before, but the prison numbers kept going up.
Authors of the u.$. report attribute this to several factors.
First, even though "crime" is down, there was a 4% increase in
people sent to prison and jail. There was also a 39% increase in
the number of people on parole returned to prison. The rate of
release continued to fall, and the average time spent in prison before release 
continues to rise. Finally, expected time served by those now entering prisons 
has increased to 43 months, from 38 months in 1990.

Changes in the INjustice system's policies have made it so that
the prison population will continue to grow even if crime rates
fall. People are still going in faster than they are coming out.
Amerika will imprison more people for lesser crimes and will keep
them in prison longer. The prison system has its own momentum, and
it is only partly related to "crime" itself. The INjustice system
serves political economic purposes -- national oppression,
population control, the exploitation of labor, jobs for the labor
aristocracy and contracts for corporate Amerika. A down-turn in
the crime rate cannot stand in the way of these important goals.

The new statistics offer fresh evidence of national oppression in
the INjustice system. In 1998, the states with the highest
imprisonment rates were those with the relatively largest pockets
of oppressed nation members: Louisiana, followed by Texas, Oklahoma Mississippi, 
and South Carolina. The states with the
lowest imprisonment rates were the whitest. Minnesota, Maine, and North Dakota. 
The difference in incarceration rates between these states is not small. 
Louisiana's incarceration rate was more than 5 times that of Minnesota, Maine 
and North Dakota.

The latest year for which imprisonment of oppressed nation members
was calculated is 1997. Imprisonment of Black nation members has
been rising faster than imprisonment of whites throughout the
1990s. With Black and Latino incarceration rising over 60% during the 1990s, the 
percentage of prisoners who are white fell below the 50% mark. 

Most striking were the imprisonment rates by age as well as sex
and nationality Among 25-29 year-old Black men, the
imprisonment rate was 8,630. That's a Black incarceration rate ten times the 
rate for white men of the same age group. In percentage terms, 8.6% of Black men 
between 25 and 29 years old were in prison in 1997.

The concentration of prisoners in the prime ages of the 20s and
30s has calculated, devastating economic, social and political
effects on the Black nation. Families, neighborhoods and
communities have major leaders and contributors ripped from their
hearts and brutally imprisoned for years at a time. When and if
they are released, the terms of their imprisonment are designed to
prevent their success in mainstream pursuits. For whites, men in
their 20s and 30s are getting the education and job experience
that they will use to translate into positions of power, wealth
and savings, and building their families. MIM does not diminish
the importance of Black wimmin when we say that the loss of all
these Black men, and the damage done to the survivors, takes a
horrific toll on the Black nation as a whole.

The prison system is indeed booming out of control. It's vital for
the people to understand the machinations of this system if they
are to develop their opposition to it. The imprisonment of
millions of people in this country is not the result of "crime,"
or the attempts of the imperialists to make this country safer --
except for themselves and their lackeys. But in building their
machine of oppression, they are also laying the groundwork for a
resistance movement, for the development of anti-imperialist and
revolutionary consciousness on the part of prisoners, former
prisoners, and their supporters on the outside. The oppressiveness
of the prison system is a symbol to all that care to see it, a
symbol of the wanton inhumanity and hypocrisy of the imperialist
system and its supporters. We need to develop the consciousness
that the prison system inadvertently promotes, to undermine and
eventually overthrow that system from within as well as from
without.



VOICE
VOICE

This is an essay by Mumia Abu Jamal entitled "An Impartial 
Killing?". with Mumia's access to the media limited, this essay is 
read by the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League. See for yourself 
why the United Snakes wants to silence revolutionary leader Mumia 
Abu Jamal.

[Mumia Essays CD, Vol 1, Track 8 7:03]




Prisoners are not organized to defend against gestapo tactics.

I suggest to those who will listen, to educate themselves as to
what they are up against and then to educate their outside family
and friends. Then I suggest that they have their family and
friends organize as concerned citizens about the going ons in
these kamps. Many people think its beyond their ability to impact
the operation of these kamps, but a few people do write letters
and call the warden about how they treat us.

I don't have a problem sharing my experience with those who want
to learn and listen. I will have served 27 years come October 1999
for killing a drug dealer during a robbery. I have seen many
changes over the years. And in many respects, it has never been
worse.

Well, thanks against for the newsletters and information.
The Struggle Continues,
--A Prisoner in Amerika