MIM Notes 166        July 15, 1998

MLM Online
World Wide Web Review
National Center on Institutions and Alternatives
http://www.igc.org/ncia

In our ongoing efforts to build campaigns around the 
U.$. Criminal Injustice System, MIM and RAIL often show 
a video produced by the Committee to End the Marion 
Lockdown that paraphrases the Russian writer Fedor 
Dostoevsky, who said that in order to understand a 
society, it was necessary to look at its prison system.

We expand this point to include all aspects of criminal 
injustice -- from police occupation of oppressed nation 
communities, police brutality, arrests, unfair trials 
and sentencing -- and finally jails and prisons. Looking 
at these structures reveals the workings of the 
imperialist system.

In analyzing conditions we frequently rely on bourgeois 
government data, and our ability to scientifically 
understand as well as criticize it. But we also seek out 
and apply information from those sources that debunk pig 
reports for us. Among those sources is the National 
Center for Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA).

Although NCIA organizes from a wholly reformist 
perspective -- promoting gang prevention, Head Start and 
other programs funded by the government -- in the 
process they expose many of the evils of state 
repression through law enforcement. The organization 
gets funding from both private philanthropic foundations 
and government agencies. But it is up to revolutionaries 
to apply the information they provide toward the 
revolution.

For example, NCIA is the organization that produced the 
report "Hobbling a Generation" in 1992 -- updated again 
in 1997 -- that exposed the astonishing rate of 
incarceration of Black men in the District of Columbia. 
By 1997, one half of Black men ages 18-35 were under 
criminal injustice supervision, which includes 
probation, parole, jail and prison. 

In D.C., RAIL developed a flier to accompany its "Oppose 
the Transfer of D.C. Prisoners" petition campaign that 
includes this statistic from NCIA. There, RAIL has 
gotten good response from people who can understand that 
incarcerating or repressing 50% of a certain population 
and then transferring them to another state (which 
happens as D.C. prisoners are sent into the Federal 
prison system) is a full scale, structural assault by 
the state.

From the main page of NCIA's web site, readers should be 
sure to check out "What Every American Should Know About 
the Criminal Justice System." Right off the bat the 
difference in line and approach from MIM and RAIL is 
evident, as we speak from the vantage point of the 
world's oppressed majority. But the information 
contained on that page is useful for agitation against 
criminal injustice. MIM, RAIL and other allied 
organizations can find a rich source of material for 
fliers and petitions.

NCIA clearly and correctly states what MIM has been 
saying for years: prisons do not reduce crime. NCIA 
attributes the failure of prisons to lack of 
rehabilitation and the criminalization of drug use 
(where some other countries treat drug use principally 
as a health problem), among other things. They cite as 
proof the lack of correlation between crime and 
incarceration across states. Liberally, NCIA provides 
two conclusions to this, but the second one, at least, 
is correct:

"The best that can be said is that the enormous increase 
in law enforcement caused a marginal decrease in crime. 
The worst that can be said is that the expansion did 
nothing for crime but caused terrible collateral harm on 
society by draining money and ruining lives." MIM and 
RAIL believe that we should indeed look at the armed 
domination of oppressed nations and youth and draw the 
"worst" conclusions.

In addition to "Hobbling a Generation," NCIA provides 
the full text of many of its reports on the Web site; 
including exposing the myths of juvenile crime that fuel 
repressive youth-based legislation, studies of jail and 
prison suicide, the decline of education inside and 
outside the walls, and the oppressiveness of private 
prisons.

NCIA provides reformist solutions to problems that MIM 
and RAIL see as fundamental and in need of revolution. 
But they also provide valuable tools for activists who 
are ready to take political leadership from 
revolutionaries. Contact RAIL for more information about 
how to get involved in our anti-criminal injustice work.