MIM Notes 211                   June 1, 2000

DNA testing expands: Massachusetts wants prisoners to fund growing 
police state 

The Massachusetts Legislature has found an additional method for 
prisoners to pay costs related to their own repression. Prisoners 
throughout Amerika already work for slave-like wages (if any wages 
at all) and they pay exorbitant prices for necessary items from 
the commissaries. Prisons also overcharge prisoners and their 
families for phone calls, medical visits and a slew of other 
"services". Now, a panel from the Executive Office of 
Administration and Finance in Massachusetts is considering the 
proposal to force prisoners to pay $110 for the establishment and 
maintenance of a DNA database.(1) We have previously reported the 
efforts of all 50 states and the federal government to implement 
DNA testing. The pigs then use the DNA database to allegedly solve 
past and future cases. Given that Amerikan law enforcement 
murders, brutalizes and lies to cover-up blame, there is no 
rational reason to assume that pigs would not tamper with the DNA 
evidence to suit their interests. In other words, we don't trust 
the pigs not to falsify evidence to pretend they have solved a 
crime. But even if the pigs do not tamper with evidence, MIM 
opposes these databases because they only lead to increased 
incarceration. Incarceration in the United Snakes does not 
decrease crime, murder and rape (the biggest culprit being the 
United Snakes itself).(2) Increased incarceration under 
imperialism only serves the interests of the settler nation 
seeking social control and national oppression. While fighting 
against the entire imperialist injustice system, we agree with 
liberal groups on a tactical level in opposing DNA databases. For 
instance, the liberal legal argument is that it is unjust to 
gather DNA for future use without individualized suspicion. 
Massachusetts courts suspended the DNA database plan in 1998 
because of this privacy argument. In 1999, the courts reversed the 
decision and DNA collection has begun. This is more proof that, 
just as in any legal battle, the bourgeoisie will do what is 
necessary, even breaking its own codes, to continue oppression. 
Legal battles can be useful to temporarily end tactics of 
repression, but only revolution will liberate the oppressed. 

"Paying" for crimes in Amerika 

Across Amerika, politicians serving white settler nation interests 
have pushed for prisoners to pay some costs of their 
incarceration. This goes over well with the tax-fearing white 
population that still wants a strong police state. But in fact, 
prisons do not stop crime and are actually a welfare program for 
rural white communities. Efforts to force prisoners to pay for 
their incarceration are both ideological and economic attacks. 
Ideologically, such programs bolster support for the imperialist 
stance that the real criminals are the ones that are put in 
prisons. Economically, prisoners are not paid the value of their 
labor (are exploited), yet still must pay for basic needs and the 
means to educate themselves. Prisoners hold jobs that peak at 25-
40 cents an hour. But policies like extortion for medical co-
payments and charging "rent" prevent prisoners from buying 
necessities. The financial burden extends beyond the prisoner's 
incarceration. When (or rather if, in Amerika) a prisoner is 
released, s/he often has to deal with additional payments to the 
"victim" or court costs. Released prisoners are virtually 
unemployable: people are afraid to hire them and their job skills 
are generally very out of date. Their debts leaving prison make 
the creation of stability in their lives that much tougher. 

Amerikan prison system is not about justice 

The "justice" system has national oppression and the maintenance 
of Amerikan imperialism as its goals, not justice. If justice were 
the goal, actual guilt (as opposed to kangaroo court conviction) 
would be paramount and Amerika would address educational and 
rehabilitation needs of those who actually committed crimes. Anti-
imperialists should always look for opportunities to use a part of 
the oppressor's system to fight back without compromising the 
larger revolutionary struggle. While the purpose of the Amerikan 
state is to use DNA evidence to increase incarceration, DNA 
evidence can be used to exonerate prisoners. In late February, 
Peter Neufeld, director of the Innocence Project, spoke at Yale 
Law School about his work using DNA evidence to free prisoners. 
Neufeld pushed for the passage of laws requiring states to allow 
post-conviction DNA testing. Currently, only New York and Illinois 
give prisoners the right to post-conviction DNA testing. Not 
surprisingly, it is New York and Illinois that have the highest 
number of post-conviction exonerations. Illinois has recently 
released eight prisoners from death row because they were proven 
innocent. Both legislators and prosecutors spend time fighting the 
ability of prisoners to prove their innocence. In half of 
Neufeld's cases, prosecutors oppose his attempts to allow such 
testing. Neufeld also made an interesting argument about fighting 
the Amerikan death penalty: because DNA evidence is available now, 
activists have a tactical opportunity to galvanize the public 
against the death penalty with a large number of releases of 
innocent prisoners. In the future, while the white nation courts 
will still convict the innocent, there may not be similar 
impressive numbers of indisputable releases. The Innocence Project 
currently represents 200 prisoners where DNA evidence still exists 
that could exonerate them. The Project has a backlog of 1,000 
cases that met their criteria, and several thousand more cases 
have not been taken because the evidence has been lost or 
destroyed by prosecutors. In a study of 70 cases where the 
prisoner was exonerated with post-conviction DNA evidence, 
mistaken eyewitnesses were involved in 84%. With one exception, in 
all of the cases, defense attorneys challenged the admissibility 
of the identifications, but the settler nation's courts upheld 
each identification. Police misconduct was involved in 50% of the 
cases, prosecutorial misconduct in 40% and inadequate defense 
counsel in 25%. Significantly, the system protects its own; not 
one of the cases where the prisoner appealed on the grounds of 
ineffective counsel did the courts grant appeal. As of his 
lecture, 64 people have been freed from Amerikan jails with post-
conviction DNA evidence (8 of these from death row) and another 8 
in Canada. For Neufeld and for MIM, in Neufeld's words: "It's not 
how they got out, it's how they got in [prison]" that really 
matters. Neufeld also warned that the use of DNA testing will not 
stop future incorrect convictions. If left unchanged, the same 
factors that send the innocent to prison will continue to 
function. We agree with Neufeld on this point, but of course 
emphasize that it is only through thorough revolutionary overhaul, 
seizure of state power by the proletariat and proletarian 
dictatorship that the system will be changed. Reforms of this 
parasitic and repressive kkkountry will not stop the bourgeois and 
the pigs from finding new ways to incarcerate the innocent and 
exploit the oppressed. ITAL Reporting by an ally, analysis and 
article by MIM. END 

Note: 1. Laywers Weekly, 6 March 2000. 2. See for example: 
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/ulk/194crime.pdf