* * The Maoist Internationalist Movement * * - MIM Notes 110, March 1996 - MASSACHUSETTS UPS THE ANTE ON CRIMINAL INJUSTICE On January 22nd, the Massachusetts State House and Senate both unanimously passed a bill to fund more prison and jail cells, providing money for 3,000 new and renovated cells. In a publicity trick to get this bill passed, Massachusetts Governor William Weld took 299 prisoners hostage, sending them to Texas to illustrate the supposed overcrowding problem in Massachusetts prisons. Weld wants to build more prisons, so he created an overcrowding problem by moving prisoners from lower security to higher security prisons to make it look like there was a lack of high security facilities. These state-sponsored criminals play games with prisoners' lives in the newspaper and the legislature, all to boost their own 'law and order' images and improve the state's economy. The bill authorized a total of $486,255,860 in new expenditures for the Massachusetts criminal injustice system. Rehabilitative services such as education, family visits, drug and alcohol programs, and even medical care have been cut recently, yet in this close to $500 million bill the only rehabilitative services of any kind are new "boot camps" being built for juveniles. The bill included provisions to pay for police facilities and grants for "publicly owned capital projects" as an incentive to communities building more prisons. OPPRESSED NATIONALS PRONE TO CRIME? Another measure hidden in this bill was the following: "...the department of correction, in conjunction with the department of public health and the department of education, shall conduct a study into the biological causes of crime based on the premise that scientists have been studying biological risk factors which they believe predispose individuals to criminal behavior; provided further, that said study should incorporate these findings to work toward a more effective approach toward criminology..." Since Blacks and Latinos are locked up at a disproportionate rate relative to their numbers in the population, this so-called study will find that race determines criminal behavior. Capitalist society does not recognize the murder, theft, rape and pillage conducted by our government against peoples of the Third World and oppressed nations within U.S. borders as crime. This "more effective approach toward criminology" just means expanding the lockdown in communities of oppressed nationalities. RAIL held a rally in Springfield, Massachusetts on February 10. The really marked the second anniversary of the police execution of Black motorist Ben Schoolfield, the February 7 national day of action for Mumia Abu-Jamal and protested the expansion of the police in Springfield. Springfield already has the second largest police force in New England with 500 armed oinkers, but it is far from the second largest city. Apparently the masses of Springfield are not adequately locked down, and the city's new mayor wants to spend $3 million adding 100 new cops to the force. See the next issue of MIM Notes for an article about this rally.