Black Steel in the Hour of Budgets

as prison spending far exceeds that of public education,
African Americans are hit the hardest

r u s s w h i t e

You don’t have to read the statistics to know that American racial politics are fucked up. Despite so many attempts over the years at “healthy national dialogues” on race relations, the country remains rather staunchly divided by the railroad tracks. As more and more affluent subdivisions (read “white people”) use immaculate iron gates to protect themselves from the supposedly horrific dangers of urban squalor (read “black people”), one can’t help but let out a sigh of resignation at the mention of anyone having “A Dream.”

And when you do read the statistics, such cynicism quickly crystalizes. According to a new study from the Justice Policy Institute, a D.C. advocacy group, there were more African American men incarcerated nationwide than enrolled in colleges or universities in 2000. At first this might seem underwhelming since colleges generally accept people aged 18 to 22 while jails and prisons welcome anyone over 17. Common sense would seem to dictate that of course there are more people in prison since the applicant pool spans all of American post-pubescent humanity, right? Actually, no, things weren’t always like this. (And here’s where the proverbial shit gets heavy.) In 1980, there were only 143,000 incarcerated black males and 463,700 enrolled in higher education. By 2000, national college and university enrollment had increased by less than 150,000 while the black male prison population had boomed to a total of 791,600. And the really odd thing is that the increase has not been racially uniform. “Between 1985 and 1997 (when more than a million new prisoners were added to state and federal prisons),” the study explains, “70 percent of prison growth came from the addition of new African American and Latino prisoners.” At this point, one in four African American men is likely to spend some time in jail during his life.

So what exactly brought on this steep rise in black prisoners? The study fails to offer an explicit explanation. New York Times writer Fox Butterfield reports that one proposed theory cites a rise in drug crackdowns. But Justice Department figures from 1990 to 2000 show that fifty percent of the growth in inmate populations at state prisons resulted from violent crimes and that only twenty percent were from drug crimes.” With that option out, who the hell do we blame now?

The most obvious answer seems to be the prisoners themselves. After all, they were the ones who broke the locks or pulled the triggers in the first place. Granted, some inmates face sentences for crimes they did not commit, but I would assume that, by and large, most of the prison population did earnestly break the law. Even in the case of harmless or treatable crimes, particularly drug use, in which incarceration seems ludicrous, I can’t help but wonder why so many of one demographic are breaking the law (and consistently being convicted of it). Some have tried to argue the genetic case, that black people are more violence-prone in much the same way, I suppose, that most white people are dickheads. But ultimately this theory is exceedingly simplistic, not to mention racist. Besides, black people have more in common with each other than their mere skin color. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the African American community has the largest poverty rate, 22.1 percent, of any race. Whites have less than 10 percent. With a social problem so systematic, perhaps we should have a gander at the system itself: enter The Man.

Could it be simply that racism dominates the judicial system? For the large part it certainly does. Far beyond racial profiling by highway patrolmen, the situation seems to be that Caucasian life actually has a higher value to the courts. As the Death Penalty Information Center points out, “Over 80 percent of completed capital cases involve white victims, even though nationally only 50 percent of murder victims are white.” With these extra financial and prejudicial burdens in mind, one begins to see a pattern of abject nurture instead of simple bad nature.

And here’s where public education steps forward as one of the culprits. We’ve all seen the inner-city high school movies, from Dangerous Minds to The Substitute, in which lackluster schooling produces bedlam. Of course, hip-hop artists such as KRS-One, Public Enemy, and Dead Prez have been demanding better public education for fifteen years or more. Would improved education really help reduce crime rates? The answer seems almost painfully obvious. Someone with a good high school and college education would have better access to better jobs, which would limit the need and desire to steal or kill to survive. Plus, graduation from most educational institutions would indicate that this someone has survived in a rigorous and largely subservient environment. Thus he would have basically learned how to cope with and possibly thrive in the American power structure. For the most part, African Americans are having trouble coping, let alone thriving.

Another main focus of the “Cellblocks or Classrooms” study is the discrepancy between education and corrections spending. “Between 1985 and 2000,” states a U.S. Newswire story on the findings, “the increase in state spending on corrections was nearly double that of the increase to higher education ($20 billion versus $10.7 billion), and the total increase in spending on higher education by states was 24 percent, compared with 166 percent for corrections.” In Texas in particular, corrections spending increased by 346 percent since 1986 while education received only an extra 47 percent. State Senator John Whitmire, D-Houston, explains that voters simply eat up tough-on-crime policies: “We have a shortage right now of 40,000 schoolteachers and 2,500 prison guards, and more is said about filling the guard positions.”

With government help dwindling, educational institutions have had to raise tuition accordingly. The U.S. Newswire story continues, “From 1980 to 1998, tuition and fees support for higher education have risen at 8 times the rate of state support. For low-income families, the cost of paying for tuition at a four-year institution increased from 13 percent of their income to 25 percent.” The prison/school population discrepancy is starting to make sense: people clearly need to eat before they can settle down with a textbook.

As Hilary O. Shelton, Director of the NAACP Washington Bureau, laments, “It is sad that our states are finding it easier to contribute more to incarcerating our men and women and creating a downward spiral of poverty and destitution rather than investing through our educational system to create an upward spiral of accomplishment and achievement.” Thankfully, we are starting to get the message. “In the last year,” reports the Newswire, a variety of states “have enacted legislation to end mandatory minimum sentencing, reform national drug laws, reduce probation and parole violations, and defund the construction of planned prison expansion.” Nevertheless, America still has a long way to go in reforming our corrections systems and pumping more life into public education. As Texas state Senator Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, suggests, “We might be better off spending money on drug treatment programs and education on the front end than on prison beds on the other end.”

Unfortunately, most Americans seem more concerned with keeping their streets safe tonight than with implementing long-term recovery plans. If we allow the prison system to continue to bloat and smother education, everyone including African Americans will suffer. As Senator Whitmire puts it, “we have to see the relationship between crime and education and find the right balance.” In the meantime, do yourself a favor and take a class in locksmithery.