That is just one small example in the overwhelming flood of cases that are prosecuted in this country every day of the working week; and sometimes on the weekend if the court is really clogged up. For the powers that be, there is no incentive, NONE, in reducing crime in this country because crime is a problem that never touches him. He doesn’t live in places where crime exists. Where he’s from crime can be taken care of with a well placed political donation, or the funding of a little league field. Anyone who is courageous enough to do the research will find that post-emancipation proclamation and throughout Jim Crow many of those former slaves freed by the 13^th Amendment, ended up arrested for such petty offenses as loitering or make believe charges such as vagrancy (not having a job). These laws were designed to solve a problem for the white man in Amerikkka. He wasn’t a real farmer, he was more a supervisor. He couldn’t survive without slave labor. He had NEVER had to survive without slave labor. The cotton was rotting in the fields, the livestock were dying. His child didn’t have a titty to suckle, his wife didn’t have a “buck” to take care of her needs (shit, now I gotta do it) and dammit to hell, I ain’t got nobody to rape. (yeah, don’t let ANYONE tell you slavery wasn’t that bad, I’m actually old enough to have been around folks that were old enough to be the children of slaves, believe me, I’ve heard the stories. Not the warm and fuzzy Hollywood bullshit slavery stories, but the stories that didn’t have a happy ending, good didn’t triumph over evil)

Then a funny thing happened in the mid to late 70’s and early 80’s. As greedy shareholders and CEOs outsourced many jobs in the manufacturing belts of this country, those poor out of work white folks had to have a way to feed their families. The solution, the country went on a prison building binge. If you look at a map and designate areas in this country where manufacturing, farming, timber or mining were once the primary economic engine for that area, you now see prisons. Only problem was, there weren’t enough bodies to fill those prison beds. The solution to that problem was the new and improved war on drugs and the newly designed war on poverty. The war on poverty started out as a way to ameliorate the effects of poverty on white communities in the south, blacks just came along for the ride. Now the war on poverty, in effect, means a war on the consequences of poverty. The change in focus was so slick and so well marketed that no one even noticed the difference until it was too late. The war included, rules and regulations promulgated to criminalize previously civil cases; cases such as failure to pay child support, “neglect” of a dependent (which can mean anything from the Good Times Penny situations, to failure to maintain utilities while living in public housing). If you weren’t employed, you were considered a vagrant, if you were a vagrant, you don’t have an address, if you’re homeless you are arrested for loitering. Some jurisdictions have even went to the extreme of outlawing sleeping in your vehicle even if you have absolutely nowhere else to go. This plan exploded ironically under our old friend Bill Clinton. True enough, Ronald Reagan coined the term “welfare queen” but it was under Clinton that the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act otherwise known as the “crime bill” was signed into law. This legal monstrosity had the effect of not only dramatically increasing the number of men and women behind bars, it also was the largest “crime” bill in the history of the United States. It created 100,000 new police officers, almost 10 billion in funding for new prisons. (Incidentally, the Senator responsible for the writing of the bill actually was our old friend Joe Biden who we elected along with our hero Barack Obama) The bill also saw the creation of a ban on assault weapons along with over 60 new death penalty classifications (hmmm, why again is death row full of US?) The bill also had a curious rider attached that banned prisoners from receiving Pell Grants to go to college while locked up even though bipartisan studies had shown that college educated ex-cons recidivated at a rate dramatically lower than prisoners with no access to higher education. Additionally the VCCLEA also for the first time in history made it a crime to even BE in a gang. So if you were intimidated into being a Crip, you go to prison for being a punk. (wonder who that provision was directed towards)

So now you have the two ingredients you need, you have bed space in these shiny new prisons, additionally, you have statutes on the books that allow you to basically throw a net over whole neighborhoods and basically everyone you catch will be suspected of something. Now for the interlude, the plan is not complete because there is a process that must be followed. Before you get from the city block to the cell block, there’s the minor inconvenience of finding them guilty.

Before I begin on this mechanism, let me state for the record that I know what I’m talking about. I’m those rare individuals who went to prison who was NOT a dummy. I did dumb shit, but I was smart. I say that without the slightest suggestion of hubris. I know what I know and that’s it. I know that I graduated with a overall gpa of 3.469 with a perfect 4.0 in my minor of counseling psychology. In addition to that, I also went to prison with a skill-set that guaranteed I would be just fine in the belly of the beast. I was a paralegal when I hit the gate. I already knew trial procedure, the rules of court, pleading, legal research and appeal procedure. That means that I went to prison with status. I wasn’t a golden gloves boxer, the most I ever benched was 265 and it damned near killed me. What I did possess was the ability to show you how to get out of prison. Because of that I had the undying loyalty of the worse of the worse, both white and black. I was just as comfortable talking with the leader of the largest black gangs, the largest latin gangs and the largest white supremacists. I was also good enough to do work for the prison guards. Baby momma won’t let you see the kids, come get this Petition for Order of Visitation. Need a divorce, come get this Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

Okay, Jalal you beating on your chest, you saying all this to say what? Its to say that I have read literally THOUSANDS of trial transcripts and discoveries. I know for a fact that what you see on CSI or Law and Order is BULLSHIT. The powers that be will have you believe that their over 90% conviction rate is the result of gumshoe detective work. In the movies the criminal is put into a room and after the clever detective outlines all the evidence that they have collected against the accused, he puts his head down and tells the police he did it and why. That’s not the way it works. That myth is perpetuated so that the criminal justice system can continue to use the tool that they have always used against black people, OUR OWN. In the course of those almost two decades of reading the pages and pages of transcripts and trial documents from those unfortunate souls that were languishing in the hell that is prison in America, one thing that struck me is just how many of these brothers were there because of the testimony of someone they loved or trusted implicitly.

Drops mic and walks from stage drippin’ blackness.

Read Part 3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/building.html

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=465

http://www2.davidson.edu/news/news_archives/archives99/9910_anderson.html

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime