The recent report and press conference of the NAACP in regard to the increase in spending on prisons and the continuous decline in school budgets; especially in the communities of color, has confirmed what many community leaders and activists throughout the nation have said for decades. Many state governments plan to provide billions in tax relief to the wealthy, and at the same time laying the foundation for the increase in percentage of poor.
Education is not only a human need, it is also a human right. Every child has a human right to receive a well- funded education. This makes our children assets to our community and to our nation. Many school officials will say (off the record) that school administrators are pushing our youth through high school, allowing graduating with low literacy skills rather than holding them an extra year or two because of the cost to the school system’s budget.
Strong literacy skills are closely linked to the probability of having a successful career, decent earnings, and access to training opportunities. Individuals with weak literacy skills are more likely to be unemployed, thus they rather pursue illegal actives to make a living and feed their families.
The percent of students earning a standard diploma in 4 years shifted from 69.2% in 2006 to 68.8% in 2007, according to an analysis of the most recent data in “Diplomas Count 2010.” This indicates that there were 11,000 fewer graduates in 2007 than in 2006, according to the report by Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center, a nonprofit in Bethesda, Maryland.
Nationally, the graduation rate for white students was 78%, compared with 72% for Asian students, 55% for African-American students, and 53% for Hispanic students.
The gender gap in graduation rates is particularly large for minority students. Nationally, about 5 percentage points fewer white male students and 3 percentage points fewer Asian male students graduate than their respective female students. While 59% of African-American females graduated, only 48% of African-American males earned a diploma (a difference of 11 percentage points).
As a National Law Enforcement organization, we do recognize that pockets of communities that have high dropout rates also have a low literate population that results in a decrease in wages, and increase in crime that is directly correlated to an increase in the rates of incarceration. This is especially evident in our communities of color.
Prisons are Big Business
For the last decade, the United States has the highest
rate of incarceration in the world. As of year end 2008 (the most recent year for
which statistics are available), the U.S. incarceration rate was 754 jail and
prison inmates
per 100,000 population, five to ten times higher than that of Canada and most
of the industrialized democracies of Western Europe.
Many states are increasing budgets for incarceration that
goes directly to private prison companies such as Correction Corp of America. Many states are now
leasing beds from privatized correctional facilities. Officials that are in favor of this
deal will claim that it is economical than state run institutions, but when you look closer you
will see that it is business as
usual
with high powered
lobbyists and the hand of “Corporate America”.
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), based in
Nashville, Tennessee, and the GEO Group, a global corporation based in Boca Raton, Florida are the nation’s two
largest prison companies. They run
highly integrated operations to design, build, finance, and operate prisons.
GEO rakes in $1.17 billion in annual revenue, and CCA tops that at $1.69 billion.
Together these companies are principal moving forces in the behind-the-scenes
organization of the current wave of anti- immigrant legislative efforts, which,
if successful,
would dramatically increase the number of immigrant prisoners in over 20 states.
GEO CEO, George Zoley, was a Bush “Pioneer” who bundled
more than $100,000 in contributions
for the Bush-Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004. GEO hired the services of
lobbyists who had held influential positions in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
Bureau of Prisons, Office of the Attorney General, and the office of then- Senate Majority
Leader, George Mitchell, to lobby their former employers and Congress. Throughout 2005 and
leading up to the largest immigration raid in U.S. history in December 2006, GEO and
CCA spent a combined total of over $6 million on lobbying efforts.
The lobbying efforts paid off for both companies, in huge
revenue increases from government contracts to incarcerate immigrants. From 2005 through 2009,
for every dollar that GEO spent lobbying the government, the company received a $662
return in taxpayer-funded contracts, for a total of $996.7 million. CCA
received a $34
return in taxpayer-funded contracts for every dollar spent on lobbying the
federal government, for a total of $330.4 million. In addition, both companies
increased revenues over the same period from detention facility contracts with a number of
states.
GEO and CCA are not the only
companies that have made millions of dollars. Companies like Aramark. In some states, Aramark has
earned an estimated $58-million in 1 year, providing meals at a cost of $2.32
per inmate each
day. None of these companies have given back to any of the communities that are
infected with high crime, low unemployment, and low graduation rates. Why? Because this is the cattle
they need to slaughter for profit.
As a Correction Officer who
has worked for 21 years in the state of New York, I have watched almost two generations of Black men grow
up within the prison system. The institution of “Corrections” has failed to “correct” young men and
women throughout
the United States.
Confronting Confinement, a June 2006 U.S. prison
study by the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, reports than on any
given day more than 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States, and that over
the course of a year, 13.5 million spend time in prison or jail.
African Americans are
imprisoned at a rate roughly seven times higher than whites, and Hispanics at a
rate three
times higher than whites. Within 3 years of their release, 67% of former
prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated, a recidivism rate that calls into
question the effectiveness of America's corrections system, which costs taxpayers $60
billion a year
Michelle Alexander, law
professor at Ohio State and author of her year – old bestseller, The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is quoted saying, “that there are more African American men
are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the
Civil War began.”
In
closing, as a national law enforcement organization, we have met with community
leaders, politicians, clergy, and even representatives of the United States government. To
truly address changes in policy in education, high incarceration, racial profiling, police
misconduct and economic development in the communities of color; politicians, especially
Black politicians have been AWOL on the causes and now we are left to fight the effect.
Damon K. Jones
Blacks In Law Enforcement of America
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