Portland observer., March 16, 1978, Page 3, Image 3

Portland Observer Thursday, March 16. 197«
Behind, the wall
Larry B a ie r «35021,
O.S.P. (o rre .w n d e n l
Phil
Aaet.
«39520
As a former federal judge stated in F.
le e Bailey's highly publicized book, “On
the Defense Side," we no longer try cases
in our courts of law. “W e negotiate
them.” Well, the same can be stated
about Oregon's Criminal M etric System,
“W e no longer consider an individual's
attitude or future progress by his human
ability to change - we computerize his
future by his past."
After viewing both ‘T o w n Hall” spe
cials on “Prison” and “Victims," this
Correspondent noticed that some very
important areas were neglected that are
too important to go unsaid or unwritten.
Question?...Why were there only two
Black inmates from an audience of fifty
individuals on the taping of “Inside the
Walls?” Also there were no Indians or
Mexican Americans.
Black inmates make up over sixteen
percent of the Oregon’s prison population
and that percentage is rising, yet the
Blacks in the entire State's population are
a mere one percent. In fact the Oregon
Department of Correction holds the ho­
norary claim in having the state’s second
largest population of concentrated Black
faces. The first being Portland.
Question?...There was not one Black
victim on “Victims of Crime", nor Indian
On Sunday. March 5th, “Town Hall" on
Channel 2 and hooted by Jerry Pratt,
presented "Victims of Crimes,” or was it
“The Harold Haas and Ira Blalock Spe
cial?" That was the question asked by
many of the inmates who sat watching at
O.S.P. Some were the same men who had
but just a few weeks prior found tnem
selves being nsed in order to give their
viewpoints and comments to the “Town
Hall" taping called “Inside Prison Walls.”
Used...is the proper word, not only
were these inmates never given the
opportunity to assemble themselves, in
order to coordinate their subjects, so
they could represent a wider cross-sec
tion of inmates within the prison, but also
more in-depth and constructive answers
to Jerry Pratt's questions. I t is felt
throughout this prison that the 75.000
viewers who watched “Inside Prison
Walls" were cheated.
Many of the inmates who did appear on
‘T ow n Hall" now say they would have
never exposed themselves before M r.
Pratt's cameras if they had known they
were going to be the “subjects of exploi­
tation." Some felt they were used by the
“Powers That Be" - the Parole Board,
Multnomah District Attorney’s Office,
and Courts - to justify the newly
implemented "Metric System."
A M U S IC A L SCORE
1 seem to be loosing it
Perception of time
Like counting notes
On endless stanzas
five bells in three-quarter time
Two shower overtures
Hard-rock lullabies
Two sheets in every beat
Three frames of meals.
Tall Tsife, Talk,Talk, Tdk Tall,T«li Tall T&Ut
{äZA 6Z1 iA T a il Tall,
f a l l j A Wfe . T ^ k l k j a l k j ^ T a l k T a l k
Juliu» D. Snowden «38013,
Poetry Editor
or Mexican American. Does this mean
minority races commit crimes only
against whites in Oregon? Or is the issue
of racism too “Hot" to deal with in the
eyes of the general public? Doesn't t ie
Multnomah Criminal Court docket show
that over one half of the victims are
minorities?
Since many of Oregon's Human Re
source agencies and courts will not
address themselves to such topics or
subjects, the voices of concern have
grown silent, except for a group of
individual Black people who will seek to
combine their efforts to attract the
attention of M r. Benjamin Hooks, Presi
dent of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. He and
his national executive committee have
been invited to O.S.P. prior to the
N A A C P National Convention being held
in Portland on July 3rd through the 7th,
so that these questions and issues won't
be swept under the rug.
The group they meet will not be made
up of Black inmates alone, but also Black
guards. Black counselors, Black mini­
sters, and community people. Hooks has
‘ been invited to attend a half-day w ork­
shop dealing with Black felons and
victims in Oregon. The inmate group has
also w ritten a letter to Governor Robert
Straub, who is on the N A A C P ’s “Blue
Ribbon” Committee, requesting he also
support such an invitation to M r. Hooks.
There comes a time when Black people
have to deal with Black people in order to
solve Black problems.
Since it is also a true fact that Oregon’s
local N A A C P branches are powerless to
But the hardest is
Constant repetition of this melody
Broken metranomes
Trying to keep tempo
Exhausted arrangements
finding no key in which to rest.
Amongst all these twisted strains
flat as a deadness
Sharp as a scalpel
That I can see and hear
And hum along with
Everywhere abounding inside
The no rhyme or reason
O f this twenty-four symphony.
by A .E . «38176
T O M B S TO N E T E R R IT O R Y
The young
reactionary souls
pivoted,
down the streets of Tombstone T errito ry,
with boothill mentalities.
deal with the rising Black press popula
tion problem, it is hopeful that M r. Hooks
and his committee might offer some
suggestions and assistance, not only to
the local branches, but to the Department
of Correction as well.
The surprising thing is this group will
not be dealing with what goes on within
the walls of this prison. The damage
there has already been done. The inmates
feel their efforts will serve a more
valuable purpose in subjects such as,
“What can be done by the Black commu­
nity to keep Black men and women from
returning to prison?" "W hat goals must
Blacks achieve in prison so they may be
accepted back in the Black community?”
“Restoration being provided to Black
victims.” “How to deal with the fact that
83.1% of the Black people convicted in
Oregon last year never went to trial for
fear of white juries and white attorneys
not properly representing them and so
plea bargaining th eir rights away.”
Exploitation of Blacks in Oregon can
come in many forms. Let us hope this
avenue, “Courts and Prison," isn’t anoth­
er manner. Once we deal with the truth,
then we can deal with the problem and
work toward a solution. Those answers
will not be found in any metric or
computer system; the factors are too
human.
I f the National N A A C P is able to
provide us with valuable assistance as
they have done in many other states,
then let this be a special invitation for M r.
Blalock, M r. Haas and M r. P ra tt to sit in
our Black audience - since we were not in
theirs. >
Talk Talk,Tok.,Taikj^,Taik,ra£k,TaikTa/k,
Talk/folk Talk,T^,Talk, T^kTalk,
k lk
Talk,Talk, T ä Z l^ a lk .T ä il.T ^ T A ^ T -ll
Taik,Taik,Taik,Toik.Taik rnkTnk,Ti/k,Tilk,
Talk, Talk, Talk,Talk,Talk, T a lk jn k W k ,
TaZkTatl^aZlTalk.T^TalkJa^ldU.TdZk,
Talk,Talk,Talk,Talk,Talk,Talk,Talk^älk~hlk
Tjk,TalkJalk,Talk,Talk,TalkTalkTalk, Talk,
Talk Talk,Talk, Talk.Talk,Talk TtdkTilkTdk
TotJk,Talk,Talk,Talk,Tajik TdkTilkTali,Talk,
ralkTdkTnk,TaJ^,TdkTalk,TakiTalk,TaJk,
Talk,Talk;Tali;
Talk,Talk,Talk,Talk,Talk TalkTalk, Talk,
Talk TalkTalk.
-Talk,
-TtJk
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In this nation of Sodom strolled dope fiends,
cowboys, sluts and whores while a saloon door
swings and one more bites the dust as the smoke
from a 28” syringe settles, the slow assassination
of a troubled people...
In Tombstone, and the struggle continues, while death
flaunts itself in the streets, surrounded in sorrow.
Wake up people, turn off the t.v. another nightmare
in Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco and Portland
becomes the new Tombstone Territo ry, or mixed between
whorehouses on one corner and religion on another.
He’d make a cocktail - a bloody M ary...
And the children
they pivot down the alleys, in the streets with hate
in their hearts and boothill mentalities to test their
mettle on the streets of...Tombetone T errito ry.
Vernon Woodrow Broadnax
Juvenile crime
(Continued from Page 1 Column 6)
the elderly.
In 1975, men aged sixteen to nineteen
nationwide were victimized by robbery at
a rate three times that of men aged 3549.
They suffered an assault rate three and
a half times that for 35 to-49-year-olds,
and an astonishing eighteen times the
assault rate for men over 65.
A 16-to-19-year-old woman is twice as
likely to be raped as a 25-to-34 year old. A
boy aged 12-15 in San Francisco is more
than three times as likely to be assaulted
or robbed as a man aged 50-64, and, if he
is white, six times as likely as a white
man over 66.
In a recent study of crime patterns in a
Philadelphia ghetto. University of Pen
nsylvania criminologist I Leonard Savita
found that 46 percent of Black teenagers
interviewed had been robbed, assaulted
or extorted in the course of a single year,
and 60 percent had over two years.
These researchers also found that,
confounding popular beliefs, juvenile cri­
minals were as liable to be crime victims
as law abiding youth; between a third
and two-fifths of both delinquents and
nondelinquents had been robbed in one
year.
The same study turned up evidence
that, for inner-city youth, belonging to a
fighting gang may reduce the danger of
criminal victimization.
Fighting gang
members were found to suffer fewer
robberies, assaults and extortions, to be
less fearful of their neighborhoods, and to
♦
be no more seriously involved in criminal
acts than their peers.
Another common belief regarding ur­
ban crime in general - that it will
decrease as a result of a predicted decline
in the youth population - is also, unfor­
tunately. apt to be wrong, since adults
account for most of our urban violence
Moreover, some experts doubt the
contention that the numbers of crime
prone youth will decrease over the next
20 years.
Harvard criminologist W alter M iller,
for example, has calculated that the part
of the youth population most “at risk” in
terms of violent crime - urban minority
youth - is on the increase in major
American cities. In Los Angeles, M iller
predicts, that group will rise by 16
percent between 1970 and 1980. Similar
calculations by Franklin Zimring of the
University of Chicago Law School sug
gest that the minority youth population
in big cities will increase from 12 20
percent of the total urban population
from 1970 to 1990.
lElUott Currie, form erly a .»rofeeoor ef
sociology and criminoiegy at Yale and the
University ef California Berkeley, served
as assistant director of a task force of the
government's national commission on the
cause and >revention ef violence. He new
monitors nibhc ;ieUcy en criminal justice
for P N 8 ’ ‘
‘
force. | “
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