Page 2 The Skanner June 14, 2017
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Opinion
Criminal Justice Disparities Present Barriers to Re-entry
A
ustin, Ill., the commu-
nity where I live, in the
heart of the congressio-
nal district I represent,
includes the zip code with the
largest number of releases
from the Illinois Department
of Corrections; 90 percent of
the individuals released are
African American males.
When these (mostly) young
men are released from pris-
on, they find all of the social
and economic barriers they
faced before incarceration,
plus additional barriers to
jobs, housing, education, and
almost every aspect of daily
life. One in every 40 adults
is unable to vote because of a
current or prior felony con-
viction. For African Ameri-
cans, the rate is one in 13.
Over the past 50 years, our
penal system has become an
increasingly urgent issue
that has reached crisis pro-
portions, especially in the
African American communi-
ty. There were about 338,000
individuals in prison in 1970.
Today, that number is over
2,000,000. That number has
grown every decade over
the last half century without
regard for the falling crime
rate. The Federal Bureau of
Prisons appropriations in-
creased more than $7.1 billion
from FY1980 ($330 million) to
FY2016 ($7.479 billion)
Every year in the United
States, 641,000 people walk
Rep. Danny
K. Davis
Senator
(D-Ill)
out of prison gates, and, ev-
ery year, people will go to jail
over 11 million times. This is
called jail churn.
It happens because most of
the people who are jailed have
not been convicted.
Some will make bail with-
in a short time; some are too
“
I have fought
to reduce
disparities in
our criminal
justice system
poor and will stay in jail until
their trial. Some will be con-
victed of misdemeanors and
will receive sentences of un-
der a year.
African Americans are in-
carcerated at nearly six times
the rate of Whites and while
they make up 13 percent of
the U.S. population, they are
40 percent of the prison pop-
ulation. In some states that
rate was 10 times or more.
Research from numerous
scholars and organizations
has been instrumental in de-
veloping a growing biparti-
san consensus on the forces
driving this great disparity
and the additional costs this
disparity places on the Af-
rican American community
and society in general.
A recent report by The Sen-
tencing Project notes:
Proposed explanations for
disparities range from vari-
ations in offending based on
race to biased decision-making
in the criminal justice system,
and also include a range of in-
dividual level factors such as
poverty, education outcomes,
unemployment history, and
criminal history.
During my years in the Con-
gress, I have fought to reduce
disparities in our criminal
justice system.
I believe my “Second Chance
Act” and other initiatives,
coupled with the fiscal real-
ities that these disparities
have imposed on the states
and federal government, have
helped to create a space for bi-
partisan debate and consen-
sus about how best to reduce
these disparities.
I believe that debate and
consensus laid the ground-
work for some gains we saw
during the Obama presiden-
cy. The Sentencing Project
notes:
While states and the federal
government have modestly re-
duced their prison populations
in recent years, incarceration
trends continue to vary sig-
nificantly across jurisdictions.
Overall, the number of people
held in state and federal pris-
ons has declined by 4.9% since
reaching its peak in 2009.
Sixteen states have achieved
double-digit rates of decline
and the federal system has
downsized at almost twice the
national rate. Twelve states
have continued to expand
their prison populations even
though most have shared in the
nationwide crime drop. States
with the most substantial pris-
on population reductions have
often outpaced the nationwide
crime drop.
These incremental steps
toward equal justice are now
being reversed by our new
administration.
Friday’s policy change ef-
fectively rescinds Obama-era
guidelines for federal prose-
cutors that were designed to
curtail the harshest sentences
for defendants charged with
low-level drug offenses.
The previous memo, first
promulgated by then-Attor-
ney General Eric Holder in
2013, reserved the most se-
vere options in the federal
sentencing guidelines for “se-
rious, high-level, or violent
drug traffickers” instead of
defendants charged with low-
er-level offenses.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
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Bill Maher Betrayed Black Intellectuals
W
hen considering the
implications of Bill
Maher’s latest an-
tics, it is important
to level set. Maher has, over
the years, become the trust-
ed media host for Black left-
wing intellectuals. His roster
of guests includes a Who’s
Who of the Black intelligen-
tsia; luminaries from old stal-
wart Cornel West to MSNBC
host Joy Reid and others have
been regular guests over the
years. So, given this history
it would seem surprising that
Maher would so readily toss
his friends under the bus by
his casual on-air use of the
n-word.
But if one really considers
Bill Maher and his history,
a more complicated story
emerges.
Maher is a liberal prognosti-
cator who exhibits a pretense
of tolerance and open-mind-
edness — thereby giving him
comedic license to offend.
Maher’s latest missive —
responding to Senator Ben
Sasses’ exhortation to engage
in grass roots ‘field’ politi-
cal organizing in Nebraska
with the dismissive remark,
‘Senator, I’m a house n***er,’
— is not surprising. But the
remark was so out of context
that it could not have been
anything other than a strate-
gically-timed joke — one that
unfortunately missed the
Armstrong
Williams
NNPA
Columnist
mark.
Read in the context of Ma-
her’s irreverent stance on
many issues — it seems that
the use of the n-word was
meant to remind Black liberal
“
slave on the media plantation.
That Maher chose to use
the n-word on his ‘scripted’
talk show (deceptively named
‘Real Time’) was undoubtedly
a calculated act.
This was probably not the
first time Maher has used the
‘n-word’ in the presence of Af-
rican Americans — he prob-
ably believes that since he
allows many of them to come
on to his show and debate,
and that he sticks up for them
against the various conserva-
That Maher chose to use the
n-word on his ‘scripted’ talk show
(deceptively named ‘Real Time’)
was undoubtedly a calculated act
intellectuals that they are the
wholly-owned property of the
liberal elite.
It was an open admission
of something conservatives
have noted all along: Black
intellectuals do not have an
actual ownership stake of the
liberal establishment, but in
fact serve at the pleasure and
whim of the liberal wing of
the Democratic Party.
Whether Maher, a 61 year-
old White guy who has been
employed by HBO for the past
14 years, actually considers
himself a ‘house negro’ is not
what’s significant here.
He, in fact, may identify his
job with that of a well-kept
tive ‘straw boogeymen’ whom
he constructs for dramatic ef-
fect, he therefore has earned
license to use the term.
Maher didn’t ask any Black
person for such license of
course, yet he assumed it, in
the storied tradition of liber-
al arrogance and privilege of
which he is a proud descen-
dant.
It goes without saying
that the n-word is a vulgar,
disgusting term, with a his-
tory fraught with pain. As
someone who grew up in the
deep South at a time when
many parents and relatives
were openly and custom-
arily called the ‘n-word’ by
Whites, they know first-hand
how hurtful it is. The word
is an obscene smear created
for the specific purpose of
putting Black people in their
place — relegating them to
second-class citizenship, and
alerting the intended victim
that he is less than human. I
have personally never used
the term (nor any form of ob-
scenity), and regard it as one
of the most abhorrent terms
in the English language. I
don’t like it when Black enter-
tainers use it, and I certainly
don’t like it when Whites use
it either — no matter what
their so-called liberal bona
fides. I believe the word has
no place in public discourse,
much less in the enlightened
sphere of intellectual debate.
Curiously, the reaction
among Black intellectuals to
Bill Maher’s verbal attack has
been typically passive. They
seem to have taken it on the
chin and let him off the hook.
No one has seriously demand-
ed Maher’s resignation from
HBO, and there has been no
organized boycott of his spon-
sors at the network. Can you
imagine the reaction if a con-
servative host on Fox News
or any conservative media
channel was caught using the
n-word?
Read the rest of this commentary at
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