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by Bill Thompson
Bill Thompson competed in college for Western Kentucky University (WKU) in extemp, debate, impromptu and other events during the early 1990’s. Mr. Thompson was WKU’s first national finalist and first champion in limited prep at a national tournament. Thompson started coaching high school extemp in 1993 and has coached extempers to four state championships and numerous state finals. In the last decade he has had extempers in numerous national elimination rounds and had a student finish in the top six at the MBA Round Robin. In his daily life he is a case manager at a teen shelter for homeless/runaway/abused youth in Louisville Kentucky. DMC and MI are topics that he deals with daily and is passionate about. Questions about this brief can be sent to mobilemrbill@gmail.com or feel free to approach him at a tournament to discuss these or other extemp issues.
Part I of this topic brief can be found here.
B. Causes of MI & DMC (How did we get to this point)
It is important to acknowledge that the most comprehensive work I have found on the topic of MI and DMC specifically, is Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. I recommend you buying the book, but for the purposes of filing this should make life much easier. Much of what follows will be sourced from Alexander’s book and referenced as TNJC.
It is not a stretch to say that laws in our country have never favored minorities and for the vast majority of our history laws have been aimed specifically at suppressing these groups. That said, there are many who wish to argue that much has been improved since the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. Even if some improvements have been made, there is still much work to be done in providing equal access to justice for all. In terms of DMC, perhaps no single issue has been a larger contributor to this unequal access than the War on Drugs (WOD).
1. The War on Drugs (WOD)
The War on Drugs is most commonly and accurately associated with Ronald Reagan. What most people are unaware of or have forgotten is the context in which the WOD came about. According to Alexander in TNJC,
“In October 1982, President Reagan officially announced his administration’s “War on Drugs”. At the time he declared this new war, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the country. This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and drug dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined “others” – the undeserving. (p. 49)”
What makes this particularly problematic according to Alexander is that, “as recently as the mid-1970s, the most well-respected criminologists were predicting that the prison system would soon fade away. Prison did not deter crime significantly, many experts concluded. Those who had meaningful economic and social opportunities were unlikely to commit crimes regardless of the penalty, while those who went to prison were far more likely to commit crimes again in the future.” A look at how this occurs can be found here. The article essentially seeks to answer the question, “If white American’s smoke marijuana more often than African Americans, why are African Americans FAR more like to be incarcerated for pot offenses?” Currently states like Colorado have chosen to pursue decriminalization of marijuana, which have not been without their own difficulties. Additionally Eric Holder has looked at changing the sentencing associated with drug offenses. In addition to Holder, the 8/13/13 Washington Post reports, “Sens. Dick Durbin, Pat Leahy, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul have all endorsed legislation to give federal judges more flexibility when sentencing non-violent offenders.” Holder backs the bill, too.
– The most serious charge against 51 percent of those inmates is a drug offense. Only four percent are in for robbery and only one percent are in for homicide.
– The most serious charge against 20 percent of state-prison inmates is a drug offense. That’s much lower than the 51 percent in federal prisons, though it’s still larger than any other single category of offense in state prisons.”
While these are potential solutions to DMC and MI caused specifically by the WOD, a final thought on this relationship can be found in TNJC:
“The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that’s why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.”
2. Problems with Gideon’s Army
Gideon v. Wainwright
A major contributing factor to the problem of mass incarceration and way it disproportionately affects poor and minority Americans is that the promise of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright has never been fully realized in ensuring that criminal defendants are assured effective assistance of legal counsel. In 1963 SCOTUS heard the case of Charles Gideon and the decision may have had a more profound impact on justice than potentially any other decision made in the 20th century. To hear the original oral arguments and learn more about the case click the following link. While the context of this case and what it achieved in holding that every criminal defendant is entitled to counsel, provided at state expense if the defendant is unable to afford one on his or her own, is important, what is equally important is what the Warren Court’s decision DIDN’T do. Specifically, it failed to tell states how a public defender should be provided or set standards to measure the effectiveness of PD provision in these states. TNJC illustrates this issue in the following examples,
“More than 40 years ago , in Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court ruled that poor people accused of serious crimes were entitled to counsel. Yet thousands of people are processed through America’s courts annually either with no lawyer at all or a lawyer who does not have the time, resources or, in some cases, the inclination to provide effective representation. Approximately 80% of criminal defendants are indigent and thus unable to hire a lawyer. Yet our nation’s public defender program is woefully inadequate. The most visible sign of the failed system is the astonishingly large caseloads public defenders routinely carry.
Examples of states reinforcing a criminal caste through underfunded PDs
“In Virginia, for example, fees paid to court appointed attorneys for representing someone charged with a felony that carries a sentence of less than 20 years are capped at $428.”
“In Wisconsin, more than 11,000 poor people go without representation every year because anyone who earns more than $3,000 per year is considered able to afford a lawyer.”
“In Lake Charles, Louisiana, the public defender office has only has only two investigators for the 2,500 new felony cases and 4,000 new misdemeanor cases each year.”
The recent documentary “Gideon’s Army” follows three public defenders in the south. Throughout the film a few things are made clear. PD’s working felony cases consider 125 open cases typical, if not a light load. Additionally, the fear of harsh sentences combined with overwhelming caseloads, leads to a lot of innocent people pleading guilty for fear of spending the rest of their lives in prison. As Alexander puts it in TNJC,
“Once arrested, one’s chances of ever being truly free of the system of control are slim, often to the vanishing point. Defendants are typically denied legal representation, pressured by the threat of a lengthy sentence into a plea bargain, and placed under formal control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole. Most Americans probably have no idea how common it is for people to be convicted without ever having the benefit of legal representation, or how many people plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because of fear of mandatory sentences.
Tens of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer, and those who do meet with a lawyer for a drug offense spend only a few minutes discussing their case and options before making a decision that will profoundly affect the rest of their lives.”
While it is undeniable that SCOTUS made the Gideon decision with the intention of improving poor people’s chances at acquiring justice, it can be argued that this has not occurred, or at least that it has been only of limited effectiveness when the attorneys provided are underpaid and facing the massive workloads brought about by the war on drugs and other criminal justice changes of the past 50 years. Certainly there are great public defenders in this nation and their efforts should be lauded, but the resources provided to them by states are laughable. As long as mandatory minimums, 3 strikes laws and other laws that take discretionary power from judges exist, there will always be innocent people who plead guilty out of fear. This brief doesn’t have the solution other than abolishing mandatory sentencing and providing more resources to PD offices around the country, but it is clear that something must be done. Start thinking now so you have more than 30 minutes to find that answer when this question comes up.
3. School to Prison Pipeline
While this might seem like a stretch, there is a clear argument to be made about the relationship between school failure and MI. Perhaps the clearest way to show this relationship is through the state of Arizona. “When the State of Arizona projects how many prison beds it will need, it factors in the number of kids who read well in fourth grade (Arizona Republic (9-15-2004). Evidence shows that children who do not read by third grade often fail to catch up and are more likely to drop out of school, take drugs, or go to prison. So many nonreaders wind up in jail that Arizona officials have found they can use the rate of illiteracy to help calculate future prison needs.” The fact that a state can predict its future need for prison beds based on 1st – 3rd grade reading performance is not only a clear impact for education speeches, but a real life reason why there is a real need for early childhood education initiatives. This issue is not just specific to Arizona, “Low literacy is strongly related to crime. 70% of prisoners fall into the lowest two levels of reading proficiency (National Institute for Literacy, 1998).”
Currently there are numerous education efforts around the country to help prevent young children from falling behind during these critical learning years. While I doubt any of you will ever draw a question specifically on the school to prison pipeline, it is highly likely that you will all draw early childhood education or another education question where this impact can be explored. Additionally, early life turmoil like poverty, foster care, abuse, and other issues that cause students to underperform during these years could be argued to significantly increase the likelihood of a child going to prison as an adult. Understanding the relationship between education and imprisonment allows you to give tangible impacts to education speeches and can help to distinguish your analysis in a tough round. Spending trade off between education and incarceration is explored in the following link.
C. Impacts of MI/DMC
1. Caste system
Undoubtedly there will be those who balk at the idea of a caste system in the US. I would at least like to present the argument as Alexander explains it in TNJC for your consideration. Essentially, it can be argued that from a person’s first labeling as a convicted felon, they have been placed in a caste. This label goes beyond them and whose impacts extend even to members of their families, especially their children. This is especially true when discussing minorities who have been convicted of crimes, often due to taking a plea for fear of a longer sentence. Those who argue against the existence of a caste system in terms of corrections point to mandatory minimums being “colorblind” or by arguing that race is no longer an issue in American society. Not only do statistics disprove these arguments, Alexander counters that colorblindness isn’t a worthy goal at all. She states,
“Far from being a worthy goal, however, colorblindness has proved catastrophic for African Americans. It is not an overstatement to say that the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States would not have been possible in the post-civil rights era if the nation had not fallen under the spell of a callous colorblindness. The seemingly innocent phrase, “I don’t care if he’s black…” perfectly captures the perversion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that we may, one day, be able to see beyond race and spiritually connect across racial lines. Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste. The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass incarceration is officially colorblind. It purports to see black and brown men not as black and brown, but simply as men— raceless men —who have failed miserably to play by the rules the rest of us follow quite naturally. The fact that so many black and brown men are rounded up for drug crimes that go largely ignored when committed by whites is unseen. Our collective colorblindness prevents us from seeing the basic fact. Our blindness also prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions that persist in society: the segregated unequal schools, the segregated, jobless ghettos, and the segregated public discourse—a public conversation that excludes the current pariah caste. Our commitment to colorblindness extends beyond individuals to institutions and social arrangements. We have become blind, not so much to race, but to the existence of racial caste in America.”
Beginning with Nixon’s initiatives to get tough on crime in order to win back the south for the GOP, it can be seen that DMC has become an increasing problem in this nation. The reasons are numerous and most are stated above (underfunded PD’s, educational achievement gaps, mandatory minimums, etc.). It is then rational to ask why nothing is done by the judicial branch to deal with DMC. Ironically, The Supreme Court helped to reinforce DMC in the McKlesky v. Kemp decision. Alexander explains in TNJC,
“SCOTUS ruled that racial bias in sentencing, even if shown through credible statistical evidence, could not be challenged under the 14th Amendment in the absence of CONCIOUS, discriminatory intent.” The ruling essentially established that “Racial bias would be tolerated – virtually to any degree- so long as no one admitted it.”
While labeling serves to build a caste for offenders, their arrests also have a profound impact on their family’s livelihoods and the future of their children. The statistics on children with incarcerated parents are staggering and can be found here. According to a March 2009 National Conference of State Legislatures “1.7 million children under 18 (2.3% of the US child population) have a parent incarcerated”. According to a statistic that has been put out by the Department of Justice for over a decade, children of incarcerated parents are 7 times more likely than their peers to be incarcerated as adults. What’s more there is an immediate financial impact. The 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics states that, “64% of mothers and 47% of fathers lived with their kids the month before imprisonment and 42% of mothers and 17% of fathers were sole providers for their children prior to prison.” Thus incarceration had an immediate and profound impact on the families of those who were incarcerated.
2. Prison costs to tax payers
The aforementioned August Washington Post article pointed to the cost of imprisonment, “The U.S. prison population is more than 2.4 million. That’s more than quadrupled since 1980. That means more than one out of every 100 American adults is behind bars. About 14 percent of the prison population is in federal prison — that’s the group Holder is talking about. The single largest driver in the increase in the federal prison population since 1998 is longer sentences for drug offenders. The average inmate in minimum-security federal prison costs $21,000 each year. The average inmate in maximum-security federal prisons costs $33,000 each year. Federal prison costs are expected to rise to 30 percent of the Department of Justice’s budget by 2020.
While the costs will continue to fluctuate these estimates have been fairly constant. Cross reference expenditures on prison against education expenditures in the pipeline section.
The Center for Law and Justice
- Over the past two decades, state spending on prisons grew six times faster than the spending of higher education
- From 1997 to 2007 the number of women in prison has increased by 832%
- Nearly $70 billion is spent annually on prisons, probation, parole and detention
Conclusion: There are many other areas of this topic that I could explore, but in the interest of time and attention span this is the length of what I will cover in this brief. I hope the links will prove helpful to each of you and I highly recommend the video links. Even if you never draw a question on this topic area I hope this brief has pushed you to think about this topic in a new way or to ask critical questions you hadn’t thought of before. To me that is the beauty of this event.
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