[Magdalen] Yet another case of race abuse?

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Some statistics to consider:

*Incarceration Trends in America*

   - From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America
   quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people
   - Today, the US is 5% of the World population and has 25% of world
   prisoners.
   - Combining the number of people in prison and jail with those under
   parole or probation supervision, 1 in ever y 31 adults, or 3.2 percent of
   the population is under some form of correctional control

*Racial Disparities in Incarceration*

   - African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3
   million incarcerated population
   - African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of
   whites

from
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3 at ckt.net> wrote:

> On 10/1/15 8:50 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford wrote:
>
>> The number of Blacks in prison is far and away greater than their actual
>> behavior.  It's a matter of give the white boy a pass and when the Black
>> kid comes before the bar, throw the damn key away.
>>
>> When I taught in prison, it was like it was a Black prison.  I could be
>> the
>> only white face in sight, excepting, of course all the white guards (they
>> hate being called guards.  They prefer to be called correction officers.)
>>
>
> That's odd.  The people who go to jail from here are almost all white, or
> maybe Latino.  We're doing race in this thread, so I should mention that
> the "whites" here are frequently part Indian, but they usually don't _look_
> Indian at all, unlike the Latinos.  I see the pictures in the papers.  They
> go for everything from drugs (meth, usually, around here, lots of kitchens,
> though we have some grass kicking around too), burglary, drunk driving with
> resulting death, domestic violence, on up to murder.  We do get some nasty
> stuff happening, like the boy who went to prison last summer (white).  He
> got badly beaten up at a beer party, by a somewhat older young man, went
> home and got his gun, went back to the party, and shot him.  The picture in
> the paper at the kid's arrest (I think he's 19-20) showed the battered
> condition of his face from the beating.  I got the impression from the
> newspaper stories that it was one of those post-adolescent macho pride
> things.  Admittedly, we don't have a high proportion of black people, but
> not one of my friend Joyce's dozen or so kids (black) have ever been in
> prison (that I know of).  I don't know a black person in this county (of
> course, I don't know everyone in the county) who has been in jail.
>
>
>
> --
> Sibyl Smirl
> I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
> mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net
>