Beneath
the thunder of the mighty cataclysms unleashed by the Bush Administration
– the war crime in Iraq, the global torture gulag, the epic
corruption, the gutting of the Constitution, the open embrace of
presidential tyranny – a quieter degradation of American society
has continued apace. And this slow descent into barbarism didn’t
begin with George W. Bush – although his illicit regime certainly
represents the apotheosis of the dark forces driving the decay.
With the world’s
attention understandably diverted by the latest scandals and shameless
posturings of the Bush Faction – domestic spying, bribes
and hookers at the CIA, military units roaring
down to the border to scare unarmed poor people looking for
work – few noticed a small story that cast a harsh, penetrating
light on the corrosion of the national character.
Earlier this
month, the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College
London released its annual
World Prison Population List. And there, standing proudly at
the head of the line, towering far above all others, is that shining
city on the hill, the United States of America. But strangely enough,
the Bush gang and its many media sycophants failed to celebrate
– or even note – yet another instance where a triumphant
America leads the world. Where are the cheering hordes shouting
"USA! USA!" at the news that the land of the free imprisons
more people than any other country in the world – both in raw
numbers and as a percentage of its population?
Yes, the world’s
greatest democracy now has more than two million of its citizens
locked up in iron cages: an incarceration rate of 714 per 100,000
of the national population, the Centre reports. The only countries
within shouting distance are such bastions of penological enlightenment
as China (1.55 million prisoners, plus some unsorted "administrative
detainees"), Russia (a wimpy 763,000) and Brazil (330,000),
whose exemplary prison management has been on such prominent display
this week.
Inside the
Homeland, the state of Texas sets the pace, as you might imagine.
During George
W. Bush’s tenure there as governor in the 1990s, Texas had the
fastest growing prison population in the country, almost doubling
the national rate, as the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
reports. In fact, by the time Dubya was translated to glory by Daddy’s
buddies on the Supreme Court, one out of every 20 adult Texans were
"either in prison, jail, on probation or parole," the
CJCJ notes; a level of "judicial control" that reached
to one in three for African-American males. George also killed more
convicts than any other governor in modern U.S. history as well
– a nice warm-up for the valorous feats of mass slaughter yet
to come.
But although
the U.S. prison population has soared to record-breaking heights
during George W. Bush’s presidency, America’s status as the most
punitive nation on earth is by no means solely his doing. Bush is
merely standing on the shoulders of giants – such as, say,
Bill Clinton, who
once created 50 brand-new federal offenses in a single draconian
measure, and expanded the federal death penalty to 60 new offenses
during his term. In fact, like the great cathedrals of old, the
building of Fortress America has been the work of decades, with
an entire society yoked to the common task. At each step, the promulgation
of ever-more draconian punishments for ever-lesser offenses, and
the criminalization of ever-broader swathes of ordinary human behavior,
have been greeted with hosannahs from a public and press who seem
to be insatiable gluttons for punishment – someone else’s punishment,
that is, and preferably someone of dusky hue.
The main engine
of this mass incarceration has been the 35-year "war
on drugs": a spurious battle against an abstract noun that
provides an endless fount of profits, payoffs and power for the
politically connected while only worsening the problem it purports
to address – just like the "war on terror." The "war
on drugs" has in fact been the most effective assault on an
underclass since Stalin’s campaign against the kulaks.
It was launched
by Richard Nixon, after urban unrest had shaken major American cities
during those famous "long,
hot summers" of the Sixties. Yet even as the crackdowns
began, America’s inner cities were being flooded with heroin, much
of it originating in Southeast Asia, where the CIA and its hired
warlords ran well-funded black ops in and around Vietnam. At home,
criminal gangs reaped staggering riches from the criminalization
of the natural, if often unhealthy, human craving for intoxication.
Ronald Reagan upped the ante in the 1980s, with a rash of "mandatory
sentencing" laws that can put even first-time, small-time offenders
away for years. His term also saw a new flood – crack cocaine –
devastating the inner cities, even
as his covert operators used drug money to fund the terrorist
Contra army in Nicaragua and run illegal weapons to Iran, while
the downtown druglords grew more powerful. The American underclass
was caught in a classic pincer movement, attacked by both the state
and the gangs. There were no more "long, hot summers"
of protest against injustice; there was simply the struggle to survive.
Under Reagan,
Bush I and Clinton, the feverish privatization of the prison system
added a new impetus for wholesale, long-term detention. Politically-wired
corporations need to keep those profit-making cells filled, and
the politicians they grease are happy to oblige with "tougher"
sentences and new crimes to prosecute. Now Bush Junior is readying
another front in the war on the underclass, promising this week
to build 4,000 new cells for immigrant detainees this year alone
– having prudently handed Halliburton a $385 million "contingency"
contract back in February to build, lo and behold, "immigrant
detention centers" should the need for them arise, the NY
Times reports.
Like the war
on drugs, the equally ill-conceived war on immigrants will be directed
at the poorest and most vulnerable, not the "coyote" gangs
who profit from this human trafficking – and certainly not
the American businesses and wealthy Homelanders who love the dirt-cheap
labor of the illegals. Those for-profit prisons will soon be filled
to bursting with this new harvest.
A nation’s
true values can be measured in how it treats the poor, the weak,
the damaged, the unconnected. For more than 30 years, the answer
of the American power structure has been clear: you lock them up,
you shut them up, you grind them down – and make big bucks
in the process.
A version
of this column appeared in the May 19th edition of The Moscow
Times.
May
23, 2006
Chris
Floyd, Global Eye columnist for the Moscow Times, is the
author of Empire
Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.
