Abuses Of The Criminal Justice System
Racism, Classism and Political Persecution
Within the American legal system, not only is implementation of the law biased, unfair and reflective of individual prejudices, the laws themselves are rooted in class, race, political and gender biases. And thus, in critiquing the surface problem of "crime" we must at the same time examine its institutional roots and its very definition.
What is deemed "criminal" in our society? Essentially poverty has been criminalized, Blackness has been criminalized and political radicalism has been criminalized.
Ordinances against loitering and vagrancy are a reflection of the criminalization of poverty. The laws shove homeless people from park bench to park bench, and hovel to hovel so as not to be too unsightly for too long in one spot, especially in the "nicer parts of town."
Blackness, as well as poverty, has been criminalized in this society. Murder, theft, rape, and assaults are all devastating social problems affecting Black communities in particular. However, such acts are not always deemed "crimes," depending on how, where and by whom they are committed. In identifying the structural features of racism within the judicial, law enforcement and penal systems of this country, we must inescapably look not only at the personnel within these institutions - the bad attitudes and corruption among cops, judges and prison guards - but at the rules of the game itself.
A Black person is ten times more likely to be a suspect in a criminal case and more likely to receive a jail term or the death penalty than a white person. The erroneous but pervasive stereotype of all young Black men as criminals has led to widespread police harassment and police brutality targeting Black and Latino youth. Racist vigilante violence is burgeoning, often justified under the guise of fighting "Black crime" such as in the Howard Beach and Bernard Goetz cases in New York City. As the Black Panther Party suggested nearly two decades ago, "the racism in the criminal justice system in the U.S. has placed the entire Black community under a permanent state of arrest."
In 1988 there are more young Black men in America's penal institutions and reformatories than in colleges and universities. In communities where guns and drugs are made more accessible than jobs and scholarships, the problem of crime is not too surprising. Most victims of violent crime are themselves people of color. The startling rate of death by homicide for Black males under 45 years old is 125.2 per 100,000 in contrast to 14.2 per 100,000 for white males in the same age group.
Most of the solutions being advocated today promise to exacerbate rather than seriously address the social problems facing Black and Latino communities. In most major cities across the country, while alarming cutbacks in social services have been made over the past decade, increased funding continues for cops and jails. In Michigan, while school systems like Detroit are grossly underfunded, millions of dollars have been allocated, not to train and educate, but to lock up more young people in regimented "youth work camps."
Another distinct feature of the American justice system is its criminalization of political radicalism. There have been, of course, periods of intense political repression such as the reign of terror under Senator McCarthy's House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1950's. HUAC's Cold War paranoia about "a commie under every bed" not only criminalized political radicalism, but liberalism as well, targeting and harassing activists, artists and intellectuals who were critical of any aspect of U.S. policy.
The unscrupulous meddling of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover is yet another example of the criminalization of political activism. In particular, the FBI's Counter Intelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, was an important force in disrupting and dividing the progressive movements of the 1960's. As sociologist Manning Marable writes: "... the state developed an extraordinarily powerful and illegal apparatus- the COINTELPRO... Begun in 1956... (it) mushroomed into a wide ranging series of assaults against progressive and Black nationalist leaders and organizations. In its 15 year history of operations the FBI sent anonymous mailings to group members criticizing a leader or an allied group..., encouraging hostility up to and including gang warfare between rival groups; (and) ordered federal, state, or local authorities to arrest, audit, raid, inspect or deport Black activists."
In addition to these rather dramatic forms of state repression, other surveillance and counter-intelligence programs are routinely implemented by local and federal agencies, such as the case recently exposed by the Center for Constitutional Rights of infiltration and spying upon Central American solidarity groups. Despite the rhetoric of political freedom, to seriously ally oneself with the Left in this country is to risk a run-in with the criminal justice system.
To simply equate crime with immorality and American law with universal justice is to gloss over the glaring contradictions within our legal system. It is a system which would put an unemployed mother in jail for stealing food for her children and give awards to military officers for the murder of innocent civilians in other parts of the world.