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July 4, 2007

Prison abolition and Paris Hilton

Posted by Jeremy Bearer-Friend at 12:01AM

 

You'd think the anti-prison activists would be cheering. Never in the history of California's prison expansion has there been such undivided media attention on the corruption of California courts, cops and jails. For 24-hours-a-day, for over 23 days, every local TV station, online news source or print paper was reporting on the inconsistent, illegal and incompetent practices of the LA County jail system. All thanks to one Paris Hilton.

The story they told was a simple one: rich, white people are treated differently by California law enforcement than the rest of us. And at a time when California is spending more money on prisons and jails than ever before, when more women and people of color are locked up than ever before in US history, this story couldn't be more timely.

Most readers of Wiretap are familiar with this gruesome state of affairs. The prison industrial complex is present in our everyday lives, at the root of so many of the problems we spend our lives fighting against. But it's not a story we expect to find running 24-7 on CNN.

So why wasn't this a media justice victory? Where were the voices of anti-prison activists?

Sadly, another shining opportunity to talk about race and criminal injustice passed us by. The conversation instead deteriorated into a rabid tough-on-crime frenzy, with newscasters presuming audiences want bigger jails full of more and more non-violent offenders.

In a bizarre reaction to the obvious corruption of the LA County Jail system, most commentators called for an expansion of the reach of the jail, rather than questioning the jail to begin with.

If the audience for these broadcasts knows the jail is corrupt, and if they all agree that they've seen this corruption play out over and over again on TV loops across the world, why are they demanding that we give more credence and authority to this corrupt system? Why is there any trust in these jails at all?

Before the next celebrity rainstorm drowns out any other news story, we have an opportunity to write about the real problem of imprisonment in California.

The real scandal here is that women of color are the fastest growing population of incarcerated people in the US, yet this story is never told or reported on. The current media frenzy over Paris demonstrates only the apartheid state we currently live under, with a media that is absolutely uninterested in reporting on the mass imprisonment of people of color.

Decarceration has been a central goal of anti-prison work in California. That Paris had the opportunity to remain in contact with her community and recover from her substance abuse amongst her family is an opportunity that all addicts should be able to enjoy.

The reaction to her story is not to lock up everyone for longer and prevent addicts from accessing treatment. The solution is to shut down system that has devastated communities of color.

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WE WERE HERE, THE NEWS REPORTERS WEREN'T

Posted by: charli777 on Jul 4, 2007 6:04 AM

I am a prison reform activist (www.grandmothersofthelight.org) and I can assure you that all of us agree with you that Paris Hilton was a golden opportunity to be heard, except the news people didn't want to hear from us unless we had a hot gossip tip. Believe me, I tried. I even wrote Paris Hilton in jail in the slim vain hope she might actually give a flying fig about jail conditions (she would have died in prison if she thought jail was bad).

All that race stuff aside (because we are all descended from one common ancestor, that has been proven) the important thing is that HUMAN BEINGS are being locked up in a runaway industrial prison complex that executes it's wounded and warehouses it's sick. California is truly the "golden gulag" and until the powers that be include people who "get it" and stop adding to and expanding the problem we will never see an end to the madness.

It is not about racial issues, profiling, ethnicity, cultural differences...no my dear, it is far more simple than that, far more basic than that........it is about a 2 tiered system that only cares about ONE common denominator.............MONEY. You can be purple with green hair and tentacles as long as you have money and you can thereby escape the system or the country altogether. OJ Simpson, Robert Blake, Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, Roman Polanski, the list is a long one. California's only REAL law? Penal Code 90210.
 
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Race and Criminal Injustice

Posted by: bearerfriend on Jul 4, 2007 1:52 PM

Hi Charli, it was wonderful to find out about your organization through grandmothersofthelight.com, and I am inspired to know that there are even more of us working to shut down this hideos criminal injustice system. I hope you will consider collaborating with Califonians United for a Responsible Budget, http://www.curbprisonspending.org/, a statewide coaltion working against prison expansion in CA.

I have no doubt in my mind that class is an overwhelmig factor in determining who is locked up and tortured in CA prisons, and if class is your preferred approach to anti-prison work, it seems a very powerful and effective strategy.

You might also agree, though, that class so often falls along race lines in California, as people of color have been systematically denied the most basic economic opportunities for centuries. The racial demographics of today's poverty rates and homelessness rates show how this economic history has resulted in a society that is stratified by race. As committed as you may be to living in a racially just society that no longer catalogs people by race, our current government and economy do not hold on to that same dream. Instead, our government treats people of color very differently from its white citizens, and this is particularly true with CA's prison system. We cannot fight such a racist system without a deliberate and focused attention to race.
 
 

 
A recent graduate of Young People For's inaugural Leadership Academy, Jeremy spent the spring of his fellowship working as a lobbyist for Californians United for a Responsible Budget, a state-wide coalition of 39 organizations working to cut prison spending in California. Over the past five years, he has helped organize against prison expansion through Justice Now, the SF Coalition on Homelessness and Direct Action for Rights and Equality. Jeremy is currently a Ph.D student at UC Berkeley's School of Education and a consultant to the Movement Strategy Action Fund.