By William Fisher
When former FBI Director Louis Freeh was running the task force investigating sloppy forensic testing by the FBI lab some 20 years ago and mistakenly sending thousands to prison, Freeh was encouraging FBI personnel to do exactly the opposite of what he did while investigating the Penn State pedophile scandal.
“He did everything in his power to cover them up,” referring to the many mistakes made by FBI forensic specialists in their analyses, particularly their analyses of hair. The protocol used in the analysis was found to be seriously flawed and unprofessionally applied. The outcome was that many were convicted and sentenced to long imprisonments on the strength of unreliable testing.
These remarks came from C. Fred Whitehurst, the former FBI Special Agent, the whistleblower whose revelations created a firestorm of criticism of the FBI lab which, until then, had been regarded as the gold standard of forensic analysis.
Whitehurst charged that, “In light of the most recent revelations about FBI lab failures requiring 10,000 more cases to be reviewed we should read of this pot calling the pan black.”
In a report released this morning, former FBI Director Louis Freeh writes that "the most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who [former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry] Sandusky victimized. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky’s victims until after Sandusky’s arrest."
But Whitehurst says that “While I was reporting issues at the FBI crime lab, FBI Director Louis Freeh was doing every thing he could to shut me down including coming at me with proposed criminal charges, referrals for fitness for duty (psych evals), destroying my career, moving me around the lab like a rag doll, ruining my wife's career. This man has no conscience and he is accusing Penn State managers of not taking any steps. He ought to be ashamed. Before the lab scandal is over you will find that Freeh was right in the middle of it. He did EXACTLY what the Penn State folks did.”
The task force remained operational for years, but is generally thought to have done virtually nothing to identify or alleviate the conditions of thousands sent to prison on the basis of faulty forensics.
Prosecutors were notified by the FBI, but judges and defense counsel were not.
The article above appeared in the pages of Prism Magazine.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Capitalism
This essay on Capitalism was written by Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University.
Pope John Paul II once remarked that "pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one." Whatever else you might think of this Pontiff, he makes a good point here–and one applicable to the U.S.A. American politicians never tire of telling us that ours is the greatest nation on earth and, for the world’s sake, we must aggressively (often by war) expand our freedoms, as well as our general culture, to the ends of the earth. Actually, this is a message that has been repeated for two hundred years and "its dominion" here in the "land of the free" is manifest. For many citizens, this assumption is one of the primary reasons we invaded Iraq, are hanging on in Afghanistan, and swear eternal loyalty to the Israelis. It is probably the cas e that American political and civic leaders invoke God and national manifest destiny more than those of any other nationality.
Capitalism
This is the world’s prevalent economic system. It is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods and services for profit. Wage labor is an important element on the cost side of the capitalist ledger. So are things like safe working conditions and worker benefits. The capitalist impulse is to minimize costs in order to maximize profit. Left to themselves, capitalists will pay workers (white collar or otherwise) the lowest possible wages and deny or minimize other benefits. They will ignore worker safety and deny any responsibility for worker health. The only reason these important aspects of the work place prevail is because of the pressure put upon the capitalist system by unions on the one hand, and government regulatory agencies on the other. If you want to maximize the probability of economic breakdown, just destroy all effective government regulation of the economy and outlaw uni ons.
Part II - Ideologies at odds
Nationalism and capitalism are quite different ideologies, yet somehow Americans have conflated them. Take a list of what are considered the best things
about Capitalism: equality, achievement, freedom, growth and even happiness, and then compare them to a list of things considered the best about America: equality, opportunity for personal growth, freedom, a longer and fuller life. What do you know! They’re almost the same. This is odd and not a little illogical. Why so? Well, consider the fact that these ideologies operate in opposition one to another. And do so right out in the open.
Here is a good example. On 11 July 2012, Fred Grimm, a columnist for the Miami Herald wrote a piece entitled "This column was made in the U.S.A." In it he notes that "last year the Wall Street Journal surveyed employment data from a number of the nation’s heftier corporations...and found that while they were cutting their domestic workforces by 2.9 million over a decade, they had hired 2.4 million people overseas." What sort of jobs are being exported by American corporate executives with, one assumes, the approval of their largely American stockholders? It turns out that they are not just your mundane factory floor jobs. They also include the work of: accountants, radiologists, architects, mortgage banking officers, computer technicians, and journalists (outsourcing the writing of local news st ories to underpaid reporters in places like the Philippine).
As the Wall Street Journal noted, this has been going on for a while now. Back in a 12 January 2004 edition of the Harvard Business School’s online publication, Working Knowledge, James Heskett told us that "arguments based on accepted [those accepting are not named] macroeconomic theory generally come down in support of the free exportation of jobs." But then Heskett quoted Brad Leach’s observation that "the real question is how to deal with the disproportionality of this impact: the broad, shallow, positive impact on product prices versus the narrow [sic], deep, negative impact on individuals."
In other words, American capitalism has been sticking it to American nationalism, at least to the extent of destroying a minimum of 2.9 million jobs over the past decade. Is this an example of capitalism promoting achievement, or growth, or happiness? Certainly not for those 2.9 million American ex-employees. So just how could American corporations, the executives and stock holders of which are, one assumes, loyal and patriotic Americans, do such a thing?
Part III - Capitalism Wins
Well, it would seem that nationalism has met its match. It has been overwhelmed by that which lies at the heart of capitalism: profit. Thus, consider a hypothetical American corporation A which makes socks in town X and has done so for a hundred years. At some point corporation A finds itself confronted with competition from cheaper socks made abroad and allowed into the U.S. by the millions of pairs because of laws placed on the books by free-market American Senators and Congresspersons. These foreign socks are being willingly purchased, instead of A’s more expensive domestic brand, by red blooded American consumers. So the executives of corporation A face a serious problem. It does not take them long to figure out that if they move out of town X, where the labor costs are relatively high, and relocate to some foreign country with no unions or government regulations, their labor costs will go down and their competitiveness and profitability will go up. But to do so wi ll destroy the economic basis of town X and the lives of its patriotic citizens who have loyally served corporation A for generations. So what do you do? Well, just ask the residents of all the defunct textile towns on the U.S. east coast from New England to the Carolinas.
Very few entrepreneurs or their customers are going to admit that such issues as cost, profit and price are more important than every one of those things listed as the best of capitalism and nationalism. No, they will just ignore the distinctly second place status of equality, freedom, doing your best, growth and happiness, etc., and they will pretend that the economic destruction of workers’ lives is an unavoidable consequence of commonsense business. Blame it on the natural laws of macroeconomics if you must. When the time comes for Mexican or Chinese or Indian workers to organize and achieve regulation of their industries so as to obtain decent wages and benefits, their lives in turn will be ruined as their employers run away to other places with lower labor costs, fewer required benefits and lower corporate taxes. For when it comes to the so-called commonsense demands of business, profits are more important than life itself (though not the financial well-being of th e investors).
Part IV - Coping Mechanisms
I think that a growing number of Americans, witnessing the long running exportation of their livelihoods, do sense that the ground is moving under their feet. A 19 November 2011 New York Times op-ed by Charles Blow entitled "Decline of American Exceptionalism" reports that a Pew Research Center poll found that just 49% of Americans agreed with the statement "our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others." That was down from 60% in the year 2002.
It is hard to see your culture as superior when so many jobs are being shipped abroad. Yet, if we can extrapolate out from the Pew poll, nearly half the nation still seems to manage it. How do they do it? Here are some suggestions:
1. Displacing a sense of powerlessness. Whether you are the victim or it is your neighbor, one just doesn’t know what to do about the situation. But it helps to believe that, even though jobless, you live in a great country, the power and traditions of which assure that you are better off than some worker in an Indonesian sweatshop turning out upscale Nikes. Holding on to that thought, many of the displaced buck up and start looking for other, usually less lucrative, work. Some of them may also take to beating up their kids or spouses when frustrations of the job search run high.
2. Dealing with cognitive dissonance. One has two contradictory concepts in one’s head at once (the U.S. is the greatest show on earth vs. too many of our jobs are being exported, contributing to the fact that a lot of us are getting poorer) and it is uncomfortable. So one naturally tries to reconcile the problem. For instance, you can tell yourself that the dichotomy is temporary and will disappear after a period of economic adjustment. Or, this is a great opportunity to get retrained for a position better than the one you just lost (ignoring the fact that the effectiveness of retraining programs is now being called into question).
3. The phenomenon of volunteering. For those who have lost their jobs but retain enough of a pension or savings to live on (usually an older crowd approaching retirement age) they can take solace in the world of volunteers. Actually, this is a pattern of work which allows a lot of non-profit, and some for-profit businesses as well, to get free labor. So the worker ends up doing for free what he or she should rightly be paid for–particularly in an avidly capitalist society like ours. It is a cockeyed sort of situation, but it does allow many older, displaced workers, to salvage some self-esteem even while they are exploited.
Part V - Conclusion
Most often our lives are too narrowly focused to allow us to understand the larger economic and political forces impacting us. We know our local area, we know the work we do (or did), and we know what those in leadership positions tell us. But all of this knowledge turns out to be inadequate when we are hit by debilitating social change. Then, most of us feel helpless and passively resign ourselves to what we consider fate, or perhaps God’s will.
We are trained from childhood to behave like this. Remember temper tantrums? When our children throw them they soon learn that it doesn’t work. As adults we seem to have carried over the lesson. Relatively small numbers of us do occasionally loudly protest our situation, but with rare exceptions what do we learn? It doesn’t work. Perhaps we should try harder.
The ideals of capitalism, so ardently believed in, turn out to be false except for (as the current saying goes) the fortunate 1%. And those of nationalism? They too are drilled into our heads from childhood. But, alas, they cannot substitute for one’s supper.
Pope John Paul II once remarked that "pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one." Whatever else you might think of this Pontiff, he makes a good point here–and one applicable to the U.S.A. American politicians never tire of telling us that ours is the greatest nation on earth and, for the world’s sake, we must aggressively (often by war) expand our freedoms, as well as our general culture, to the ends of the earth. Actually, this is a message that has been repeated for two hundred years and "its dominion" here in the "land of the free" is manifest. For many citizens, this assumption is one of the primary reasons we invaded Iraq, are hanging on in Afghanistan, and swear eternal loyalty to the Israelis. It is probably the cas e that American political and civic leaders invoke God and national manifest destiny more than those of any other nationality.
Capitalism
This is the world’s prevalent economic system. It is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods and services for profit. Wage labor is an important element on the cost side of the capitalist ledger. So are things like safe working conditions and worker benefits. The capitalist impulse is to minimize costs in order to maximize profit. Left to themselves, capitalists will pay workers (white collar or otherwise) the lowest possible wages and deny or minimize other benefits. They will ignore worker safety and deny any responsibility for worker health. The only reason these important aspects of the work place prevail is because of the pressure put upon the capitalist system by unions on the one hand, and government regulatory agencies on the other. If you want to maximize the probability of economic breakdown, just destroy all effective government regulation of the economy and outlaw uni ons.
Part II - Ideologies at odds
Nationalism and capitalism are quite different ideologies, yet somehow Americans have conflated them. Take a list of what are considered the best things
about Capitalism: equality, achievement, freedom, growth and even happiness, and then compare them to a list of things considered the best about America: equality, opportunity for personal growth, freedom, a longer and fuller life. What do you know! They’re almost the same. This is odd and not a little illogical. Why so? Well, consider the fact that these ideologies operate in opposition one to another. And do so right out in the open.
Here is a good example. On 11 July 2012, Fred Grimm, a columnist for the Miami Herald wrote a piece entitled "This column was made in the U.S.A." In it he notes that "last year the Wall Street Journal surveyed employment data from a number of the nation’s heftier corporations...and found that while they were cutting their domestic workforces by 2.9 million over a decade, they had hired 2.4 million people overseas." What sort of jobs are being exported by American corporate executives with, one assumes, the approval of their largely American stockholders? It turns out that they are not just your mundane factory floor jobs. They also include the work of: accountants, radiologists, architects, mortgage banking officers, computer technicians, and journalists (outsourcing the writing of local news st ories to underpaid reporters in places like the Philippine).
As the Wall Street Journal noted, this has been going on for a while now. Back in a 12 January 2004 edition of the Harvard Business School’s online publication, Working Knowledge, James Heskett told us that "arguments based on accepted [those accepting are not named] macroeconomic theory generally come down in support of the free exportation of jobs." But then Heskett quoted Brad Leach’s observation that "the real question is how to deal with the disproportionality of this impact: the broad, shallow, positive impact on product prices versus the narrow [sic], deep, negative impact on individuals."
In other words, American capitalism has been sticking it to American nationalism, at least to the extent of destroying a minimum of 2.9 million jobs over the past decade. Is this an example of capitalism promoting achievement, or growth, or happiness? Certainly not for those 2.9 million American ex-employees. So just how could American corporations, the executives and stock holders of which are, one assumes, loyal and patriotic Americans, do such a thing?
Part III - Capitalism Wins
Well, it would seem that nationalism has met its match. It has been overwhelmed by that which lies at the heart of capitalism: profit. Thus, consider a hypothetical American corporation A which makes socks in town X and has done so for a hundred years. At some point corporation A finds itself confronted with competition from cheaper socks made abroad and allowed into the U.S. by the millions of pairs because of laws placed on the books by free-market American Senators and Congresspersons. These foreign socks are being willingly purchased, instead of A’s more expensive domestic brand, by red blooded American consumers. So the executives of corporation A face a serious problem. It does not take them long to figure out that if they move out of town X, where the labor costs are relatively high, and relocate to some foreign country with no unions or government regulations, their labor costs will go down and their competitiveness and profitability will go up. But to do so wi ll destroy the economic basis of town X and the lives of its patriotic citizens who have loyally served corporation A for generations. So what do you do? Well, just ask the residents of all the defunct textile towns on the U.S. east coast from New England to the Carolinas.
Very few entrepreneurs or their customers are going to admit that such issues as cost, profit and price are more important than every one of those things listed as the best of capitalism and nationalism. No, they will just ignore the distinctly second place status of equality, freedom, doing your best, growth and happiness, etc., and they will pretend that the economic destruction of workers’ lives is an unavoidable consequence of commonsense business. Blame it on the natural laws of macroeconomics if you must. When the time comes for Mexican or Chinese or Indian workers to organize and achieve regulation of their industries so as to obtain decent wages and benefits, their lives in turn will be ruined as their employers run away to other places with lower labor costs, fewer required benefits and lower corporate taxes. For when it comes to the so-called commonsense demands of business, profits are more important than life itself (though not the financial well-being of th e investors).
Part IV - Coping Mechanisms
I think that a growing number of Americans, witnessing the long running exportation of their livelihoods, do sense that the ground is moving under their feet. A 19 November 2011 New York Times op-ed by Charles Blow entitled "Decline of American Exceptionalism" reports that a Pew Research Center poll found that just 49% of Americans agreed with the statement "our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others." That was down from 60% in the year 2002.
It is hard to see your culture as superior when so many jobs are being shipped abroad. Yet, if we can extrapolate out from the Pew poll, nearly half the nation still seems to manage it. How do they do it? Here are some suggestions:
1. Displacing a sense of powerlessness. Whether you are the victim or it is your neighbor, one just doesn’t know what to do about the situation. But it helps to believe that, even though jobless, you live in a great country, the power and traditions of which assure that you are better off than some worker in an Indonesian sweatshop turning out upscale Nikes. Holding on to that thought, many of the displaced buck up and start looking for other, usually less lucrative, work. Some of them may also take to beating up their kids or spouses when frustrations of the job search run high.
2. Dealing with cognitive dissonance. One has two contradictory concepts in one’s head at once (the U.S. is the greatest show on earth vs. too many of our jobs are being exported, contributing to the fact that a lot of us are getting poorer) and it is uncomfortable. So one naturally tries to reconcile the problem. For instance, you can tell yourself that the dichotomy is temporary and will disappear after a period of economic adjustment. Or, this is a great opportunity to get retrained for a position better than the one you just lost (ignoring the fact that the effectiveness of retraining programs is now being called into question).
3. The phenomenon of volunteering. For those who have lost their jobs but retain enough of a pension or savings to live on (usually an older crowd approaching retirement age) they can take solace in the world of volunteers. Actually, this is a pattern of work which allows a lot of non-profit, and some for-profit businesses as well, to get free labor. So the worker ends up doing for free what he or she should rightly be paid for–particularly in an avidly capitalist society like ours. It is a cockeyed sort of situation, but it does allow many older, displaced workers, to salvage some self-esteem even while they are exploited.
Part V - Conclusion
Most often our lives are too narrowly focused to allow us to understand the larger economic and political forces impacting us. We know our local area, we know the work we do (or did), and we know what those in leadership positions tell us. But all of this knowledge turns out to be inadequate when we are hit by debilitating social change. Then, most of us feel helpless and passively resign ourselves to what we consider fate, or perhaps God’s will.
We are trained from childhood to behave like this. Remember temper tantrums? When our children throw them they soon learn that it doesn’t work. As adults we seem to have carried over the lesson. Relatively small numbers of us do occasionally loudly protest our situation, but with rare exceptions what do we learn? It doesn’t work. Perhaps we should try harder.
The ideals of capitalism, so ardently believed in, turn out to be false except for (as the current saying goes) the fortunate 1%. And those of nationalism? They too are drilled into our heads from childhood. But, alas, they cannot substitute for one’s supper.
Corporate Social What? Redux.
By Guy Gravenson
My cousin Guy, who lives in Mexico, decided to get into our little debating gig about whether anything good is likely to come from trying to teach corporate responsibility to some of the most irresponsible executives on earth. Here’s his take:
What is missing in all this back and forth, Bill, is the question of education, K-12. Educating the young. You suddenly don't come to a new set of ethics or morals as a grown person. You learn that in your formative years. And if you haven't learned it by high school, you get some standin to take your test or a crib sheet or hidden cell phone to slide you the answers. Corruption starts as soon as the teacher's back is turned.
A solution? Leave K-6 pretty much as it is now, a time to learn basic skills, to socialize and get into sports, and keep the brats out of the house for half a day for the parents to recover. At middle-school time, give all kids a FREE tablet (Kindle or iPad, whatever).
The tablet has no phone, no internet, so social networking sites. Just lessons, a library to get the answers -- and a connection to an adult mentor from the school. Kids work on their own or with peers to complete the lessons, whether programmed learning, multiple choice or composition. This is basic middle school stuff ... English, Math, Social Studies, Science, Civics (ethic lessons here), Second language...etc. Tests are taken back at the school, supervised, serious. If you fail a course you have to repeat it over the summer to graduate middle school. Then you hand back your tablet in exchange for a cap and gown.
Graduates go on to virtual High School. There can be a real high school in the neighborhood, of course, but students need only to check in to meet with teachers one-to-one and to do group assignments, social stuff. There are no class hours, except appointment times. The High School becomes a study hall. Again, all lessons are on individual FREE tablets, but these are not interchangable. They have a fingerprint match entry and other safeguards against theft/plagiarism. You carry it with you for 4 years. How fast you get through HS is up to you. You work at your own speed ... you take pop quizzes for your own edification. You just have to pass Government Regent tests -- standardized national tests (not State tests) on your climb out of high school. You have to pass 5 core subjects, and 5 elective subjects in each of those 4 years. Core manditory subjects: English composition, Math (algebra, geometry, trig,) Science (biology, chemistry, physics) Second Language, and American History. 5 elective subjects can be anything from logic to computer literacy, to theatre, to basic business administration, -- or anything teachable that interests the young person. So you need 40 credits to graduate High School -- and an optional 10 additional points in a particular field of interest or out-of-school volunteer/intern work that will go a long way to get you into college. After you pass your 40 credits, you have to take a day's worth of tests on everything you've learned (a comprehensive, like an S.A.T.) and an interview before a body of educators who will try to give you insight on where they think you should go next. Even help exceptional students to get to the college of their choice.
Of course, you can drop out whenever you want -- and clean off tables at Wendy's.
My cousin Guy, who lives in Mexico, decided to get into our little debating gig about whether anything good is likely to come from trying to teach corporate responsibility to some of the most irresponsible executives on earth. Here’s his take:
What is missing in all this back and forth, Bill, is the question of education, K-12. Educating the young. You suddenly don't come to a new set of ethics or morals as a grown person. You learn that in your formative years. And if you haven't learned it by high school, you get some standin to take your test or a crib sheet or hidden cell phone to slide you the answers. Corruption starts as soon as the teacher's back is turned.
A solution? Leave K-6 pretty much as it is now, a time to learn basic skills, to socialize and get into sports, and keep the brats out of the house for half a day for the parents to recover. At middle-school time, give all kids a FREE tablet (Kindle or iPad, whatever).
The tablet has no phone, no internet, so social networking sites. Just lessons, a library to get the answers -- and a connection to an adult mentor from the school. Kids work on their own or with peers to complete the lessons, whether programmed learning, multiple choice or composition. This is basic middle school stuff ... English, Math, Social Studies, Science, Civics (ethic lessons here), Second language...etc. Tests are taken back at the school, supervised, serious. If you fail a course you have to repeat it over the summer to graduate middle school. Then you hand back your tablet in exchange for a cap and gown.
Graduates go on to virtual High School. There can be a real high school in the neighborhood, of course, but students need only to check in to meet with teachers one-to-one and to do group assignments, social stuff. There are no class hours, except appointment times. The High School becomes a study hall. Again, all lessons are on individual FREE tablets, but these are not interchangable. They have a fingerprint match entry and other safeguards against theft/plagiarism. You carry it with you for 4 years. How fast you get through HS is up to you. You work at your own speed ... you take pop quizzes for your own edification. You just have to pass Government Regent tests -- standardized national tests (not State tests) on your climb out of high school. You have to pass 5 core subjects, and 5 elective subjects in each of those 4 years. Core manditory subjects: English composition, Math (algebra, geometry, trig,) Science (biology, chemistry, physics) Second Language, and American History. 5 elective subjects can be anything from logic to computer literacy, to theatre, to basic business administration, -- or anything teachable that interests the young person. So you need 40 credits to graduate High School -- and an optional 10 additional points in a particular field of interest or out-of-school volunteer/intern work that will go a long way to get you into college. After you pass your 40 credits, you have to take a day's worth of tests on everything you've learned (a comprehensive, like an S.A.T.) and an interview before a body of educators who will try to give you insight on where they think you should go next. Even help exceptional students to get to the college of their choice.
Of course, you can drop out whenever you want -- and clean off tables at Wendy's.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Corporate Social What?
By William Fisher
The misconduct of the financial industry no longer surprises most Americans. Only about one in five has much trust in banks, according to Gallup polls, about half the level in 2007. And it’s not just banks that are frowned upon. Trust in big business overall is declining. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe corruption is widespread across corporate America. According to Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, nearly three in four Americans believe that corruption has increased over the last three years. (New York Times, July 12, 2012)
A good friend of mine is trying to teach corporate social responsibility on the heels of Libor and so many, many other shameful deceptions – or worse . That must be like flying into the eye of the hurricane on a mosquito. The perfect storm caused not only by banking and financial interests, but also by manufacturers, service companies, just about everyone whose mission is the turn a profit.
What in the world could you be teaching them? Maybe your focus is on what they could do to become socially responsible that they clearly are not doing now?
In all honesty, I would be hard put to name a single company I felt was and had been acting in a socially responsible manner. In fact, I’d do much better with the inverse proposition. No shortage of villains out there!
Back in the 70s and 80s I used to lecture and write a lot about CSR. Back in the those days, we were able to point to at least a few companies that we thought were acting responsibly – Cummins Engine, Caterpillar, General Electric, and a few others.
Huge companies couldn’t slow down to catch their breath and implement real programs; it was liberal lipservice. Smaller companies just struggled to stay afloat. And most of them didn’t.
I daresay we are now experiencing a repeat of that situation – with the added disadvantage that the people know. Thanks to the web, 24-hour news cycles, etc. companies acting irresponsibility have no place to hide.
The usual sponsorships of social services, educational, athletic, and artistic programs looked to be tinier than usual in relation to what needed to be done. Most of these are good programs, well thought-out. But they are implemented largely in isolation, with little coordination among donors and sponsors.
And as one after another after another of those donors is exposed as corner-cutting, smarmy-talking prevaricators caught with both hands in the cookie jar, so the American public loses what little faith it may once have had in the indestructible pillars of American capitalism.
What to do? Nothing? Not acceptable!
So I found myself thinking the most simplistic, eighth-grade solution. And knowing that my economist friends would be all over me in a nano-second.
So, being a rabid risk-taker, I posited the following:
Ten of millions of people are out of work.
Big multinational companies and financial institutions are stuffed with cash they borrowed at zero interest from the Fed.
They are not lending that money; they are sitting on it until demand rises for their products and services.
The longer they sit on it, the more the banks love them.
But suppose President Obama did something really off the wall?
Suppose he sat down with the shareholders of the Fortune 500 and tried to persuade them each, for a period of time, to take a 50% haircut on the profits they’re now making on the stocks and bonds of these dinosaurs. Corporations and banks would put their cash to work by hiring unemployed people – starting with those fired or furloughed when the economy tanked. The government would subsidize any losses these investors would incur.
And here comes the big IF. The government would need to be trusted as the rescuer of last resort.
If, by some miracle of alchemy, charisma, and pragmatism, the FatCats agreed, a lot of folks would have jobs again – not makework, not entry-level no-income internships, but real jobs to put real meals on the table and be able to afford to pay real mortgages, and jobs that opened up the possibility of the industrial and financial innovation that seems to have gotten lost in the past decade.
Now, dear readers, tell me the many reasons this won’t work!
First to weigh in was Chip Pitts, who happens to be the friend who’s lecturing on CSR at Oxford this summer. Here’s his take:
“I think that something like this could be part of the solution, a la the New Deal, but you’re right that the economists would object, and likely on grounds that those jobs are (“the market has spoken”) no longer needed, by definition, since they’re not there and (from the companies’ standpoint and the economy’s standpoint the economy is still working pretty well for the elites). Thus, there is a legitimate concern that this could result in ‘makework’.”
He continued: “Some of that would be OK, but it would be better if we found work for people in new jobs that could stand on their own in this increasingly competitive global environment. It would thus seem to me to be more a priority to think about how to rejigger and restart the economy using methods calculated to create new technologies and jobs that are definitely needed for the sectors likely to be most in demand in the future which also have social and environmental purpose.”
He added, “CSR and rights-based businesses can spur some of that by creating new products, services, and business models, like GE’s Ecomagination and Healthmagination, Unilever’s Shakti program, Grameen Danone’s joint venture, etc. But we also need lots of other old and new ideas, including continuing education, job training, starting entirely new social enterprises and small business – all which might be better, more sustainable and resilient investments and approaches.”
I’m sorry to be such a sourpuss, but I can’t resist pointing out that all these proposed initiatives are spoken in the future tense. Maybe they’re going to happen someday, but they haven’t happened yet. Yet now is when they are most needed. What have we been doing since 2008 and well before?
Well, it took a bone fide economist to shake me from my torpor. He came in the person of Dr. Jack N. Behrman, Associate Dean Emeritus at the University of North Carolina Business School. In his usual characteristic plain-speaking language, this non-academic academic delivered this IED:
“Now, who is going to do what about it -- what with the big financiers corrupting Congress and the Supreme Court? They are interested in only one thing -- jimmying the election and then the U.S. economy so they control it for their own selfish reasons. No sense of ‘noblesse oblige’--nor social responsibility, and B-school faculty have come to their senses too late, having mushed the brains of their students with ‘profit-maximization’ goals.”
A somewhat more hopeful note was struck by another old friend reader, Ludwig Rudel, who ran a successful property business after serving as one of the first American development specialists ever deployed to South Asia.
Lu asks:
“Who possibly can be against enhancing corporate social responsibility? It is asking others to behave better! No cost to me! Next you will try to reform or eliminate prostitution. Good Luck.”
“Me ... I prefer incentives. It is generally thought that the unemployment problem will not go away until the housing sector is stabilized. I have been waiting four years for our President to do something ‘off the wall to solve that.”
“How about this? FNMA will buy any and all of a bank's mortgages, either performing or non-performing, for homes still occupied by mortgagees for 80% of the outstanding principal, excluding penalties and fees, (no appraisal required) if the bank can prove they actually own the mortgage. FNMA can then offer to rewrite the house owner's mortgage paper at that (80%) value, for the first 5 years at an APR of 2%, the second 5 years at 4% and the last 20 years at 6% (since FNMA can obtain short term funds at virtually 0%). Then, for those mortgagees that such terms still can't be made to work, FNMA will handle foreclosure at its own cost.
“Such mortgages would be very affordable and attractive to owners. The banks would get out from under. It costs them more than 20% to foreclose. The cost to the taxpayer would be minimal.”
“Maybe it would be possible to persuade the banks that they will get brownie points on their social responsibility ledger for doing this.”
OK, but at this rate accumulating enough Brownie points is going to take a while. Maybe we should try Girl Scout Cookies?
Then comes the coup de grace. Artist Tony Benn, my favorite Marxist didact, blind-sides me with this:
“Without wanting to sound totally defeatist but most likely post-Marxist. Capital has and will always be amoral. Teaching it morality will always be sinking water into the desert of morality. The point of the State whichever one we can elect coherently and cohesively is to ameliorate the worst excesses of Capital. Until we all wake up to that awful but sobering realization then expecting a CEO to change the mindset of two centuries that started with the French revolution we are just dealing with the chimera and the spectacular nature of Capital.”
He adds: “And yes, this is the post-Marxist bit, until the contradictions of Capital are revealed or better still betrayed to itself not much is likely to happen. When the generals stop obeying orders of the ruling classes then the image cracks. Vis, the revolutions such as they are in the North Africa crescent. The Syrian general class jumping ship...pip pip!
If the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes were to go out with his lantern in search of an honest many today, a survey of Wall Street executives on workplace conduct suggests he might have to look elsewhere.
A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday.
In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.
Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.
The misconduct of the financial industry no longer surprises most Americans. Only about one in five has much trust in banks, according to Gallup polls, about half the level in 2007. And it’s not just banks that are frowned upon. Trust in big business overall is declining. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe corruption is widespread across corporate America. According to Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, nearly three in four Americans believe that corruption has increased over the last three years. (New York Times, July 12, 2012)
A good friend of mine is trying to teach corporate social responsibility on the heels of Libor and so many, many other shameful deceptions – or worse . That must be like flying into the eye of the hurricane on a mosquito. The perfect storm caused not only by banking and financial interests, but also by manufacturers, service companies, just about everyone whose mission is the turn a profit.
What in the world could you be teaching them? Maybe your focus is on what they could do to become socially responsible that they clearly are not doing now?
In all honesty, I would be hard put to name a single company I felt was and had been acting in a socially responsible manner. In fact, I’d do much better with the inverse proposition. No shortage of villains out there!
Back in the 70s and 80s I used to lecture and write a lot about CSR. Back in the those days, we were able to point to at least a few companies that we thought were acting responsibly – Cummins Engine, Caterpillar, General Electric, and a few others.
Huge companies couldn’t slow down to catch their breath and implement real programs; it was liberal lipservice. Smaller companies just struggled to stay afloat. And most of them didn’t.
I daresay we are now experiencing a repeat of that situation – with the added disadvantage that the people know. Thanks to the web, 24-hour news cycles, etc. companies acting irresponsibility have no place to hide.
The usual sponsorships of social services, educational, athletic, and artistic programs looked to be tinier than usual in relation to what needed to be done. Most of these are good programs, well thought-out. But they are implemented largely in isolation, with little coordination among donors and sponsors.
And as one after another after another of those donors is exposed as corner-cutting, smarmy-talking prevaricators caught with both hands in the cookie jar, so the American public loses what little faith it may once have had in the indestructible pillars of American capitalism.
What to do? Nothing? Not acceptable!
So I found myself thinking the most simplistic, eighth-grade solution. And knowing that my economist friends would be all over me in a nano-second.
So, being a rabid risk-taker, I posited the following:
Ten of millions of people are out of work.
Big multinational companies and financial institutions are stuffed with cash they borrowed at zero interest from the Fed.
They are not lending that money; they are sitting on it until demand rises for their products and services.
The longer they sit on it, the more the banks love them.
But suppose President Obama did something really off the wall?
Suppose he sat down with the shareholders of the Fortune 500 and tried to persuade them each, for a period of time, to take a 50% haircut on the profits they’re now making on the stocks and bonds of these dinosaurs. Corporations and banks would put their cash to work by hiring unemployed people – starting with those fired or furloughed when the economy tanked. The government would subsidize any losses these investors would incur.
And here comes the big IF. The government would need to be trusted as the rescuer of last resort.
If, by some miracle of alchemy, charisma, and pragmatism, the FatCats agreed, a lot of folks would have jobs again – not makework, not entry-level no-income internships, but real jobs to put real meals on the table and be able to afford to pay real mortgages, and jobs that opened up the possibility of the industrial and financial innovation that seems to have gotten lost in the past decade.
Now, dear readers, tell me the many reasons this won’t work!
First to weigh in was Chip Pitts, who happens to be the friend who’s lecturing on CSR at Oxford this summer. Here’s his take:
“I think that something like this could be part of the solution, a la the New Deal, but you’re right that the economists would object, and likely on grounds that those jobs are (“the market has spoken”) no longer needed, by definition, since they’re not there and (from the companies’ standpoint and the economy’s standpoint the economy is still working pretty well for the elites). Thus, there is a legitimate concern that this could result in ‘makework’.”
He continued: “Some of that would be OK, but it would be better if we found work for people in new jobs that could stand on their own in this increasingly competitive global environment. It would thus seem to me to be more a priority to think about how to rejigger and restart the economy using methods calculated to create new technologies and jobs that are definitely needed for the sectors likely to be most in demand in the future which also have social and environmental purpose.”
He added, “CSR and rights-based businesses can spur some of that by creating new products, services, and business models, like GE’s Ecomagination and Healthmagination, Unilever’s Shakti program, Grameen Danone’s joint venture, etc. But we also need lots of other old and new ideas, including continuing education, job training, starting entirely new social enterprises and small business – all which might be better, more sustainable and resilient investments and approaches.”
I’m sorry to be such a sourpuss, but I can’t resist pointing out that all these proposed initiatives are spoken in the future tense. Maybe they’re going to happen someday, but they haven’t happened yet. Yet now is when they are most needed. What have we been doing since 2008 and well before?
Well, it took a bone fide economist to shake me from my torpor. He came in the person of Dr. Jack N. Behrman, Associate Dean Emeritus at the University of North Carolina Business School. In his usual characteristic plain-speaking language, this non-academic academic delivered this IED:
“Now, who is going to do what about it -- what with the big financiers corrupting Congress and the Supreme Court? They are interested in only one thing -- jimmying the election and then the U.S. economy so they control it for their own selfish reasons. No sense of ‘noblesse oblige’--nor social responsibility, and B-school faculty have come to their senses too late, having mushed the brains of their students with ‘profit-maximization’ goals.”
A somewhat more hopeful note was struck by another old friend reader, Ludwig Rudel, who ran a successful property business after serving as one of the first American development specialists ever deployed to South Asia.
Lu asks:
“Who possibly can be against enhancing corporate social responsibility? It is asking others to behave better! No cost to me! Next you will try to reform or eliminate prostitution. Good Luck.”
“Me ... I prefer incentives. It is generally thought that the unemployment problem will not go away until the housing sector is stabilized. I have been waiting four years for our President to do something ‘off the wall to solve that.”
“How about this? FNMA will buy any and all of a bank's mortgages, either performing or non-performing, for homes still occupied by mortgagees for 80% of the outstanding principal, excluding penalties and fees, (no appraisal required) if the bank can prove they actually own the mortgage. FNMA can then offer to rewrite the house owner's mortgage paper at that (80%) value, for the first 5 years at an APR of 2%, the second 5 years at 4% and the last 20 years at 6% (since FNMA can obtain short term funds at virtually 0%). Then, for those mortgagees that such terms still can't be made to work, FNMA will handle foreclosure at its own cost.
“Such mortgages would be very affordable and attractive to owners. The banks would get out from under. It costs them more than 20% to foreclose. The cost to the taxpayer would be minimal.”
“Maybe it would be possible to persuade the banks that they will get brownie points on their social responsibility ledger for doing this.”
OK, but at this rate accumulating enough Brownie points is going to take a while. Maybe we should try Girl Scout Cookies?
Then comes the coup de grace. Artist Tony Benn, my favorite Marxist didact, blind-sides me with this:
“Without wanting to sound totally defeatist but most likely post-Marxist. Capital has and will always be amoral. Teaching it morality will always be sinking water into the desert of morality. The point of the State whichever one we can elect coherently and cohesively is to ameliorate the worst excesses of Capital. Until we all wake up to that awful but sobering realization then expecting a CEO to change the mindset of two centuries that started with the French revolution we are just dealing with the chimera and the spectacular nature of Capital.”
He adds: “And yes, this is the post-Marxist bit, until the contradictions of Capital are revealed or better still betrayed to itself not much is likely to happen. When the generals stop obeying orders of the ruling classes then the image cracks. Vis, the revolutions such as they are in the North Africa crescent. The Syrian general class jumping ship...pip pip!
If the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes were to go out with his lantern in search of an honest many today, a survey of Wall Street executives on workplace conduct suggests he might have to look elsewhere.
A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday.
In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.
Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
A Holocaust of FBI Law Enforcement Practices Comes to Light
By William Fisher
Back in April, this reporter did a story about the scandal that arose in the mid-1990s at the FBI criminal laboratory when it was revealed that results of forensic tests on as many as 10,000 cases had been falsified or otherwise presented to juries in ways that were scientifically unfounded and virtually guaranteed to produce guilty verdicts.
The head of the FBI and the Attorney General of the US acknowledged at the time that serious mistakes had been made. But no one ever told the defense attorneys or the defendants.
The DOJ brass formed a Task Force to investigate. They concentrated on the work of a senior forensics analyst, Michael Malone, who was dismissed. That so-called investigation went on for years. In silence.
Until yesterday, that is.
Yesterday was the day the Washington Post announced that the DOJ would now perform analyses of an undetermined number of the cases that were tried during this period and resulted in guilty verdicts. Those convicted are scattered throughout prisons all of the US. Some have completed their sentences and have been released.
Prism talked today (7/11/12) with C. Fred Whitehurst, the former FBI agent who played the pivotal role in blowing the whistle on the FBI lab. He recalled his previous talk with Prism:
“It is exactly what we were talking about a few months ago. The right angle to this is huge. The FBI is agreeing to look at 10,000 cases when in fact the FBI taught local, state and federal crime lab personnel this analytical technique for decades. That means that in this nation alone there are virtually hundreds of thousands of cases in jeopardy where forensic hair analysis was conducted. We are seeing a holocaust of law enforcement come to light which has been taking place now for decades under the nose of an unsuspecting American nation,” Whitehurst told Prism.
He added: “What changed their minds was the innocence cases in DC that recently were established. And the Washington Post article from Spencer Hsu. What you would look for as a tell in cases is if hair was the only real significant evidence that tied defendants to crimes. Guys in the lab wanting to ‘solve’ the case and be heroes might have pushed the envelope and been the guy who did what no one else could do. I have no doubt there will be more exonerations.”
Mike German of the ACLU, a former FBI Special Agent, believes the DOJ/FBI decision was triggered by pressure over failing to notify defense lawyers or judges that the forensics information was being provided only to prosecutors.
“I think the answer to your ‘why’ question is the Washington Post investigative expose from a few months ago that revealed that the FBI/DOJ had not made a significant effort to find persons convicted based on the suspect FBI forensics, “ German told Prism.
In April, the Washington Post identified two men convicted largely on the testimony of FBI hair analysts who wrongly placed them at crime scenes. The Post wrote: “The government has moved to overturn the conviction of one of the men, who was convicted of a sexual assault. A judge has vacated the conviction of the other man, who was convicted of killing a taxi driver.”
Whitehurst told Prism the FBI would not be using its old, outdated methods to analyze hair samples. He explained: “The FBI quietly changed its protocol a few years ago so that now any hairs that it matches must be then analyzed with DNA analysis.”
He added: “Sadly, though, the FBI changed its protocol realizing that the previous was seriously flawed, convicted defendants were never notified in any way at all. As for the FBI teaching local, state and federal crime lab personnel, that is true. What does that say for all the convictions based on hair analysis conducted by local, state and federal crime labs across the US?”
The Post reported that the Justice Department is partnering with the Innocence Project, a private group, to provide an independent, third-party assessment of the government’s review. The advocacy group is dedicated to reforming the criminal justice system and to exonerating the wrongfully convicted through DNA testing.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also will work with the government on the effort.
The Post quoted former Justice Department inspector general Michael R. Bromwich, who investigated the FBI lab in the 1990s and uncovered serious problems with some FBI lab analyses, called the review “an important and necessary response to the multiple documented cases in which flawed hair microscopy analysis and testimony have led to wrongful convictions.”
The Post quoted him as saying, “Working with the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is a step in the right direction. Nothing can give back the many years those wrongfully convicted defendants spent in prison, but at this point all participants in the criminal justice system — prosecutors, defense lawyers, and the courts — need to make extraordinary efforts to ferret out as quickly as possible any similar cases.”
Some close to the DOJ told Prism that there could be a connection between the speed of the FBI lab announcement and Attorney General Eric Holder’s current difficulties with Republicans in
Congress over the “Fast and Furious” operation, for which Holder has been held in contempt of Congress.
The American Bar Association wrote today that, “According to the Post, hundreds of defendants are still in prison or on parole for crimes in which FBI hair and fiber experts may have wrongly identified them as suspects. And the review of hair evidence issues focused on just one FBI agent while ignoring other problems that may have led to false evidence matches,” the story says.
The ABA added, “Justice Department officials maintain they fulfilled their legal obligations by telling prosecutors of errors and they did not need to directly contact defendants.”
DNA tests this year in two Washington, D.C., cases virtually clear a man convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978 and completely clear a man convicted of a 1981 sexual assault. Both prosecutions relied on evidence of hair matches. But the cases weren’t included in the crime lab review. The Post has a separate story on one of the defendants, Santae Tribble, who was arrested at 17 and served 28 years in prison after his conviction, the ABA reports, adding:
“The review came too late in another case, the Post investigation found. According to a prosecution memo, Benjamin Herbert Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty because of problems in the FBI lab work. He was executed in 1997, a year after the investigation of the lab began.”
Back in April, this reporter did a story about the scandal that arose in the mid-1990s at the FBI criminal laboratory when it was revealed that results of forensic tests on as many as 10,000 cases had been falsified or otherwise presented to juries in ways that were scientifically unfounded and virtually guaranteed to produce guilty verdicts.
The head of the FBI and the Attorney General of the US acknowledged at the time that serious mistakes had been made. But no one ever told the defense attorneys or the defendants.
The DOJ brass formed a Task Force to investigate. They concentrated on the work of a senior forensics analyst, Michael Malone, who was dismissed. That so-called investigation went on for years. In silence.
Until yesterday, that is.
Yesterday was the day the Washington Post announced that the DOJ would now perform analyses of an undetermined number of the cases that were tried during this period and resulted in guilty verdicts. Those convicted are scattered throughout prisons all of the US. Some have completed their sentences and have been released.
Prism talked today (7/11/12) with C. Fred Whitehurst, the former FBI agent who played the pivotal role in blowing the whistle on the FBI lab. He recalled his previous talk with Prism:
“It is exactly what we were talking about a few months ago. The right angle to this is huge. The FBI is agreeing to look at 10,000 cases when in fact the FBI taught local, state and federal crime lab personnel this analytical technique for decades. That means that in this nation alone there are virtually hundreds of thousands of cases in jeopardy where forensic hair analysis was conducted. We are seeing a holocaust of law enforcement come to light which has been taking place now for decades under the nose of an unsuspecting American nation,” Whitehurst told Prism.
He added: “What changed their minds was the innocence cases in DC that recently were established. And the Washington Post article from Spencer Hsu. What you would look for as a tell in cases is if hair was the only real significant evidence that tied defendants to crimes. Guys in the lab wanting to ‘solve’ the case and be heroes might have pushed the envelope and been the guy who did what no one else could do. I have no doubt there will be more exonerations.”
Mike German of the ACLU, a former FBI Special Agent, believes the DOJ/FBI decision was triggered by pressure over failing to notify defense lawyers or judges that the forensics information was being provided only to prosecutors.
“I think the answer to your ‘why’ question is the Washington Post investigative expose from a few months ago that revealed that the FBI/DOJ had not made a significant effort to find persons convicted based on the suspect FBI forensics, “ German told Prism.
In April, the Washington Post identified two men convicted largely on the testimony of FBI hair analysts who wrongly placed them at crime scenes. The Post wrote: “The government has moved to overturn the conviction of one of the men, who was convicted of a sexual assault. A judge has vacated the conviction of the other man, who was convicted of killing a taxi driver.”
Whitehurst told Prism the FBI would not be using its old, outdated methods to analyze hair samples. He explained: “The FBI quietly changed its protocol a few years ago so that now any hairs that it matches must be then analyzed with DNA analysis.”
He added: “Sadly, though, the FBI changed its protocol realizing that the previous was seriously flawed, convicted defendants were never notified in any way at all. As for the FBI teaching local, state and federal crime lab personnel, that is true. What does that say for all the convictions based on hair analysis conducted by local, state and federal crime labs across the US?”
The Post reported that the Justice Department is partnering with the Innocence Project, a private group, to provide an independent, third-party assessment of the government’s review. The advocacy group is dedicated to reforming the criminal justice system and to exonerating the wrongfully convicted through DNA testing.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also will work with the government on the effort.
The Post quoted former Justice Department inspector general Michael R. Bromwich, who investigated the FBI lab in the 1990s and uncovered serious problems with some FBI lab analyses, called the review “an important and necessary response to the multiple documented cases in which flawed hair microscopy analysis and testimony have led to wrongful convictions.”
The Post quoted him as saying, “Working with the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is a step in the right direction. Nothing can give back the many years those wrongfully convicted defendants spent in prison, but at this point all participants in the criminal justice system — prosecutors, defense lawyers, and the courts — need to make extraordinary efforts to ferret out as quickly as possible any similar cases.”
Some close to the DOJ told Prism that there could be a connection between the speed of the FBI lab announcement and Attorney General Eric Holder’s current difficulties with Republicans in
Congress over the “Fast and Furious” operation, for which Holder has been held in contempt of Congress.
The American Bar Association wrote today that, “According to the Post, hundreds of defendants are still in prison or on parole for crimes in which FBI hair and fiber experts may have wrongly identified them as suspects. And the review of hair evidence issues focused on just one FBI agent while ignoring other problems that may have led to false evidence matches,” the story says.
The ABA added, “Justice Department officials maintain they fulfilled their legal obligations by telling prosecutors of errors and they did not need to directly contact defendants.”
DNA tests this year in two Washington, D.C., cases virtually clear a man convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978 and completely clear a man convicted of a 1981 sexual assault. Both prosecutions relied on evidence of hair matches. But the cases weren’t included in the crime lab review. The Post has a separate story on one of the defendants, Santae Tribble, who was arrested at 17 and served 28 years in prison after his conviction, the ABA reports, adding:
“The review came too late in another case, the Post investigation found. According to a prosecution memo, Benjamin Herbert Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty because of problems in the FBI lab work. He was executed in 1997, a year after the investigation of the lab began.”
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Special Administrative Measures: One Step Closer to a Police State
By William Fisher
In his most recent book, “With Liberty and Justice for Some,” Glenn Greenwald charges that the U.S. now has a two-tier justice system – one tier for ordinary defendants, another for those prominent enough to escape any form of accountability for the crimes they fomented.
As if this wasn’t reason enough for national concern, there is yet another bias being played out in our Article III Courts. Legal experts see this bias as emanating from the prosecutorial anxiety associated with the acquittal of a defendant in a terror-related trial.
The widely-popular writer for Salon.com says he expected a good deal of the fear triggered by the 9/11 attacks to have receded; instead, he says, it has grown more intense and irrational and more widely used than ever to obliterate some of the most fundamental values of constitutional law for defendants.
He is far from alone. A virtual posse of constitutional authorities have likewise concluded that we Americans have been terrified into shooting ourselves in the feet by dispensing with the very qualities that make us special.
Scott Horton, a well-respected lawyer who writes for Harper’s Online, says, “Especially after 9/11, prosecutors in what they assert are national-security cases have gained a decisive tactical advantage in court proceedings that makes a mockery of the pretense of a level playing field between prosecutors and defense counsel.”
He adds, “Prosecutors routinely flout their duties to disclose evidence that would assist the defense, and routinely make representations about the gravity of alleged threats which cannot be sustained in the courtroom and which turn out in the end to have been made on the basis of neither any evidence nor any reasonable analysis. There has been a tendency towards grandstanding that has effectively manipulated courts... and has led a good number of federal judges feeling they were deceived. But when the trial judges try to rectify this overreach, they find that conservative federal appeals court judges reverse them, demanding that they give deference to prosecutorial mumbojumbo.”
Summing up, he told Prism, “The ability of prosecutors to improperly influence trial judges is a question that sits right on the frontier of judicial independence. It would be going too far to say that American judges as a class are no longer independent, but on the other hand, particularly in national security cases, the deck has tilted decisively and improperly in favor of the prosecution.”
During the public controversy over the use of our Article III civilian court system to try terror-related defendants, the government’s legal experts were widely quoted as believing that civilian courts would provide much fairer trials for these defendants, while ensuring their conviction and imprisonment. The civilian court system was thought to be a mature institution, while Guantanamo’s Military Commissions were untried and, as one military defense attorney was told, the Military Commissions were intended to convict people.
Comparing outcomes in the two venues, there doesn’t seem to be very much qualitative difference.
One of those most infuriated by our publicity-heavy attempts to ramp up our “national security” anxieties is Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College. Dr. Theoharis was in the forefront of a substantial community grassroots effort to mount a robust defense for Syed Hashmi, US-born of Pakistani nationality.
Hashmi was a student of Theoharis at Brooklyn College. On the eve of his federal trial in 2009, he pled guilty to helping Al Qaeda. Hashmi, 30, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on one count of providing material support to a terrorist organization. Had he not pled, he would have faced a 70-year sentence.
The former Brooklyn College student was arrested in London in 2006. The government accused him of passing “gear” to Al Qaeda; the gear consisted of a suitcase containing rain ponchos and heavy socks.
After his arrest, he was held in twenty-three-hour-a-day solitary confinement for nearly three years. The government’s case rested on the testimony and actions of an old acquaintance of Hashmi’s who turned government informant after his own arrest.
Theoharis points to a number of specific liberties that were denied to Hashmi and other pre-trial defendants in terror-related cases. She notes with modesty that these are simply off the top of her head and attributes their application to the radical political views Hashmi embraced before he was arrested. Yet last time Prism looked this up, expressing such views was the most basic of our First Amendment freedoms.
Theoharis charges that people like Fahad Hashmi and Tarek Mehanna were targeted in part for their political speech and association, which formed part of the government's case against them. Also, she adds, in many of these cases with FBI informants, what informants are sent into mosques to listen for, initially, are people voicing opinions and ideas critical of the United States.
Tarek Mehanna is an American pharmacist serving a 17-and-a-half year prison sentence after having been convicted of conspiring to help Al Qaeda.
Following the Mehanna sentencing, the ACLU released a statement saying that the suppression of unpopular ideas is contrary to American values, and that the verdict undermines the First Amendment.
Theoharis points to the right of a defendant to see and examine the evidence against him/her. But in many of these cases, much of the evidence is classified under CIPA, the Classified Information Act, passed by Congress in 1980. CIPA presents guidelines for the use of classified information by both government and defendant in a legal case. But defendants don't get to review it.
Theoharis also sees a defendant’s right to counsel diminished in terror-related cases. She says that one of the side effects of CIPA is that lawyers often go through a CIA-level screening to be able to review the evidence but they are not allowed to share what they saw with their client. According to Theoharis, this drives a wedge into the attorney client relationship.
Punishment before conviction is one of Theoharis’s most serious concerns. Like her former student, many terror suspects spend years in pre-trial solitary confinement. This degrades their health and ability to participate in their own defense, she says.
Due process: Theoharis says that while there are ostensibly ways to challenge these conditions of confinement and the application of SAMs, almost no one succeeds in using these administrative processes to actually get their SAMs removed or conditions altered.
Right to a speedy trial: Because much of the evidence is classified in many of these cases, people are impelled to waive their speedy trial rights under the Eighth Amendment to give their counsel adequate time to review the evidence. One defendant, Sami Al Arian, has been largely locked up, in one type of facility or another, for more than nine years.
Confidentiality of attorney-client communications. Lawyers representing people accused of terror-related offenses have been notified that their working sessions with their clients are no longer confidential. This ruling was made because prison authorities feared that defendants were using their attorneys to deliver messages to their colleagues. But the ruling struck a body blow at one of the bedrock principles of legal representation. One result is that lawyers are becoming reluctant to take on the defense of terror suspects.
Numerous legal experts have commented that ordinary citizens who have been charged but not tried would be unlikely to be punished for speaking out, regardless of how radically -- because speech is protected by the Constitution. But where terrorism is involved, prosecutors and judges find themselves conflating free speech with overt action.
How has this erosion of liberties taken place? Is it government by the rule of law or the law of the Wild West? Or is it some informal ad hoc arrangement between prosecutors and jailers?
Amy Fettig, a senior counsel with the ACLU’s Prison Project, has studied the SAMs regimen and is familiar with both its content and its application by Federal authorities.
She told Prism:
“Less than two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Department of Justice issued an interim rule that drastically expanded the scope of the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) powers under the special administrative measures (SAMs) promulgated in the mid-1990’s after the first bombings of the World Trade Center and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma. The regulation became effective immediately without the usual opportunity for prior public comment.
“The original SAMs promulgated during the Clinton Administration allowed the government to impose special administrative measures on certain federal inmates, including solitary confinement, interception of mail, and restriction on telephone calls and visitors.
“Before imposing a SAM, the rule required a specific determination by the Attorney General that the measure was ‘reasonably necessary’ in order to deter future acts of violence or terrorism. The rule also limited the extent of a SAM by placing a 120-day time limit, renewable on reapplication in 120-day increments.
“In contrast, the SAMs re-promulgated after 9/11 are an unprecedented frontal assault on the attorney-client privilege and the right to counsel guaranteed by the Constitution.
“The current SAMs allow the Attorney General unlimited and unreviewable discretion to strip any person in federal custody of the right to communicate confidentially with an attorney. In any case in which the Attorney General believes that there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ that a person in custody ‘may’ use communications with attorneys or their agents ‘to further or facilitate acts of terrorism,’ the Director of BOP ‘shall … provide appropriate procedures for the monitoring or review of communications between the inmate and attorneys or attorneys’ agents who are traditionally covered by the attorney-client privilege…’
“It is especially disturbing that the provisions for monitoring confidential attorney-client communications apply not only to convicted prisoners in the custody of the BOP, but to all persons in the custody of the Department of Justice, including pretrial detainees who have not been convicted of crime and are presumed innocent, as well as material witnesses and immigration detainees, who are not accused of any crime.
“In addition to the broad nullification of the attorney-client privilege allowed under these BOP regulations, SAMs no longer have a 120-day time limit and the revised regulation also permit monitoring and measures that include extreme forms of social isolation, such as housing in segregation and limitations on visitation and other contact with the outside world, for one-year periods with indefinite renewal of additional one-year intervals.
“The revised BOP SAMs rules are a direct assault on the attorney-client privilege that flies in the face of our Constitution and the underlying principles of our legal system. Under the SAMs, a defendant and his counsel are confronted not just by the fear that the government is monitoring communications, but by the certain knowledge that it is doing so. Such a defendant is told that none of his communications with his attorney will be confidential – that all such communications, whether conducted in person, by mail, or by telephone, are subject to government monitoring. Under such conditions, the right to counsel as consistently defined by our courts, is essentially undermined.
“Additionally, the SAMs regulations may subject individuals, including individuals who are seriously mentally ill, to indefinitely renewable, long-term solitary confinement without any evaluation of their mental state or existing mental illness. Federal courts have consistently held that such isolation violates the Constitution when inflicted on the seriously mentally ill. This callous disregard for Constitutional protections in regulations promulgated by the U.S. Department of Justice sends a disturbing signal that automatic deference to assertions of national security is dangerously trumping our rule of law.”
Many prison experts believe SAMs, including solitary confinement, are both cruel and ineffective, and needlessly increase the anger of prisoners toward their captors.
But the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, Charles E. Samuels Jr., doesn’t see it that way.
At the very first Congressional hearing ever held on the subject of segregation, or solitary confinement under the SAMs, he explained that “SAMs are special conditions of confinement or limitation of privileges that are reasonably necessary to prevent disclosure of national security information or prevent acts of violence and/or terrorism…SAMs restrict access to mail, media, telephone, and/or visitors, depending upon the specific risk factors.”
Testifying that “this restricted form of housing applies to only a small number of inmates within the Bureau,” Samuels told the Senators that “the use of restricted housing, however limited, remains a critical management tool that helps us maintain safety, security, and effective reentry programming for the vast majority of federal inmates housed in general population.”
But that is not the issue here. The issue here is whether the justice system should be using these administrative tools to put a gag on prisoners who have every right to speak out.
The precise number of prisoners living under SAMs is difficult to know – the Bureau of Prisons will not comment. The Director of the Bureau also testified at the Senate last week that he didn’t know the exact number of mentally ill inmates locked up in the US prison system as well as the number of those living under SAMs.
The number under SAMs is thought to be about 50, with 30 of those charged with terror-related crimes. But if the Director of the Bureau of Prisons has the slightest interest in making this problem less disgraceful, he needs to begin with an accurate count.
And he needs to disclose it to the public.
Senator Durbin and the members of the Judiciary Committee hope to attract support for a full-blown review of SAMs and other administrative coercions, leading to regulations that achieve more with a lot less pain.
In his most recent book, “With Liberty and Justice for Some,” Glenn Greenwald charges that the U.S. now has a two-tier justice system – one tier for ordinary defendants, another for those prominent enough to escape any form of accountability for the crimes they fomented.
As if this wasn’t reason enough for national concern, there is yet another bias being played out in our Article III Courts. Legal experts see this bias as emanating from the prosecutorial anxiety associated with the acquittal of a defendant in a terror-related trial.
The widely-popular writer for Salon.com says he expected a good deal of the fear triggered by the 9/11 attacks to have receded; instead, he says, it has grown more intense and irrational and more widely used than ever to obliterate some of the most fundamental values of constitutional law for defendants.
He is far from alone. A virtual posse of constitutional authorities have likewise concluded that we Americans have been terrified into shooting ourselves in the feet by dispensing with the very qualities that make us special.
Scott Horton, a well-respected lawyer who writes for Harper’s Online, says, “Especially after 9/11, prosecutors in what they assert are national-security cases have gained a decisive tactical advantage in court proceedings that makes a mockery of the pretense of a level playing field between prosecutors and defense counsel.”
He adds, “Prosecutors routinely flout their duties to disclose evidence that would assist the defense, and routinely make representations about the gravity of alleged threats which cannot be sustained in the courtroom and which turn out in the end to have been made on the basis of neither any evidence nor any reasonable analysis. There has been a tendency towards grandstanding that has effectively manipulated courts... and has led a good number of federal judges feeling they were deceived. But when the trial judges try to rectify this overreach, they find that conservative federal appeals court judges reverse them, demanding that they give deference to prosecutorial mumbojumbo.”
Summing up, he told Prism, “The ability of prosecutors to improperly influence trial judges is a question that sits right on the frontier of judicial independence. It would be going too far to say that American judges as a class are no longer independent, but on the other hand, particularly in national security cases, the deck has tilted decisively and improperly in favor of the prosecution.”
During the public controversy over the use of our Article III civilian court system to try terror-related defendants, the government’s legal experts were widely quoted as believing that civilian courts would provide much fairer trials for these defendants, while ensuring their conviction and imprisonment. The civilian court system was thought to be a mature institution, while Guantanamo’s Military Commissions were untried and, as one military defense attorney was told, the Military Commissions were intended to convict people.
Comparing outcomes in the two venues, there doesn’t seem to be very much qualitative difference.
One of those most infuriated by our publicity-heavy attempts to ramp up our “national security” anxieties is Dr. Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College. Dr. Theoharis was in the forefront of a substantial community grassroots effort to mount a robust defense for Syed Hashmi, US-born of Pakistani nationality.
Hashmi was a student of Theoharis at Brooklyn College. On the eve of his federal trial in 2009, he pled guilty to helping Al Qaeda. Hashmi, 30, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on one count of providing material support to a terrorist organization. Had he not pled, he would have faced a 70-year sentence.
The former Brooklyn College student was arrested in London in 2006. The government accused him of passing “gear” to Al Qaeda; the gear consisted of a suitcase containing rain ponchos and heavy socks.
After his arrest, he was held in twenty-three-hour-a-day solitary confinement for nearly three years. The government’s case rested on the testimony and actions of an old acquaintance of Hashmi’s who turned government informant after his own arrest.
Theoharis points to a number of specific liberties that were denied to Hashmi and other pre-trial defendants in terror-related cases. She notes with modesty that these are simply off the top of her head and attributes their application to the radical political views Hashmi embraced before he was arrested. Yet last time Prism looked this up, expressing such views was the most basic of our First Amendment freedoms.
Theoharis charges that people like Fahad Hashmi and Tarek Mehanna were targeted in part for their political speech and association, which formed part of the government's case against them. Also, she adds, in many of these cases with FBI informants, what informants are sent into mosques to listen for, initially, are people voicing opinions and ideas critical of the United States.
Tarek Mehanna is an American pharmacist serving a 17-and-a-half year prison sentence after having been convicted of conspiring to help Al Qaeda.
Following the Mehanna sentencing, the ACLU released a statement saying that the suppression of unpopular ideas is contrary to American values, and that the verdict undermines the First Amendment.
Theoharis points to the right of a defendant to see and examine the evidence against him/her. But in many of these cases, much of the evidence is classified under CIPA, the Classified Information Act, passed by Congress in 1980. CIPA presents guidelines for the use of classified information by both government and defendant in a legal case. But defendants don't get to review it.
Theoharis also sees a defendant’s right to counsel diminished in terror-related cases. She says that one of the side effects of CIPA is that lawyers often go through a CIA-level screening to be able to review the evidence but they are not allowed to share what they saw with their client. According to Theoharis, this drives a wedge into the attorney client relationship.
Punishment before conviction is one of Theoharis’s most serious concerns. Like her former student, many terror suspects spend years in pre-trial solitary confinement. This degrades their health and ability to participate in their own defense, she says.
Due process: Theoharis says that while there are ostensibly ways to challenge these conditions of confinement and the application of SAMs, almost no one succeeds in using these administrative processes to actually get their SAMs removed or conditions altered.
Right to a speedy trial: Because much of the evidence is classified in many of these cases, people are impelled to waive their speedy trial rights under the Eighth Amendment to give their counsel adequate time to review the evidence. One defendant, Sami Al Arian, has been largely locked up, in one type of facility or another, for more than nine years.
Confidentiality of attorney-client communications. Lawyers representing people accused of terror-related offenses have been notified that their working sessions with their clients are no longer confidential. This ruling was made because prison authorities feared that defendants were using their attorneys to deliver messages to their colleagues. But the ruling struck a body blow at one of the bedrock principles of legal representation. One result is that lawyers are becoming reluctant to take on the defense of terror suspects.
Numerous legal experts have commented that ordinary citizens who have been charged but not tried would be unlikely to be punished for speaking out, regardless of how radically -- because speech is protected by the Constitution. But where terrorism is involved, prosecutors and judges find themselves conflating free speech with overt action.
How has this erosion of liberties taken place? Is it government by the rule of law or the law of the Wild West? Or is it some informal ad hoc arrangement between prosecutors and jailers?
Amy Fettig, a senior counsel with the ACLU’s Prison Project, has studied the SAMs regimen and is familiar with both its content and its application by Federal authorities.
She told Prism:
“Less than two months after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Department of Justice issued an interim rule that drastically expanded the scope of the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) powers under the special administrative measures (SAMs) promulgated in the mid-1990’s after the first bombings of the World Trade Center and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma. The regulation became effective immediately without the usual opportunity for prior public comment.
“The original SAMs promulgated during the Clinton Administration allowed the government to impose special administrative measures on certain federal inmates, including solitary confinement, interception of mail, and restriction on telephone calls and visitors.
“Before imposing a SAM, the rule required a specific determination by the Attorney General that the measure was ‘reasonably necessary’ in order to deter future acts of violence or terrorism. The rule also limited the extent of a SAM by placing a 120-day time limit, renewable on reapplication in 120-day increments.
“In contrast, the SAMs re-promulgated after 9/11 are an unprecedented frontal assault on the attorney-client privilege and the right to counsel guaranteed by the Constitution.
“The current SAMs allow the Attorney General unlimited and unreviewable discretion to strip any person in federal custody of the right to communicate confidentially with an attorney. In any case in which the Attorney General believes that there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ that a person in custody ‘may’ use communications with attorneys or their agents ‘to further or facilitate acts of terrorism,’ the Director of BOP ‘shall … provide appropriate procedures for the monitoring or review of communications between the inmate and attorneys or attorneys’ agents who are traditionally covered by the attorney-client privilege…’
“It is especially disturbing that the provisions for monitoring confidential attorney-client communications apply not only to convicted prisoners in the custody of the BOP, but to all persons in the custody of the Department of Justice, including pretrial detainees who have not been convicted of crime and are presumed innocent, as well as material witnesses and immigration detainees, who are not accused of any crime.
“In addition to the broad nullification of the attorney-client privilege allowed under these BOP regulations, SAMs no longer have a 120-day time limit and the revised regulation also permit monitoring and measures that include extreme forms of social isolation, such as housing in segregation and limitations on visitation and other contact with the outside world, for one-year periods with indefinite renewal of additional one-year intervals.
“The revised BOP SAMs rules are a direct assault on the attorney-client privilege that flies in the face of our Constitution and the underlying principles of our legal system. Under the SAMs, a defendant and his counsel are confronted not just by the fear that the government is monitoring communications, but by the certain knowledge that it is doing so. Such a defendant is told that none of his communications with his attorney will be confidential – that all such communications, whether conducted in person, by mail, or by telephone, are subject to government monitoring. Under such conditions, the right to counsel as consistently defined by our courts, is essentially undermined.
“Additionally, the SAMs regulations may subject individuals, including individuals who are seriously mentally ill, to indefinitely renewable, long-term solitary confinement without any evaluation of their mental state or existing mental illness. Federal courts have consistently held that such isolation violates the Constitution when inflicted on the seriously mentally ill. This callous disregard for Constitutional protections in regulations promulgated by the U.S. Department of Justice sends a disturbing signal that automatic deference to assertions of national security is dangerously trumping our rule of law.”
Many prison experts believe SAMs, including solitary confinement, are both cruel and ineffective, and needlessly increase the anger of prisoners toward their captors.
But the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, Charles E. Samuels Jr., doesn’t see it that way.
At the very first Congressional hearing ever held on the subject of segregation, or solitary confinement under the SAMs, he explained that “SAMs are special conditions of confinement or limitation of privileges that are reasonably necessary to prevent disclosure of national security information or prevent acts of violence and/or terrorism…SAMs restrict access to mail, media, telephone, and/or visitors, depending upon the specific risk factors.”
Testifying that “this restricted form of housing applies to only a small number of inmates within the Bureau,” Samuels told the Senators that “the use of restricted housing, however limited, remains a critical management tool that helps us maintain safety, security, and effective reentry programming for the vast majority of federal inmates housed in general population.”
But that is not the issue here. The issue here is whether the justice system should be using these administrative tools to put a gag on prisoners who have every right to speak out.
The precise number of prisoners living under SAMs is difficult to know – the Bureau of Prisons will not comment. The Director of the Bureau also testified at the Senate last week that he didn’t know the exact number of mentally ill inmates locked up in the US prison system as well as the number of those living under SAMs.
The number under SAMs is thought to be about 50, with 30 of those charged with terror-related crimes. But if the Director of the Bureau of Prisons has the slightest interest in making this problem less disgraceful, he needs to begin with an accurate count.
And he needs to disclose it to the public.
Senator Durbin and the members of the Judiciary Committee hope to attract support for a full-blown review of SAMs and other administrative coercions, leading to regulations that achieve more with a lot less pain.
Virginia’s Political Asset
By William Fisher
The news item, bylined by the Washington Post’s Anita Kumar, was so small I almost missed it. But I didn’t.
It reported that “the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates killed a bill that would have required the state to study ways to limit the use of solitary confinement in state prisons,” especially those housing mentally ill inmates as is done at Red Onion State Prison in Wise County.
Should we be surprised? After all, Virginia (at least Southern Virginia) is among the reddest of the red states. The Republican zoo animals who sit in the House of Delegates have this urgent need to throw large dollops of red meat out to their constituents with some frequency.
And, it seems, there’s no redder meat than being super-tough on crime. Especially when Democrats are trying to understand how their most violent inmates are treated and what, if anything, could be done to reduce the mayhem.
It was precisely that investigative mission that Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington), Del. Charniele Herring (D-Alexandria) and Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) had in mind when they proposed a bill after visiting state prisons last fall.
The Republican-controlled House killed the bill in short order in its Rules Committee, Ms. Kumar reports. A similar bill in the Senate has yet to be heard, but she says it’s unlikely that the House would change its position.
Just by way of background, Kumar reports that Virginia is one of 44 states that use solitary confinement, has 1,800 people in isolation, a sizable share of the estimated 25,000 people in solitary in the nation’s state and federal prisons.
Lamentably, the GOP’s Kill-Bill action synchronized awkwardly with Sen. Dick Durbin’s efforts at the national level to shine a little sun on the unspeakably barbarian practices of our penal system.
The Senate’s Number Two Democrat had called a hearing – the first of it kind ever to be held by Congress. The audience heard blood-curdling descriptions of endless solitary confinement, lack of food, lack of health care, mental illness, suicide, and – perhaps worst – lack of dignity.
As we work overtime to stuff our prisons with low-level, mostly brown-skinned, mostly non-violent inmates, more will become known about the effects of isolation — on inmate health, public safety and prison budgets.
And prison authorities in some states, even Red ones, may finally understand that the chances of a relatively smooth-running prison do not improve in direct ratio to the cruelty meted out.
The Washington Post story says that, according to lawyers and inmates, some of the state’s 40,000 prisoners, including some with mental health issues, have been kept in isolation for years, in one case for 14 years. That’s unlikely to produce warm and fuzzy feelings from those who are isolated.
What’s totally predictable is that those prisoners are going to be exponentially more frustrated and full of rage – very bad candidates for better behavior.
Even if their anger is a political asset.
Our lawmakers desperately need to understand some of the paths toward better behavior. If they don’t, we’ll just go on spending more money and throwing more lives on the landfill of broken lives.
The news item, bylined by the Washington Post’s Anita Kumar, was so small I almost missed it. But I didn’t.
It reported that “the Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates killed a bill that would have required the state to study ways to limit the use of solitary confinement in state prisons,” especially those housing mentally ill inmates as is done at Red Onion State Prison in Wise County.
Should we be surprised? After all, Virginia (at least Southern Virginia) is among the reddest of the red states. The Republican zoo animals who sit in the House of Delegates have this urgent need to throw large dollops of red meat out to their constituents with some frequency.
And, it seems, there’s no redder meat than being super-tough on crime. Especially when Democrats are trying to understand how their most violent inmates are treated and what, if anything, could be done to reduce the mayhem.
It was precisely that investigative mission that Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington), Del. Charniele Herring (D-Alexandria) and Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) had in mind when they proposed a bill after visiting state prisons last fall.
The Republican-controlled House killed the bill in short order in its Rules Committee, Ms. Kumar reports. A similar bill in the Senate has yet to be heard, but she says it’s unlikely that the House would change its position.
Just by way of background, Kumar reports that Virginia is one of 44 states that use solitary confinement, has 1,800 people in isolation, a sizable share of the estimated 25,000 people in solitary in the nation’s state and federal prisons.
Lamentably, the GOP’s Kill-Bill action synchronized awkwardly with Sen. Dick Durbin’s efforts at the national level to shine a little sun on the unspeakably barbarian practices of our penal system.
The Senate’s Number Two Democrat had called a hearing – the first of it kind ever to be held by Congress. The audience heard blood-curdling descriptions of endless solitary confinement, lack of food, lack of health care, mental illness, suicide, and – perhaps worst – lack of dignity.
As we work overtime to stuff our prisons with low-level, mostly brown-skinned, mostly non-violent inmates, more will become known about the effects of isolation — on inmate health, public safety and prison budgets.
And prison authorities in some states, even Red ones, may finally understand that the chances of a relatively smooth-running prison do not improve in direct ratio to the cruelty meted out.
The Washington Post story says that, according to lawyers and inmates, some of the state’s 40,000 prisoners, including some with mental health issues, have been kept in isolation for years, in one case for 14 years. That’s unlikely to produce warm and fuzzy feelings from those who are isolated.
What’s totally predictable is that those prisoners are going to be exponentially more frustrated and full of rage – very bad candidates for better behavior.
Even if their anger is a political asset.
Our lawmakers desperately need to understand some of the paths toward better behavior. If they don’t, we’ll just go on spending more money and throwing more lives on the landfill of broken lives.
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