Jim Webb & prison reform

Jim Webb is officially my favorite American politician.

This week, he went on the Senate floor to propose a commission aimed at fundamental prison reform, including an 18 month long look at American drug laws and sentencing positions. Considering how ridiculous people are about their quixotic “War on crime,” the risks for Webb appears to be monumental. No sitting senator, to say nothing of first-termers, has even close to his level of courage and conviction.

The odds of the recommendations by the commission he proposed resulting in meaningful change seem limited. An earlier commission recommended President Nixon overhaul drug policy in 1972. Nixon didn’t. It is likely President Obama will do the same to recommendations by Webb’s commission. However, ff nothing else, it’ll advance the national conversation and at the very least, get some aspects of its recommendations passed into law.

The prison system is a self-propagating monster, sucking billions off the public teat, with no core value aside from “keep them here longer. More money for us. Look how safe you are!” A single prisoner on average costs as much per year to support as a recent college graduate, about 30000 dollars. Sentences have gotten longer too so this cost is spread over a larger period of time. Imagine the outcry if the public was asked to pay for a large demographic with no commensurate reward. At least, recent college graduates typically work, pay taxes, earn more, pay more taxes, provide services etc. The prison system cannot claim anything similar, only the nebulous assertion that they’re “keeping us safe” and providing slave labor, to say nothing of the cycle of recidivism inbuilt into it. Former Oregon State Rep Kevin Mannix once suggested Nike move its sweatshop in Indonesia to America so it could take advantage of the competitive American prison workforce, suggesting the true value of prisoners to America today. By moving the “problems” out of sight and forcing taxpayers to pay for them ie. prisoners while simultaneously making a profit out of them, the prison system, always evil, has become even more so.

The punishment for a typical non-violent drug offence is similar to a bank robbery, for instance. Yet, more and more politicians propose even more cops on the street, even more arrests, ever harsher laws. Apparently, we’re safe but also poor and guilty of unjustifiable unfairness. You need literally a 100 times more cocaine to be punished the same way as for minimum possession of crack, which only poor people use anyway. I’ve lived among white folk and black folk, Asian folk and Hispanic. It’s a lie to say blacks and Hispanics do more drugs than whites and Asians.

Consider this: If you steal three separate bicycles, you could be looking at life in prison. You’ll work, of course, manufacturing ID tags and canteens, military helmets, paintbrushes, at minimum wage. This is how prisons make a profit. Regardless, they are paid a fixed amount of money from the government per prisoner.

Jim Webb is a first-term Senator from a barely Democratic area. He’s got nothing riding on this but principle. Very few politicians can get past an accusation of being “soft on crime,” especially Democrats who think the only way to avoid this is by putting as many people in jail as they can so they can appear “tough on crime,” by bringing more prisons to their states.

Over the last year, Jim Webb managed to pass his GI Bill which ensured fairer treatment for combat veterans while “patriotic” Americans like John McCain argued that he was reducing the army’s pool by giving them a fair shot at life. This sort of political expediency and callousness is commonplace across the political spectrum. Two days ago, President Barack Obama laughed off a serious question about drug policy. Granted, he’s got enough on his plate right now, and that derision was more likely than not, calculated. Yet, it rankles.

We have 5% of the world’s population; we have 25% of the world’s known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States, the world’s greatest democracy, that is five times as high as the average incarceration rate of the rest of the world. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice.

….Not simply incarceration, not simply gang violence, not simply reentry, but all of those
and others together so that we can have a much-needed and long overdue restructuring of
how we address the issue of crime in this country.

-from Jim Webb’s Senate floor speech

See what I said earlier? How I had pieces I wanted to fix? Pieces that wouldn’t require much political capital to fix? Increase the amount of crack that gets you a sentence? Fairer pay for prison sweatshop workers? Less subsidies for prisons? Jim Webb doesn’t care about those things. This man wants to fix the whole damn system, costs to himself be damned. God love him. That’s the kind of politician the world needs.