Biweekly Discussion - Is Mass Incarceration a Conspiracy?

Name: Biweekly Discussion - Is Mass Incarceration a Conspiracy?
Start: 2023-08-20T13:00:00-04:00
End: 2023-08-20T15:00:00-04:00

Hosted by Brian B.

Super Organizer

Skeptics In The Pub - Philly

Details

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Just clink on the Zoom link below at the appropriate date/time...

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IS MASS INCARCERATION A CONSPIRACY?

FACT-CHECKING THEORIES OF THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, PRISON SLAVERY, SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE & THE NEW JIM CROW

INTRODUCTION:

This meetup will address a variety of conspiracy theories about America's prison system that have become fairly mainstream over the past decade or so. The skeptic movement has done a fairly good job of debunking some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories about "secret prisons" common on the radical right - e.g. Obama-era rumors that secret FEMA prison camps were being erected in preparation for a manufactured civil emergency that will result in martial law. Brian Dunning devoted an episode of his Skeptoid podcast to debunking the FEMA camps conspiracy theory, and Popular Mechanics even addressed it.

The FEMA camp conspiracy theories appeared to be mostly confined to the fringes of society and have faded in recent years, so we won't address them in this discussion. However, there's a variety of more plausible-sounding conspiracy theories about American prisons -- specially allegations of hidden motives behind mass incarceration -- that have become prevalent among many liberals & libertarians over the past decade or so. While these theories often blur together in practice, in this meetup we'll break these conspiracy theories down into 4 common permutations: (1) the Prison-Industrial Complex, (2) Prison as Modern Day Slavery, (3) the School-to-Prison Pipeline, and (4) the War on Drugs as the means for "The New Jim Crow".

As with previous meetups where we addressed conspiracy theories, it's necessary for us to consider alternative hypotheses as well. We can probably sort theories for mass incarceration into 4 general categories -- the first two are non-conspiratorial while the latter two involve different types of conspiracies:

(1) Good Policy: Mass incarceration is a necessary evil to protect the public from dangerous criminals,

(2) Policy Failure: Mass incarceration is an unnecessary evil and an unintended consequence of poorly designed criminal justice policies,

(3) Policy Failure with a Retroactive Conspiracy: Mass incarceration is an unintended consequence of poorly designed criminal justice policies, but it has become entrenched because it benefits certain powerful groups.

(4) Proactive Conspiracy: Mass incarceration is the intentional result of the prior planning & orchestration of certain powerful groups who benefit from it.

BASIC FACTS & TRENDS IN THE INCARCERATION RATE IN THE U.S.

Before we dive into the various conspiracy theories about mass incarceration, it would help if everyone has a grasp of the basic facts about trends in both the crime rate & the incarceration rate in the U.S. Wikipedia provides a decent overview:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

Crime rates fluctuated dramatically throughout the 20th century. Since changes in the classifications of crimes and problems with reporting cloud a lot of the data on crime rates, it's often helpful to use the homicide rate as a rough proxy for the violent crime rate. In the first decade of the 20th century, the homicide rate was fairly low around 5 per 100K, which despite scant reporting from earlier decades is generally agreed upon to be much lower than homicide rates in the 19th century or earlier centuries. (Refer to Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature for reasons why the U.S. and other Western nations experienced this historic decline in violence as they industrialized.) There was a spike in the homicide rate between 1907 & 1911 where it rose to between 8-9 per 100K, then it fell back to around 5.5 per 100K by 1913. However, the rate began to rise again in the teens and accelerated during the 1920s, perhaps due to violent clashes among gangs during National Prohibition of alcohol. By 1933, the homicide rate was around 9.5 per 100K, but Prohibition was repealed that year and the rate fell dramatically in subsequent years, reaching a low of about 5 per 100K again in 1943. There was a modest spike in homicides in the late 1940s up to around 6.5 per 100K, but it dropped back to 5 per 100K by 1950 and stayed around there through the rest of the decade. However, despite the economic prosperity of the 1960s, the homicide rate began to rise and by 1970 it was back around 6.5. per 100K and over 10 per 100K by 1973 despite Nixon's efforts to get "tough on crime". The homicide rate stayed 8-10 per 100K throughout the 1970s & 1980s during the "crack epidemic", but it began to drop dramatically after 1993. By 2000, the homicide rate was below 6 per 100K and by 2010 it was at historic lows of around 5 per 100K, with no discernible rise during the economic turmoil of the Great Recession. Despite a brief spike in homicide during 2015-16, the rate still didn't rise above 6 per 100K until 2020, even as certain cities like Chicago have experienced large increases in their homicides, since this is counterbalanced by other cities like New York where homicides have stayed very low. However, with disruption caused by the COVID pandemic and the anti-police riots in 2020, the murder rate rose and remained high in 2021 reaching 6.9 per 100K. It remains to be seen if this trend will subside in coming years, or if it will continue to rise and possible reach the higher level of homicides we saw back in the 1980s.

Incarceration rates in the 20th century did not experience nearly as many rises and falls. (In the following description of incarceration rates, I'll focus on the rate for men, with the understanding that the rate for women is only about half that of men.) Despite the dramatic crime increase during Prohibition, the incarceration rate merely rose from 150 per 100K in 1925 to 250 per 100K in 1939. The rate fell back to around 200 by 1945 and stayed at about that level throughout the 1950s and didn't see much of a rise until around 1975 despite the increase in crime rates. However, the incarceration rate rose to around 300 per 100K by 1980 and then shot up dramatically, reaching a peak of around 900 per 100K in 1999 even as the crime rate dropped. Since then, the incarceration rate has remained high, fluctuating between 900 & 1000 per 100K in the 2000s. This big discrepancy between historic lows in the violent crime rate and historically high incarceration rate created a political push for criminal justice reform during the second term of Obama's presidency. These efforts partly payed off, so that by 2016 the incarceration rate was at a 20-year low of around 450 per 100K. Surprisingly, this downward trend continued in the Trump era, so that by 2020 the imprisonment rate was 358 per 100K, the lowest since 1992. Nevertheless, the U.S. incarceration rate remains quite high by the standards of the early to mid 20th century and is still the highest by far in the developed world.

RELEVANT MATERIAL FROM PAST MEETUPS:

In a meetup back in May of 2017 entitled "The Historical Study of Violence" we looked at various theories for the crime rate drop of the 1990s which include a reduction in unwanted children due to the legalization of abortion after Roe v. Wade, a reduction in childhood lead exposure after the ban on leaded paint in 1978 & leaded gasoline in 1995, the "broken windows policing" of the 1990s which focused on cleaning up neighborhoods by targeting even nuisance crimes, the improved economy of the 1990s, and the subject of this discussion -- i.e. a reduction of criminals on the street due to mass incarceration. While the abortion-crime link is now mostly considered debunked, the other theories are still seriously debated and criminologists appear to have no general consensus on what caused the crime rate to drop.

In a meetup in Apr. 2018, we examined the data on racial bias in police use of force incidents in the U.S. Two of the basic takeaways was that the data collection & aggregation on police use of force isn't very comprehensive, but even with the data we have there was a lot of dishonest "massaging" of statistics to either support or counter the charges of systematic racism by police depending on the ideological biases of the journalists & pundits telling the story. We discussed a post by the rationalist blogger Scott Alexander where he stated that the best studies that control for crime rate differentials indicate there's ambiguity about the level of racial bias in police stops & minor drug arrests, but there seems to be little or no racial bias in arrests for serious violent crime, prosecutions or convictions. The actual level of racial bias is limited & only unambiguously present in sentencing, and there only at a level of 10-20%, and that only if you believe the most damning studies. Nevertheless, income disparities between blacks & whites means that police work that focuses more on poor urban neighborhoods has disproportionate racial effects.

In December of 2018, the Philly Political Agnostics had a meetup entitled "Crime & Theories of Punishment". They discussed how the death penalty doesn't have much of a deterrence effect when compared to a life sentence, and how in general the deterrence effect of a punishment appears to be mostly determined by how swift & certain it is rather than its severity. They also discussed how even in Norway's correctional system which is widely lauded for its ability to rehabilitate inmates, there's still a 20% recidivism rate, and it's not clear how it would translate to an American context with much higher violent crime rates.

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DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of the mainstream conspiracy theories about mass incarceration in the U.S. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles & watch all the videos prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about about 44 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.

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I. PRIVATE PRISONS & THE "PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX"

DO CRITICS OF PRIVATE PRISONS INCORRECTLY THINK THAT MANY OR MOST U.S. PRISONERS ARE IN PRIVATE PRISONS (IT'S ONLY 8-10% ), OR IS IT MORE OF A MORAL OBJECTION BASED ON PROFITING OFF IMPRISONMENT?
CONSIDERING ABOUT 90% OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE IN PRIVATE DETENTION FACILITIES, SHOULD THEIR LOBBYING ON IMMIGRATION POLICY BE THE BIGGER CONCERN? HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO THE LOBBYING OF LABOR UNIONS?
SINCE THE PRIVATE PRISON BOOM IN THE LATE 1990s CAME AFTER THE TREND TOWARDS MASS INCARCERATION, DOES THAT MEAN IT WAS NOT A MAJOR DRIVER?
DO PRIVATE PRISON CONTRACTS HAVE 70-90% "LOCK-UP QUOTAS" THAT FORCE JUDGES TO SEND THEM MORE CONVICTS, OR DO THE CONTRACTS MERELY GUARANTEE THEM PAID WHETHER OR NOT THEY HAVE A CERTAIN PERCENT OF CELLS OCCUPIED?
DOES PAYING FOR EMPTY CELLS IN A PRIVATE PRISON CONSTITUTE A "LOW-CRIME TAX", AS SOME CRITICS ALLEGE?
DOES LOBBYING BY PRIVATE PRISONS CREATE A PERVERSE INCENTIVE TOWARDS MASS INCARCERATION?
DO CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS UNIONS AT STATE & FEDERAL PRISONS ALSO ENGAGE IN LOBBYING? IF SO, DOES THIS MAKE LOBBYING BY PRIVATE PRISONS LESS UNIQUE AS A DRIVER OF INCARCERATION?
ARE CONDITIONS IN PRIVATE PRISONS MORE OR LESS DANGEROUS TO INMATES?
COULD THE MISTAKEN BELIEF THAT PRIVATE PRISONS ARE THE MAJOR DRIVER OF MASS INCARCERATION BE AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT ROBERT NOZICK SARCASTICALLY CALLED "NORMATIVE SOCIOLOGY" - I.E. THE STUDY OF WHAT THE CAUSES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS OUGHT TO BE?

1a) Adam Conover, "The Shocking Way Private Prisons Make Money" (video - 4:40 min, start at 1:08)

1b) Robby Soave, "Are Privatized Prisons The Problem?" (video - 2:20 min.)

Peter Wagner, "Are private prisons driving mass incarceration? Private prisons are more like a parasite on the publicly-owned prison system, not the root cause of mass incarceration." (Prison Policy)
Sasha Volokh, "Are private prisons better or worse than public prisons?" (Wash. Post)
Julia Bowling, "Do Private Prison Contracts Fuel Mass Incarceration? A new report from In the Public Interest confirms that government contracts with private prisons not only fleece the taxpayer, but often create perverse financial incentives for states to lock up more people." (Brennan Center)
Megan McArdle, "5 Bad Reasons to Scrap Private Prisons: Slashing corporate incarceration makes people feel better. There's scant evidence that it helps inmates." (Bloomberg)
Kim LaCapria, "Fact Check: Drug Law Lobbying by Corrections Corporation of America" [Rating: Mixture] (Snopes)
Ed Krayewski, "Are For-Profit Prisons, or Public Unions, the Biggest Lobby No One's Talking About?" (Reason)
Jonathan Reid, "Fact Check: Are state prisons cheaper than private prisons?" [Rating: Mostly True] (AZ Central)
Travis Arbon, "Fact Check: Relative safety of private prisons" [Rating: Inconclusive] (AZ Central)

II. PRISON LABOR AS "MODERN DAY SLAVERY":

DID PRISON LABOR IN THE U.S. BEGIN AS "CONVICT LEASING" - ESSENTIALLY A REPLACEMENT FOR SLAVE LABOR THAT EXPLOITED A LOOPHOLE IN THE 13TH AMENDMENT?
OR WAS BEING SENTENCED TO "HARD LABOR" ALREADY A COMMON PUNISHMENT IN AMERICA, DATING BACK TO "PENAL TRANSPORTATION" IN THE COLONIAL ERA?
IF FDR'S CIRCULAR NO. 3591 (1941) BANNED CONVICT LEASING, WHY DO OTHER FORMS OF PRISON LABOR STILL EXIST?
WHICH STATES REQUIRE ALL ABLE-BODIED INMATES TO WORK? WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO REFUSE?
ARE SOUTHERN STATES - OR "RED" STATES IN GENERAL - MORE RELIANT ON PRISON LABOR THAN "BLUE" STATES?
DO SOME STATE GOVERNMENTS INTENTIONALLY INCARCERATE MORE LOW-LEVEL OFFENDERS & DENY THEM PAROLE TO ENSURE A STEADY SUPPLY OF CHEAP PRISON LABOR?
WHAT PERCENTAGE OF PRISON LABOR IS FOR PRIVATE CORPORATIONS AS OPPOSED TO ROUTINE CHORES WITHIN THE PRISON (E.G. LAUNDRY, COOKING) OR STATE INDUSTRIES (E.G. LICENSE PLATES & ROAD SIGNS)?
IS PRISON LABOR FAVORED BY CORPORATIONS AS A WAY TO UNDERCUT THE MINIMUM WAGE? IF NOT, WHY DO PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS?
DID VICKI PELEAZ, A RUSSIAN SPY POSING AS A JOURNALIST, MASSIVELY OVERSTATE U.S. PRISON LABOR STATS? IF SO, WHY & HOW INFLUENTIAL WERE HER ARTICLES?
DOES NIKE USE PRISON LABOR TO PRODUCE ITS SHOES? DOES BASKETBALL PLAYER MICHAEL JORDAN OWN STOCK IN PRIVATE PRISONS? IF NEITHER IS TRUE, WHY DO MANY CONTINUE TO BELIEVE THIS?
IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE THAT SOME TYPES OF PRISON LABOR ARE ACTUALLY BENEFICIAL FOR INMATES, E.G. EARNING EXTRA MONEY FOR COMMISSARY ITEMS, TEACHING JOB SKILLS, AND/OR REDUCING IDLENESS & ALIENATION THAT CAN BREED VIOLENCE?

2a) BBC, "Are American prisoners modern day slaves?" (video - 5:15 min.)

2b) HeWhoGoesByMazz, "The Myth of Corporate Prison Labor" (video - 16:53 min.)

Robert Longley, "What Was Convict Leasing? And Was it Just Legalized Slavery?" (Thought Co)
Justin Miller, "Both Red and Blue States Rely on Prison Labor. As a Louisiana sheriff’s off-the-cuff remarks and the California wildfires remind us, all states depend on and profit from putting prisoners to work—and that’s a problem." (Prospect)
Mike Elk & Bob Sloan, "The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor: Years after ALEC's Truth In Sentencing bills became the law of the land, its Prison Industries Act has quietly expanded prison labor across the country." (Nation)
Ben Smith, "Accused spy [Vicky Pelaez] also accused fabricator" (Politico)
James Kilgore, "The Myth of Prison Slave Labor Camps in the U.S." (Counterpunch)
Miriam Valverde, "Fact Check: Companies that use prison labor: Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Walmart, Victoria’s Secret, AT&T, Bank of America, Starbucks, Wendy’s." [Rating: Mostly False] (Politifact)
Caroline John, "Fact Check: Legendary Basketball Player Michael Jordan Owns Prisons" [Rating: False] (ETN)
Sarah Shemkus, "Beyond cheap labor: can prison work programs benefit inmates?" (Guardian)

III. THE "SUPER-PREDATOR" SCARE, THE "KIDS FOR CASH" SCANDAL & THE "SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE":

DID CRIMINOLOGISTS COIN THE "SUPER-PREDATOR" TERM IN THE 1990s TO INTENTIONALLY DEMONIZE BLACK TEENAGERS OR DUE TO A MISTAKEN ANALYSIS OF JUVENILE CRIME TRENDS?
DID FOR-PROFIT JUVENILE DETENTION FACILITIES LIKE THE ONE INVOLVED IN THE "KIDS FOR CASH SCANDAL" CAUSE THE YOUTH INCARCERATION RATE TO RISE?
DO "SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS" MAKE SCHOOLS SAFER?
DO "SCARED STRAIGHT" PROGRAMS DETER JUVENILE DELINQUENTS?
DO ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES IN SCHOOLS LEAD TO MASS INCARCERATION OF MINORITY YOUTH?
DID THE 2011 CSG JUSTICE CENTER'S STUDY OF TEXAS STUDENTS SHOW THAT SCHOOL DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS LEAD TO JUVENILE JUSTICE CONTACT OR MERELY PRECEDE THEM?
WHY MIGHT SCHOOLS WITH SIMILAR DEMOGRAPHICS HAVE VERY DIFFERENT SUSPENSION RATES?
DO PRIVATE PRISONS TRACK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL READING SCORES TO PREDICT WHERE THEY NEED TO BUILD MORE PRISONS?
IS IT TRUE THAT THERE'S CURRENTLY MORE BLACK MEN IN PRISON THAN IN COLLEGE? IF NOT, WHY DID THIS CLAIM GO VIRAL?
DO SCHOOL DISCIPLINE POLICIES TEND TO UNFAIRLY TARGET RACIAL MINORITIES & STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES DUE TO TEACHER BIAS, OR IS IT MERELY THE CASE THAT SOME MINORITIES (I.E. BLACKS, BUT NOT ASIANS) & KIDS DIAGNOSED WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS LIKE "OPPOSITIONAL DEFIANT DISORDER" ARE MORE LIKELY TO ACT OUT IN SCHOOL?
DID OBAMA'S 2014 "DEAR COLLEAGUE" LETTER ADVISING SCHOOLS TO REDUCE "DISPARATE IMPACT" IN DISCIPLINE BACKFIRE & MAKE SCHOOLS MORE DANGEROUS? DID IT CONTRIBUTE TO SOME VIOLENT STUDENTS EVADING DISCIPLINE UNTIL A MAJOR CRIME OCCURRED, LIKE THE 2018 STONEMAN DOUGLAS H.S. SHOOTING IN PARKLAND, FLORIDA COMMITTED BY NIKOLAS CRUZ WHOSE RECORD OF VIOLENT BEHAVIOR WAS OBSCURED?

3a) Vox, "The school to prison pipeline, explained" (video - 3:16 min.)

3b) OAN, "Education Dept. Faces Calls to Rescind Obama-Era School Discipline Policy" (video - 3:27 min.)

Kevin Drum, "A Very Brief History of Super-Predators" (Mother Jones)
Robert Greene, "What was the real crime in the 'Kids for Cash' scandal?" (LA Times)
Ian Tuttle, "A School-to-Prison Pipeline? There’s little evidence of one." (Nat'l Review)
Donna St. George, "Myths of school discipline challenged" (Wash. Post)
Emma Brown, "Police in schools: Keeping kids safe, or arresting them for no good reason?" (Wash. Post)
Jamie Hale, "Scared Straight? Not Really" (Psych. Central)
Katie Sanders, "Fact Check: Kathleen Ford says private prisons use third-grade data to plan for prison beds" [Rating: Pants on Fire]
Jenée Desmond-Harris, "The myth that there are more black men in prison than in college, debunked in one chart" (Vox)
Stanton E. Samenow, "Schools are Not a 'Pipeline to Prison' - Who rejects whom?" (Psych. Today)
Sarah Rumpf, "The Broward Sheriff’s Juvenile Arrest Conspiracy [About the Parkland H.S. Shooting] Might Actually Be True" (Red State)
Nora Gordon, "Disproportionality in student discipline: Connecting policy to research" (Brookings)
Kimberly M. Richey, "Enforcing disciplinary leniency: How the Office for Civil Rights dictated school discipline policy and how it could again" (AEI)

IV. THE WAR ON DRUGS AS A DRIVER OF MASS INCARCERATION & MICHELLE ALEXANDER'S "NEW JIM CROW" THEORY:

DID NIXON'S AIDE JOHN ERLICHMANN CONFESS TO JOURNALIST DAN BAUM IN 1994 THAT THE PURPOSE OF THE WAR ON DRUGS WAS TO DISRUPT CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM & THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT? IS THERE ANY REASON TO THINK NIXON'S DRUG POLICIES WAS PURELY CYNICAL, OR IS THERE EVIDENCE HE WAS CONCERNED WITH THE EFFECTS OF DRUGS ON PUBLIC HEALTH?
DID THE WAR ON DRUGS LEAD TO MASS INCARCERATION? IF SO, WAS IT MOSTLY BY INCARCERATING DRUG USERS OR DRUG DEALERS - OR BOTH?
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE BASE RATES OF DRUG USE AMONG WHITES & BLACKS? WHAT ABOUT BASE RATES OF DRUG DEALING? IS THE SOURCE OF THESE BASE RATES SELF-REPORTING IN SURVEYS - AND IF SO, COULD THAT LEAD TO INACCURACIES?
DOES DRUG ENFORCEMENT INTENTIONALLY TARGET BLACKS? OR ARE DISPARITIES IN ARREST RATES MORE DRIVEN BY BLACK DRUG USERS TENDING TO VISIT OPEN-AIR DRUG MARKETS, WHEREAS WHITE DRUG USERS TEND TO BUY DRUGS THROUGH FRIENDS IN INDOOR SALES?
IS MICHELLE ALEXANDER'S CLAIM THAT THE WAR ON DRUGS WAS "GENOCIDE UP TO A POINT" AN IRRATIONAL CONSPIRACY THEORY, OR MERELY HYPERBOLIC RHETORIC?
IS ADANER USMANI CORRECT THAT ELIZABETH HINTON BUILT ON MICHELLE ALEXANDER'S "NEW JIM CROW" THESIS IN HER BOOK *FROM THE WAR ON POVERTY TO THE WAR ON CRIME* (2016) AND CLAIMED THAT THE VIOLENT CRIME WAVE OF THE 1960s-1980s WAS FABRICATED FROM FALSE CRIME STATS TO JUSTIFY THE JAILING OF MINORITIES? DOES THAT QUALIFY AS AN IRRATIONAL "CONSPIRACY THEORY"? IS USMANI RIGHT THAT MASS INCARCERATION HAS LESS TO DO WITH SYSTEMIC RACISM THAN THE SYSTEMIC CLASSISM & THE ROLLBACK OF LBJ'S GREAT SOCIETY PROGRAMS?
IS CRACK COCAINE POSSESSION PUNISHED MORE HEAVILY THAN POWDER COCAINE TO SPECIFICALLY TARGET BLACKS DRUG ADDICTS OR BECAUSE CRACK IS MORE ADDICTIVE? DID BLACK CIVIC LEADERS INITIALLY ENDORSE THIS SENTENCING DISPARITY? WAS THE "FAIR SENTENCING ACT" OF 2010 SIGNED BY OBAMA THAT CHANGED THE SENTENCING DISPARITY FROM 100-TO-1 TO 18-TO-1 A GOOD IDEA OR STILL UNFAIR & RACIST?
IF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM IS MORE COMPASSIONATE TOWARD WHITE ADDICTS, AS SOME CLAIM, WHY DOES METH POSSESSION STILL CARRY THE HARSH LEGAL PENALTIES THAT CRACK USED TO?
DID THE 1994 CRIME BILL SIGNED BY BILL CLINTON EXACERBATE MASS INCARCERATION, IN PART DUE TO ITS FEDERAL "THREE STRIKES LAW"? IF SO, COULD IT BE AN HONEST MISTAKE BASED ON PUBLIC FEAR CAUSED BY THE MUCH HIGHER CRIME RATE OF THE EARLY 1990s, OR WAS IT OBVIOUSLY RACIST IN ITS INTENT?

4a) Macat, "An Introduction to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow" (video - 3:30 min.)

4b) Ben Shapiro, "Debunks Racial Discrimination Myth Within our Justice System" (video - 5:23 min.)

German Lopez, "Was Nixon's war on drugs a racially motivated crusade? It's a bit more complicated." (Vox)
C. Eugene Emery Jr., "Fact Check: African-Americans don't use drugs at a higher level than whites [according to surveys] but 'wind up going to prison six times more.'" [Rating: Mostly True] (Politifact)
Christopher Ingraham, "White people are more likely to deal drugs [according to surveys], but black people are more likely to get arrested for it" (Wash. Post)
German Lopez, "Why you can’t blame mass incarceration on the war on drugs: The standard liberal narrative about mass incarceration gets a lot wrong. A new book [John Pfaff's 'Locked In'] breaks through the myths." (Vox)
Barry Latzer, "The Hard Realities of Hard Time: By being honest about facts and statistics, John Pfaff undermines his own book’s case against imprisonment." (City Journal)
Nathaniel Givens, "Mass Incarceration is Not a Myth" (Difficult Run)
Bernadette Rabuy, "Have we gone too far myth busting criminal justice reform? Drug policy is still important." (Prison Policy)
Christopher James, "Crack vs. Powder: Why Cocaine Arrests Aren’t The Same. Black Americans are at a higher risk for arrest and incarceration due to drug possession. But experts say the reasons why are more complex than originally thought." (Futurity)
Mike Riggs, "New Federal Sentencing Data Provides a Reminder That the War on Meth Is Alive and Awful" (Reason)
Robert Farley, "Bill Clinton and the 1994 Crime Bill: Its Effect on the Crime Rate and Whether It's Responsible for Mass Incarceration" (Fact Check)
John P. Waters & David W. Murray, "Revisiting 'The New Jim Crow'" (Hudson)
Adaner Usmani, "Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration Is Wrong" (Jacobin)

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Skeptics In The Pub - Philly

Biweekly Discussion - Is Mass Incarceration a Conspiracy?

Skeptics In The Pub - Philly

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