As a law school student, I interned at the D.C. Parole Board. I spent the entire summer of my internship sifting through files of Black men who had been denied parole. A lawsuit had been filed and was successful in casting doubt on the process of parole.
Was the process fair to the parolees? Had individuals incarcerated been allowed to spend unnecessary time in the system (in a facility or on parole)? And in these cases, what was the justification for this?
It was readily apparent as the lawsuit proceeded there was a very cavalier approach to the Black men incarcerated in the local prison system. Their lives were not valuable. They were treated as if they were less than human.
Individuals who likely should have been paroled and let out of the system remained in the system for over a decade for small offenses. Black men might get sentenced to 18 months but spend years working off a sentence that was originally possession of a small quantity of narcotics.
As I flipped through the files, I did notice another fact over and over: the vast majority of the individuals did not finish high school and/or had a learning disability. It was striking.
The percentage was over 80 percent though this was just an anecdotal search. Considering the likelihood that this large number of individuals had dropped out of school for little to no reason, I began to question the system itself.
In addition, while in law school, I co-counseled juvenile offenders in a law school clinic as their legal advocate. Most of these individuals I encountered had learning disabilities.
It drew me to conclude that the system was working just as it was supposed to work: thousands upon thousands of Black men I saw in law school, in parole files, were planned lives. They were going to prison. They would be rendered useless and without any value. They would not finish high school. They would graduate to petty crime and fight for crumbs and prison beds.
Writer Janet Ellis wrote in The Missouri Independent last year that “pick any state and you will find Blacks make up disproportionately the highest rate of people in prison.” In her state, Missouri, “black people make up 12% of the state’s population, but 34% of the people in prison.” Nationwide, according to Ellis, Blacks make up 40 percent of the prison population.
Yet, there is more to this. The results are the results that are sought via official policy. According to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), from 1979–2013, education funding increased 107 percent in America; prison/criminal justice funding increased by 324 percent in the U.S.
Every state, according to DOE, spent more on incarceration during this same period than they did on education. In Texas, spending on imprisoning people went up 850 percent. State after state had weak increases in education spending and astronomical increases in incarceration. Other studies, according to DOE, demonstrate that incarceration does not reduce crime.
Yet, states continue to spend billions on incarceration rather than investing in people. This is because the goal is (and has been) to lock up Black and brown people. To provide true educational opportunities to them is against the official policy. This is why the information I saw in the parole board files struck me so vividly.
What if the city had invested in the Black men when they were very young and identified their learning disabilities? What if the city had invested in the men before they dropped out of school?
Washington D.C., when I researched it, did the same as the states. It invested heavily in criminal justice, far less in education over the years. No wonder so many Black men were in prison. No wonder so many were failing. Their government wants them in jail.
This is just one way that Black lives continue to get undervalued. We, the people, are doing it. Because, we, the people, could tell our governments we don’t want you to spend the money like that. But, truth is, we, the people, like things as they are. If we didn’t, wouldn’t there be more outrage about these numbers?
My mother used to say, if you keep burning your bread in the toaster, you must like burned bread. America is burning its bread all the time.
And then, it pretends as if the bread was not supposed to burn. Stop it, already, I say. This is how you want it. If not, do something about it.
—
Previously Published on Medium