Subject: Mass Incarceration

My incarceration is directly connected to the social ailments within my community. Scarce economic and educational resources, immature role models and household inadequacies contributed to my developing a criminal mind state. Eventually my criminal behavior led me into the shackles of the so called “California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.” The name of this government institution is misleading as its practices are not only inhumane but, a tool to perpetrate genocide. I find it imperative that the citizens of the United States realize that rehabilitation cannot become a reality until it is prioritized over economic production and political superiority. In discussing these topics, my perspective is one of personal observation in conjunction with my education on the subject matter.

 

Analyzing my past in the hope of uncovering the causes of my criminal mind state, I realize that my development was affected by four components. In our relatively poor household –a single parent, three brothers and one sister– finances were strained. With my mother earning a little more than minimum wage and being the only breadwinner, we children were forced to be content with little and ration over time the bare necessities.

 

With no job experience and a criminal record, finding legitimate work was not only improbable but also undesirable. I was unable to obtain money in a legitimate manner but the necessity of acquiring capital still existed. Seeing individuals in my community acquire incalculable amounts of wealth in relatively short periods of time became extremely attractive. Thus, the first component to the creation of my criminal mind state was “Economic Deprivation.”

 

Looking back, I realize my mother was never taught how to adequately raise a child, nor do I believe she was interested in learning. As a child you are inquisitive because you desire to know the unknown. During this time parents are able to shape the child’s perspective as it relates to circumstances and practices prevalent within society. On many occasions my brothers and I would ask questions regarding things we saw or heard and my mother would respond, “Stop asking so many damn questions.” As a result, I was taught at an early age that if I wanted to know something I had to experience it for myself. Curiosity led me to participate in activities that were not conducive to my being a productive element in society.

 

These activities eventually led to me being incarcerated. To a child experiencing incarceration for the first time, it creates a mental extraction from the family social structure and an attachment to the social environment of prison. If the family is not invested in sustaining within the child the family social structure, the child is more susceptible to being entrenched in the prison social environment. If there is already a mental separation between the child and family social structure the child will likely entrench himself in the prison social environment (which is what happened to me).

 

This is detrimental to the healthiness of society. Where there is a disconnect between the child and the family social structure, the child becomes connected to the prison social environment. Upon release that child will take those harmful constructs into society. We will explore how this perpetuates a disenfranchised social structure that is intentionally sustained by the government as a means for capital production and political superiority. The second component to the creation of my criminal mind state is “Household Inadequacies.”

 

Most of the males in my family were gang members. I remember growing up watching documentaries on groups like MS-13 and being extremely attracted to the power and organization that they displayed. Most everyone in my community and those whom I went to school with were gang members. Since I was so disconnected from my family, an alternate social structure society played the primary role in determining who I was to become. Male gang members became role models, thus I started to emulate their behavior. The third component to the creation of my criminal mind state was “Immature Role Models.”

 

The education system in my community was and still is inadequate on many levels, mainly in the method by which children are being educated. When you sit a child in the classroom for seven to eight hours, feeding him information that he will never use in his daily life, education becomes a burden and the child becomes disinterested. Further, everyone attending my school suffered from similar problems as those I had. Where a school system uses a method of teaching that causes the students to become disinterested you end up with a microcosm of disengaged students creating an environment of play and amusement via criminal activity and education becomes ineffective. It could be argued that the education system within lower class communities is specifically designed to keep the members of that community stagnated. “Educational Deprivation” is the fourth component to the creation of my criminal mind state.

 

These four components are universal as they relate to lower-class communities. You could look at any lower-class community within the United States of America and you would find the same or similar deprivations. It is no coincidence that 90% of these lower-class communities are comprised of Mexican and African ethnic groups as is 90% of the prison population.

 

There is an obvious connection between the deprivations within lower class communities and the mass incarceration of the members of these lower-class communities. Since economic inequality, educational inadequacies, and so forth are the causes of mass incarceration, then why are federal funds diverted from social reform projects and directed towards the expansion and militarization of police departments and so-called criminal justice projects? 

 

The “CDCR” stands for “California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.” In theory this government institution’s objective is to warehouse and correct the criminal behavior of United States citizens who were found guilty of breaking the law. It wasn’t until after 2005 that this state institution considered rehabilitating inmates as being part of its objectives. 

 

The name of this institution is misleading. One might assume that this institution would create an atmosphere conducive to reformation and moral development. Instead, the practices of the CDCR have been inhumane and oppressive. One example is the CDCR’s policy that visitation and phone calls to family members are not rights, but privileges. Most prisoners in the United States are male, and it is obvious that taking away the male presence from the family (let alone designing his social environment to contribute to his destruction) is an action toxic to the family unit in society. 

 

For a nation claiming to be the leader of “civilization” to allow its government institutions to corrode the family unit, is contrary to standards of civilized humanity. By allowing the CDCR to make physical and verbal communication with family members a privilege instead of a right, the state enables the CDCR to take away these necessary forms of rehabilitation for any absurd reason that they can rationalize (which they frequently do). As discussed above, when the prisoner is disconnected from the family, he becomes immersed in the prison social environment. 

 

Staff members of the CDCR (NOT ALL) have implicitly defined the relationship between “inmate” and “correctional officer” in a manner contrary to the stated objectives of the institution and the description of the C/O position. They have developed underground practices to exacerbate conflict amongst inmates, and provoke emotionally unstable inmates into committing violence against correctional officers. The state turns a blind eye to these atrocities disregarding inmate grievances and prosecuting frivolous rule violations. The medical department of the CDCR is committed to the doctrine of “capital preservation” (especially in Pelican Bay State Prison). By this doctrine, along with the evil motivation to inflict pain and suffering upon the inmate population, the medical department of the CDCR continues to deny inmates with serious medical conditions necessary medical treatment. This not only violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, but is also a human rights violation. 

 

For the sake of brevity, I will leave out examples and intricate details of the topic. If this is the social environment that the CDCR has created and that the state and federal government has sanctioned, then one must ask what the true function of the CDCR is as it relates to the incarceration of Mexicans and Africans? Why is rehabilitation not a right in the state of California (or the U.S. as a whole)? Why is it that Mexicans and Africans are the majority in U.S. prisons? The answers to these questions are located in the reason why the Thirteenth Amendment has yet to be abolished. 

 

In order to effectively reform the United States government’s outlook on prison, the United States government itself must be reformed. I am of the opinion that we as U.S. citizens do not understand the true nature of the U.S. government’s outlook on prison nor do we understand the reality of its objectives in relation to incarceration.

 

As most know, U.S. slavery was a system with the purpose of capital production by subjugating and forcing Africans (and to a lesser extent, natives and lower-class whites) into forced labor. This system was validated by the doctrine of the racial superiority of Europeans (The White Man), and the racial inferiority of Africans (The Black Man). So, the term slavery (as used in the United States Constitution) must be defined by the system of slavery perpetuated by the United States government upon Africans and native people. 

 

I frequently hear that slavery was abolished by Abraham Lincoln. I find this statement not only absurd, but also contrary to reality. The system of slavery and the social relationships developed out of it was never abolished; they simply took on a different form. Soon after chattel slavery, the United States government was faced with a dilemma. Forced labor in the south was the main resource for capital production that plantation owners relied on. Now that slavery in its existing form had been ruled illegal, the plantation owners considered how they might legally use Africans for capital production.

 

The north, though first to abolish slavery, was also faced with a dilemma. They did not seek to abolish slavery because they were morally committed to the liberation of Africans, but because slave labor in the south caused economic hardships for the technological dependence of the north. Thus, by getting rid of slavery by illuminating its immorality, the north effectively eliminated the south as being an economic competitor. While gaining economic superiority over the south, the north was faced with the question of, “what to do with the African slaves that were set to be free?” The north never wanted Africans to assimilate in the U.S. Capitalist system, so they had to find a way to keep Africans subjugated and prevented from becoming a threat to the white race and its superiority.

 

The federal government provided a solution. It decided to legalize slavery (as defined by the historical practice of the United States) in the form of incarceration within a penal institution for those who were found guilty of breaking the law. Slavery was never abolished, it was redefined. “Slavery” became known as “Incarceration”, and a “slave” was now known as a “criminal.”

 

It is important that we state the facts and avoid the injustice of political correctness. “Slavery” and its legalized form “incarceration” was specifically created to economically, politically, and socially dominate Africans in order to prevent them from becoming a threat to white dominance and U.S. capitalism. Laws were created to specifically target Africans. Violation of these laws required them to make a choice where there was only one possible outcome in most cases. They were either required to pay a lump sum of money or pay off a debt that they owed through physical labor on a plantation. Because the African (who was forced in to labor on the plantation without a salary) lacked an adequate amount of wealth when leaving the slave plantation, most Africans were found guilty and assimilated back on the slave plantation.

 

We must conclude that slavery (both legalized and chattel) in the United States was and is an institution of dominance initiated by the U.S. government upon ethnic Africans (and to a lesser extent natives and lower class whites). The goal was and is to continue and extend that dominance across generational lines by confining these ethnic groups to ghettos, imposing upon them a social structure that would ensure the eventual destruction of these ethnic groups (genocide).

 

A perfect example of this came by way of the CIA (a United States military institution) in its use of drug cartels to smuggle “coke” into the lower-class neighborhoods of Los Angeles via Freeway Rick. Soon after the “War on Drugs” was initiated which targeted poor communities, imposing inhumane sentences upon members of the poorest class, effectively assimilating them back into the slave plantation. 

 

Why is federal funding diverted from educational programs in lower-class communities and directed towards the militarization of local police departments? In order to effectively maintain the destructive social structure and its results. Deprivation of education reduces positive choices. Why does the government not initiate enhanced “Gang Prevention” programs instead of imposing outrageous sentences on gang members (which is disproportionately biased to lower class individuals)? Because gangs sustain disunity and chaos among oppressed ethnic minorities, which also justifies local military expansion and so called “tough on crime slogans.”

 

If we wish to stop mass incarceration, we must admit that the U.S. government has always desired to subjugate and oppress its lower class communities (specifically Africans) all in the name of economic and political superiority. It is only then that a new America is born, TRUE DEFENDERS OF JUSTICE AND EQUALITY FOR ALL!!! 

Peace upon the CITIZENS OF AMERICA!!!!

Edwin Turner

Tariq-Zaynu-l-’Abidiyn