Criminal Justice Debt in the Control Society

[alcibiades_mystery]

You have to realize
What is a form of slavery organized
Under a swarm of devils
Straight up
Word 'em up on the level.

- Public Enemy, Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

We have all by now heard of the ludicrous racial bias in traffic violation and so-called broken windows policing in Ferguson, Missouri. We all have seen how this policing is intimately tied to a fines and foreclosure structure that helps keep the town's budget from collapsing. This new analysis shows just how shameless and exploitative the practice actually is:

http://qz.com/257042/these-seven-charts-explain-how-ferguson-and-many-other-us-cities-wring-revenue-from-black-people-and-the-poor/

I encourage everybody to check this article and its accompanying charts.

The implications are stark. What we learn from these statistics is that municipalities like Ferguson, and many others, literally float their finances on the backs of African Americans and the poor through deliberate state-based coercion and policing schemes. It's essentially a "protection" racket, with local cops as the wiseguys and the local power structure - and very often the white middle and upper classes - as the beneficiaries.

Let's be clear: this is not just Ferguson, Missouri. This is a national scandal that requires immediate, widespread federal intervention. It is intimately linked with the reduction or elimination of taxes at the local level, tax-free zones for attracting businesses, and the explosion in incarceration rates that accompanied these policies. It is, in fact, the everyday hinge that holds these seemingly unlikely partners together: tax cutting-fines/foreclosure/prison-industrial complex. As such, it also requires scholarly economic analysis to determine whether and to what extent the whole philosophy of tax cutting has rested on what is essentially a strong-armed robbery of poor and minority communities by their local governments. And yes, if the case for reparations still eludes you, it requires analysis to determine reparations.

[Lurks Often]

1. Don't hold your breath waiting on the DOJ to do something

even though a strong case can be made that this is a civil rights issue.

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. We need activism in that direction

Every intervention is impossible until it's not.