LAND OF THE FREE; HOME OF THE IMPRISONED

December 6, 2012

©2012 Mitchell Jon MacKay

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER as per Jimi Hendrix version, still relevant after all these years, is a facetious hypocritical tribute, as the George Gilder saying goes, by vice to virtue. It is illogical to maintain sovereign freedom with 25% of the world’s prisoners in a population of 5% of the whole.

Sure, there is still wonderful health care and some of the most incredible gadgetry, infrastructure everywhere, education of the highest kind, medical and pharmaceutical miracles. The cost of this however is as spiraling as the military budget for worldwide presence and cost of incarcerating or monitoring 1 in 31 American citizens via jail, prison, probation and parole.

Case in point, Michigan, which has no death penalty, does have the “other death penalty,” Life Without Parole, and a parole system at the whim of the elected Governor, a 4-year term. When Jennifer Granholm was Governor the state loosed thousands of prisoners through an expanded system of parole administered by a fuller body of Board and a supplemental group of Clemency advisors.

A global campaign stopped the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal. But is life without parole–death in prison–much different? FREE MUMIA! END THE DEATH PENALTY AND LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE!

That system reduced the prison population dramatically allowing the closing of many prisons. Coincidently those closings affected communities economically but this is not the intent of prison, to foster a for-profit enterprise. Prison personnel are grossly overpaid for positions that require only a high school diploma and no prison record.

When Rick Snyder was elected Governor in 2009 the Parole Board was soon cut back to former numbers, the Advisory Committee abandoned, a moratorium on parole imposed. This of course ran parallel to the conservative mindset and was justified by the rhetoric of dispensing with “extra layers of bureaucracy”, a stopgap nuance between the lines of “less government”, a Tea Party favorite reissued by folk receiving government largesse in perfect hypocritical mode.

It is well known that monitoring society’s incorrigibles via tether and probation/parole personnel is way cheaper than jailing or imprisoning defendants and convicts alike.

Thesey youth were among 3,000 who marched on Gov. Rick Snyder’s home on MLK Day 2012. Black youth are the prime targets of the school-to-prison pipeline.

Statistics via press news state that since the advent of Rick Snyder as Governor the state prison system has regained some 1000 inmates. Since statistics are not forthcoming as to efficacy of parole, the rumor has been that the Governor is paroling none but some few aged moribund inmates for compassionate purport.

The status stands at a vague proposition that parole is not only in holding pattern but ostensibly nonexistent while this Governor holds office for this term. Actual word on the “yard”, i.e. in prison, is that this is the way of it, possibly relaxed during second term if that should occur though no guarantees of either.

To my immediate knowledge there are two prison inmates that were in line for parole, prepped and tested, aligned with the MPRI program, viz. Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative, upon which has been spent hefty amounts of tax dollars, yet the process was stalled and remains in limbo after these three years, these two considered-worthy prisoners being left high and dry with notice of a 5-year hiatus and unknown indeterminate sentence respectively.

Governor Rick Snyder, who passed a law giving unprecedented and dictatorial powers to unelected Emergency Financial Managers, was invited to be the Grand Marshall of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph’s annual Bloomtime Parade. Benton Harbor is the first municipality where new EMF powers have
been used to strip power from all of its elected officials. Hundreds of Michiganders from across the state came to Benton Harbor to protest Snyder. Photo: Diane Bukowski

The Why of this remains mysterious and necessarily inhumane as well as costly to the system. Both these inmates are considered highly worthy of parole, have backup upon release, and have no demerits on their records. It is pure deliberate indifference on the part of the Parole Board to suddenly ignore what has already been in progress and of course the catalyst falls upon the Governor because the Parole Board is seen as unwilling to pursue bureaucratic motions of parole if the Governor is known to be averse to signing parole recommendations.

Why waste time and energy, in other words? So at least two prisoners, and implicitly many more, wait in suspended animation with no discernible good reason for denial of a process already in motion.

The circumstance comes down to who sits in the driver’s seat, actually the passenger’s seat of a State Police squad car to the Capitol and back home each day, Ann Arbor to Lansing round trip. That does tend to imply a temporary situation, the tentative instigation of campaign rhetoric tightening of budgetary woes of the state fiscal annual catastrophe.

Yet rising prison statistical numbers don’t gibe with that, nor do other kibosh acts such as near-elimination of the movie tax credits that promised so much to the state in popularizing Michigan as Hollywood Midwest, or indeed taking a free cab back and forth every day at taxpayer expense. The business-oriented plan of this figurehead was to save money, not spend it or restrict it. In this he has failed the state and his own premise. Naturally the constituency is taking notice and election always looms.

With some variable 5000-7000 paroled during Jennifer Granholm’s two terms and many a prison gate decommissioned, a viable movie center in question, the state was still admittedly in hock, a shibboleth which apparently worked with the electorate to switch to the Republican side since term limited offices were vacated anyway and voters were a bit dismayed with bankruptcy even in the face of money saved and generated. So it goes and Granholm got the butt end detriments of it all as well as the frontend thrust credits.

Politics has its own agenda to follow and as Reagan classically said, government is not the answer, it’s the problem. Yet the present stands as tribute by vice to virtue as always, a hypocritical fulcrum of preponderance. Michigan is known as the Midwest Prison Capitol in microcosm to the US macro of Prison Nation.

A $2 billion annual budget for the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) hardly bespeaks well of economic recovery. Yet the beat goes on and more are coming every day with evidently no relief in sight via parole.

Indeed a former prison in Detroit has been allocated for nothing but parole violation warehousing yet the word on the yard again has it that this is not the way of it. What goes on seems to be top secret for we see virtually nothing in the news about prison or parole. A closed society, a closed press, is not what we should be paying for. As has been reiterated oft a state paying more for incarceration than higher education is way off the balance books. And this is supposedly better business? The emperor is beginning to show his new clothes and it’s not a pretty sight. Play it again, Jimi.

Related articles:

http://www.michfb.com/issues/streamlining/113/1181