Clinton, Law and Order

by Frieda Gardner, WAMM

Our compassionate president, the one whose eyes mist over when he acknowledges the pain of "those less fortunate than ourselves," whose heart, according to an aide, nearly broke when he had to sign the 1996 Public Safety and Effective Death Penalty Act, has stood shoulder to shoulder with Ronald Reagan and George "The First" Bush in the creation of what is now the world's largest prison population (2,026,596 and rising).

Whether led or goaded by Republicans, whether sorry or not, he has signed a series of crime bills designed to hasten the efficiency of the death penalty on both federal and state levels. Furthermore, he has requested and received huge amounts of money to help states hire more police, build more prisons, jail more juveniles, beef up more wars on drugs, harass and deport more immigrants, capture and prosecute more "terrorists," and research more creative ways to "handle" the ever-growing prison population.

While appointing the largest number of blacks and Hispanics to hold important administrative and judicial offices, he has nonetheless strengthened a prison industry so mired in racism and class bias that even some Republicans have started to flinch.

We do not have to spend much more time worrying about whether Bill Clinton's legislative "compromises" are driven by cowardice or conviction. But it's worthwhile to examine a few instances of what can happen when "omnibus" crime bills race through Congress and are signed into law.

The habeas corpus provision of our constitution is designed to allow federal courts to review appeals, monitoring a state's competence and fairness in judging capital cases. Has the state court considered all the relevant evidence? Has the defendant been given adequate representation? Have relevant facts about the case emerged since the case was decided?

The Public Safety and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed by Clinton, requires the federal government to defer to the legal and factual decisions of state courts, unless such decisions involved "unreasonable application" of federal law or "unreasonable application" of the facts of the case. If the word "unreasonable" seems a little vague, we might imagine its interpretation in the mind of a conservative judge anxious to dispatch the latest candidate for lethal injection. If we wonder about the "application of the facts," consider the possibility that Mumia Abu Jamal may be executed because not all the "facts" of his case seemed applicable to his prosecutor and judge.

Orin Hatch (Rep., UT) ushered this bill out of his judiciary committee; Clinton signed it in the name of curbing "terrorism." And many small subsections passed into law without much notice from the mainstream press, including those limiting federal consideration of prison conditions; restricting legal aid to class-action suits; cases involving immigration or the constitutionality of welfare laws; federalizing assault with a deadly weapon (for up to 35 years); and allowing deportation of immigrants based on secret government evidence. Yet we live with the negative consequences of these and other Clinton-era laws every day.

Bad enough that we squander social wealth on a system of fear and retribution that wrecks the life of an unemployed black man who possesses the same amount of crack cocaine as a middle-class white man who possesses powdered cocaine and is quickly sprung by his family lawyer. But consider, too, what happens economically and psychologically to a declining rural community like Rush City, Minnesota, when a new prison looks inviting because it will allow former farmers to become prison guards. All of us are degraded by such a system. And what Angela Davis calls "the magic of imprisonment" soon stops working: homelessness, chronic un- and underemployment, addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy do not disappear; punishment cannot make them vanish.

This summer brings both good and bad news from the prison-industrial complex. First, the rate of increase in the prison population is slowing down (perhaps due to the eight-year drop in crime, which experts have not yet been able to explain).

Second, thanks in part to the huge number of executions approved by Texas Governor George "The Second" Bush (137 during his term and counting), the public's attention is focused on the gross injustices of capital punishment. Under election-year scrutiny, even Bush granted a brief stay of execution to allow for some DNA testing. (Most of the credit for this should go to the persistent, long-term work of groups like Moratorium, the Death Penalty Information Center, and Amnesty International.)

Third, citizen outrage and organization against police brutality, racism, and corruption in cities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and Minneapolis continue to grow.

There is growing criticism of the worst excesses of our prison-industrial complex, but both major presidential candidates continue their militant support of the death penalty. And each promises yet more and better police for our cities.

Women continue to be one of the fastest-growing segments of the prison population, locked up for petty drug offenses, their children taken away from them. The freshest statistics show that 9.4 percent of black men aged 25 to 29 sit in state and federal prisons, a rate ten times the one percent for white men of comparable age. It is probably no accident that during our era of unprecedented prison expansion, the gap between rich and poor has widened significantly.

But Bill Clinton, the great fan of dialogue, has neither helped us to make constructive connections between such social facts, nor has he initiated any spirited conversations about alternatives to our brutal, expensive, and racist incarceration system. It is a good thing that the conversations--and demonstrations--are going on anyway.

Prison-Industrial Complex Resources

Death Penalty Information Center
1320 18th Street NW, 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20036
202-293-6970 (phone)
202-822-4787 (fax)
dpic@essential.org
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

Families Against Mandatory Minimums Foundation (FAMM Foundation)
1612 K Street NW Suite 1400
Washington, D.C. 20006
202-822-6700 (phone)
202-822-6704 (fax)
famm@famm.org
www.famm.org

Minnesota FAMM Chapter
Judy Smith
1809 Lacota Lane
Burnsville, MN 55337
612-895-4048 (phone/fax)

The Prison Moratorium Project
www.nomoreprisons.org

Refuse and Resist!
National Office:
305 Madison Avenue, Suite 1166
New York, NY 10165
212-713-5657
mojo.calyx.net/~refuse/altindex.html

Twin Cities Refuse and Resist!
2441 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55405
612-649-4778