Hispanics Now Majority of Felony Convictions

Looks like Immigration “Enforcement” is doing for Hispanic communities what Drug “Enforcement” did to black communities.

Anything some folks can do to keep ‘em from voting.

More bad news for black conservatives, as how are they going to sell that black dysfunction pimp driving white fear, and assuaging white conservative guilt…

If black folks aren’t public enemy “number one”?

Looks like there will be a lot of job openings in the conservative “think tank” and “talking head” sphere for “Tio Thomas” lawn ornaments…

And some of the black stalwarts of the right…

Better start looking for honest jobs.

File this one under “Domestic Terrorism”.

Prisons - Now a Cheaper Labor source than in either China or India

Feds: Hispanics comprise majority of all people sent to federal prison for committing felonies

More than half of all people sent to federal prison for committing felony crimes so far this year were Hispanic, a major demographic shift swollen by immigration offenses, according to a new government report released Tuesday.

Hispanics already outnumber all other ethnic groups sentenced to serve time in prison for federal felonies.

Hispanics reached a new milestone for the first time this year, making up the majority of all federal felony offenders sentenced in the first nine months of fiscal year 2011, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Hispanics comprised 50.3 percent of all people sentenced in that time period, blacks 19.7 percent and whites 26.4 percent.

In comparison, last year Hispanics made up just 16 percent of the whole U.S. population.

The commission’s statistics also reveal that sentences for felony immigration crimes _ which include illegal crossing and other crimes such as alien smuggling _ were responsible for most of the increase in the number of Hispanics sent to prison over the last decade.

The demographic change in who is being sent to federal prison has already prompted debate among commissioners and experts studying the impact of expedited court hearings along the border.

“Statistics like this have to start drawing attention to this country’s immigration policies and what we’re doing, if this is one of the results,” said Fordham University Law School professor Deborah Denno, an expert on racial disparities in the criminal justice system. “The implications for Hispanics are huge when you think of the number of families affected by having their breadwinners put away for what in some cases would be considered a non-violent offense.”

Another Conservative Failure – Getting Tough on Crime and the Prison Industrial Complex

Thanks to conservative failure to understand the cost of the highest level of incarceration in the world, hundreds of former prisons now sit empty because they are too expensive to operate costing taxpayers billions.

Since Raygun Republicans have embraced the idea of building prisons and ever more draconian penalties. The problem is – conservatives are real big on action…

But not real big on thinking. It never occurred to them that prisons cost money. Like tax cuts, being tough on crime has been a conservative staple – betting that the average Faux News addicted not too bright Republican voter is way too stupid to figure out that just like in your household income … The government has expenses.

One of the results of the 2010 election is that giant, rotten Dodo bird has come home to roost, with Republicans now in charge of the majority of State Houses in the middle of many states going broke.

They now have to fix the mess they created.

Republican lawmakers paying for tough crime laws

When Harry Coates campaigned for the Oklahoma state Senate in 2002, he had one approach to crime: “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key.”

Now, Coates is looking for that key. He and other tough-on-crime lawmakers across the country, faced with steep budget shortfalls, are searching anxiously for ways to let inmates out of prison faster and keep more offenders on the street.

Oklahoma’s preferred answer for crime has collided head-on with a budget deficit estimated at $600 million, and prison costs that have increased more than 30 percent in the last decade. For years, lawmakers have pushed each other to lengthen prison sentences and increase the number of criminals behind bars. Not now: This week, new Republican Speaker of the House Kris Steele is expected to unveil a package of proposals that would divert thousands of nonviolent lawbreakers from the prison system and ramp up paroles.

The New Jim Crow – “Culture Wars” In America – Really a Race War

This one from Truthout – Hat Tip!

This is a powerful analysis of the forces behind the “culture wars” and the desire to preserve Jim Crow as a functional entity by the right wing in America by Cary Fraser. Follow the link below to the original where support documentation is provided in the form of footnotes and links. As one example of this, work by Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness) has shown that during the height of Jim Crow, blacks went to prison at roughly four times the rate of whites; today the black imprisonment rate is seven times that of whites. (Another good reference in the prison industrial Jim Crow element of this is by Robert Perkinson – Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.)

As I have reported here in The New Jim Crow series – the New Jim Crow impacts nearly every aspect of life for minorities in America, starting with access to education, credit, the ability to start business and conduct commerce, through access to jobs.

The New Jim Crow, Ubiquitous and Masked as "Culture Wars"

Coming to Terms With Equality and Diversity: America’s Ongoing Culture Wars

The recent decision by the Texas School Board of Education to revise the curriculum in the state to reflect a more “conservative” approach to social studies and history has highlighted the ongoing debate about the role of education in American society and culture. The explicit desire by the conservative majority on the Texas School Board to impose an ideological orientation in elementary and secondary education – including a shift of focus away from the civil rights movement and slavery, an emphasis upon ensuring that students be taught that the idea of the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution and promotion of the need to safeguard American sovereignty from threats posed by organizations such as the United Nations – is a barometer of the increasing uncertainty that has overtaken the conservative factions in American society. The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president, on the basis of a well-executed campaign that demonstrated the increasing electoral influence of multi-ethnic coalitions in American politics, has served as a catalyst for reactionaries of all stripes to seek ways to reverse the movement of American society toward a greater openness and engagement with the wider world, including the diverse communities of color within the country. A recent article in the Wall Street reports that recent statistics suggest that population growth among minority groups in the United States will exceed growth rates among whites in the near future.(1) If that demographic shift takes place, the United States will become a country where there is no single ethnic group or race that will constitute a majority within the population. The promise of greater cultural and ethnic diversity in the American population is a guarantee of the erosion of the white-supremacist ethos that has defined American society over the course of its history.