Few events better reflect the priorities of elected officials more vividly than a budget crisis.  It is during a budget crisis that policy-makers are forced to choose between the interests of powerful or popular constituencies and the needs of the less powerful and most vulnerable citizens.  Presently, this drama is being played out in San Francisco where social and legal services to the poor

I’m sure not too many people noticed but a brief news report from a newspaper in Chattanooga, Tennessee called attention once again to the perils of the privatization of prisons.  This story involves the settling of a lawsuit filed against Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the leading private prison company in the world.

In my previous blog I referenced a recent book by Douglas Blackmon on the subject of convict leasing.  One of the enduring offshoots of this system has been the “chain gang,” popularized by the film “Cool Hand Luke” (with Paul Newman, which carefully tried to make it seem as if it were mostly white) and memorialized in several books (e.g., “I am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang

After more than 20 years, even with the heightened awareness of the impact of the drug war on blacks and other minorities, Congress still does nothing.  The drug war’s impact has reached directly into minority neighborhoods with devastating results.  A recent book by Todd Clear documents the impact of mass incarceration (brought about mostly by the drug war) on these communities.  He shows

The “war on drugs” must be seen as a concerted effort (whether this has been intended is irrelevant) to keep the black population in a secondary status.  Such an effort can be traced to the days of slavery and even for about 100 years after slavery officially ended, at least in the South (see Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name