GL,
Here is an interesting stuff. Enjoy reading it.
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SSJawara.
----- Original Message -----
From: "HumanRights" <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: africa.news
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 12:45 AM
Subject: Black v. White CRIME & Punishment in Europe & USA
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> Reaching out to a Human Rights Victim & Prisoner of
> Conscience
> _________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
> Please send a Message of Goodwill to help bouy up his moral and
> to help keep him alive.
>
>
> - As a tourist, wrongfully arrested & imprisoned on arriving
> in France
>
> - "Guilt by association" - held 2 yrs without trial, bail or
> opportunity to defend himself
>
> - Finally, sentenced to 18 yrs without possibility of appeal
>
> - Soon to pass his 7th consecutive birthday behind bars;
> hope vanishing for release
>
> To help with this Human Rights case, please read the synopsis at
> the end of this message.
>
> http://www.poboxes.com/JUSTICE
> http://x46.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=619882664
>
>
> _________________________
> _________________________
>
>
> I.
>
>
> E U R O P E ~ A M E R I C A
>
> PATTERNS OF CRIME & PUNISHMENT ALONG RACIAL LINES
>
>
> o Although 13 percent of drug users in the U.S. are black,
> blacks account for 74 percent of all those sentenced to prison
> for drug offenses.
>
> o Blacks who kill whites were sentenced to death 22 times more
> frequently than blacks who kill blacks and seven times more
> frequently than whites who kill blacks, according to crime
> researcher David C. Baldus.
>
> o Though blacks and whites have approximately the same rate of
> drug use, blacks are one-third more likely to be arrested for
> drug offenses
>
> o Between 1985 and 1995, the rate of incarceration for
> Hispanics more than doubled.
>
> o The Asian-American population in federal prisons has
> quadrupled in the past 20 years.
>
> o Blacks are likely to receive 50 percent longer federal prison
> sentences than whites.
>
> o About 60 percent of the youths in federal custody are
> American Indians.
>
> o Minority youth are also more likely to be tried in adult
> courts and incarcerated in adult prisons. In 1997, 7,400 youth
> under the age of 18 were sent to adult prison. Three out of four
> were minorities.
>
>
> II.
>
> Also, find below the research paper of Prof. Loic Wacquant, UC
> Berkeley:
>
> "FOREIGNERS AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE PRISONS OF EUROPE"
>
>
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
>
>
> http://www.sciam.com/1999/0899issue/0899numbers.html
>
> Scientific American:
>
> The system is biased against blacks ... such as in sentencing
> for drug offenses: although 13 percent of drug users in the U.S.
> are black, blacks account for 74 percent of all those sentenced
> to prison for drug offenses. One in seven adult black males has
> lost his voting rights because of a felony conviction.
>
>
>
>
> BEHIND BARS IN THE U.S. AND EUROPE
>
>
> Most Western countries have put more people behind bars in
> recent years, but in none has the incarceration rate risen more
> than in the U.S. The cause of the extraordinary American figure
> is not higher levels of crime, for the crime rate in the U.S. is
> about the same as in western Europe (except for the rate of
> homicide, which is two to eight times greater, mostly because of
> the ready availability of guns).
>
> The high U.S. rate--which rivals those of former Soviet nations--
> can be traced primarily to a shift in public attitudes toward
> crime that began about 30 years ago as apprehension about
> violence and drugs escalated. Politicians were soon exploiting
> the new attitudes with promises to get criminals off the
> streets. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush promoted tough-
> on-crime measures, including the "War on Drugs." Bill Clinton,
> breaking with previous Democratic candidates, endorsed the death
> penalty and as president signed an anticrime bill that called
> for more prisons and increases in mandatory sentencing.
> Governors in about half the states signed "three strikes and
> you're out" legislation. Local officials who make most of the
> day-to-day decisions that affect incarceration, including
> police, prosecutors, judges and probation officers, were
> strongly influenced by the law-and-order rhetoric of governors
> and presidents. Increasingly, they opted for incarceration of
> lawbreakers in local jails or in state prisons.
>
> As a result, the length of sentences, already severe by western
> European standards, became even more punitive. Consequently, the
> number of those locked up rose more than fivefold between 1972
> and 1998, to more than 1.8 million. Most of those sentenced in
> recent years are perpetrators of nonviolent crimes, such as drug
> possession, that would not ordinarily be punished by long prison
> terms in other Western countries. The rise in the population
> behind bars happened while the rate of property crime
> victimization was falling steeply and while the rate of violent
> crime victimization was generally trending down.
>
> Conclusive proof is lacking as to whether harsh sentences
> actually deter crime. The most obvious result of harsh
> sentencing is the disruption of the black community,
> particularly as it bears on young black men. A substantial
> minority of both white and black teenage boys engage in violent
> behavior. In their twenties, most whites give up violence as
> they take on the responsibility of jobs and families, but a
> disproportionate number of African-Americans do not have jobs,
> and they are most likely to contribute to crime and imprisonment
> rates. The system is biased against blacks in other ways, such
> as in sentencing for drug offenses: although 13 percent of drug
> users in the U.S. are black, blacks account for 74 percent of
> all those sentenced to prison for drug offenses. One in seven
> adult black males has lost his voting rights because of a felony
> conviction.
>
> Two British criminologists, Leslie Wilkins (retired) and Ken
> Pease of the University of Huddersfield, have theorized that
> less egalitarian societies impose harsher penalties.
> Imprisonment thus becomes a negative reward, in contrast to the
> positive reward of wealth. The theory perhaps explains why the
> U.S. has higher incarceration rates than other Western
> countries, where income inequality is less extreme, and why
> rates began to rise in the early 1970s, shortly after income
> disparities began rising. If the theory is correct, high U.S.
> incarceration rates are unlikely to decline until there is
> greater equality of income.
>
>
> --Rodger Doyle ([log in to unmask])
>
>
>
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
>
> 2 CNN Reports
>
> New report chronicles criminal justice system's racial bias
> http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/05/04/civil.rights/index.html
>
> Minority youth face tougher treatment in justice system
> http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/04/25/juvenile.justice/index.html
>
> Minority youth at a 'cumulative disadvantage'
>
>
>
> [1]
>
> New report chronicles criminal justice system's racial bias
>
>
> May 4, 2000
> Web posted at: 1:58 PM EDT (1758 GMT)
>
>
> By Raju Chebium
> CNN Interactive Correspondent
>
> WASHINGTON (CNN) - Minorities are more likely than whites to be
> put to death, imprisoned and pulled over by traffic police, a
> civil rights group said Thursday in a report concluding that
> U.S. law enforcement agencies treat whites and people of color
> in separate and unequal ways.
>
> The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights released the 90-page
> report called "Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the
> American Criminal Justice System," which chronicles what the
> group calls the systematic and unfair treatment of blacks,
> Hispanics and other minorities.
>
> FULL TEXT:
>
> "Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal
> Justice System"
>
> "The color of a person's skin is a better indicator of how long
> a person's sentence will be, whether or not a person will be
> pulled over by police, whether or not a person is given the
> death penalty, what kind of plea bargain a person is offered or
> whether or not a juvenile is tried as an adult," the group said
> in a statement.
>
> Wade Henderson, the group's executive director, said the
> findings show that U.S. lawmakers need to reexamine their
> approaches to criminal justice.
>
> "There should not be a different level of justice for people who
> are not white. We're not suggesting that we establish laws
> that 'take it easy' on minorities. We want fairness," he said.
>
> The most disturbing aspect of the report is that police officers
> and prosecutors may be subconsciously discriminating against
> minorities without meaning to, said Karen McGill Lawson,
> executive director of the Leadership Conference Education Fund,
> a sister organization of the civil rights group.
>
> Two problems greatly contribute to the unequal treatment of
> blacks and whites, according to the report: the war on drugs and
> racial profiling.
>
> The war on drugs, which began in the early 1980s, called for
> longer prison terms for drug offenders. Lawson said lawmakers
> over the years adopted a "lock 'em up" approach to all crimes.
>
> Racial profiling, a police practice in which minorities are more
> likely to be targeted, has led to the incarceration of
> minorities in disproportionately large numbers.
>
> Additionally, reforms in federal sentencing guidelines over the
> years have increased the length of prison sentences, keeping the
> already large minority populations behind bars longer than
> whites, the report said.
>
> For instance, Lawson said, blacks comprise 12 percent of the
> nation's population and 13 percent of the drug users. Yet, they
> constitute 38 percent of those arrested for drug-related crimes
> and 59 percent of those convicted of drug crimes, she said.
>
> Some police groups agreed with the findings, calling them a wake-
> up call for an overhaul of the nation's criminal justice system.
>
> "These problems are like termites that are eating away at the
> foundations of a building," acknowledged Hubert Williams,
> president of the Police Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit
> group that strives to improve police work through research and
> training. "High-level government officials understand the
> gravity of this situation, the inequities and disparities and
> the perceived inequities and disparities."
>
> Noting efforts to end racial profiling in New Jersey and
> elsewhere, Williams said law enforcement agencies must act
> with "deliberate speed" to correct problems that have been
> identified. He also urged lawmakers to further study the issue.
>
> Among the report's findings:
>
>
> o Blacks who kill whites were sentenced to death 22 times more
> frequently than blacks who kill blacks and seven times more
> frequently than whites who kill blacks, according to crime
> researcher David C. Baldus.
>
> o Though blacks and whites have approximately the same rate of
> drug use, blacks are one-third more likely to be arrested for
> drug offenses
>
> o Between 1985 and 1995, the rate of incarceration for
> Hispanics more than doubled.
>
> o The Asian-American population in federal prisons has
> quadrupled in the past 20 years.
>
> o Blacks are likely to receive 50 percent longer federal prison
> sentences than whites.
>
> o About 60 percent of the youths in federal custody are
> American Indians.
>
>
> The report offered a variety of solutions, including
> accreditation of law enforcement agencies, hiring more minority
> officers, abolishing or suspending the death penalty and
> reforming sentencing guidelines.
>
> Lawson said two solutions that would help correct the situation
> in the short run are ending racial profiling and increasing
> money for crime- and drug-prevention programs.
>
> The Leadership Conference, which is celebrating its 50th
> anniversary Thursday, is a coalition of 180 civil rights groups.
> Members include leading groups such as the National Association
> for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil
> Liberties Union and the National Council of La Raza.
>
> The Associated Press contributed to this report.
>
>
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/04/25/juvenile.justice/index.html
>
> [2]
>
> Minority youth face tougher treatment in justice system
>
> April 25, 2000
> Web posted at: 2:51 p.m. EDT (1851 GMT)
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In this story:
>
> Minority youth at a 'cumulative disadvantage'
>
> Complicated problem
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> WASHINGTON (CNN) -- African-American youths face tougher
> treatment throughout the juvenile justice system, according to a
> report released Tuesday by a children's advocacy group.
>
> Law Dictionary
>
> The report found that in 1998, 71 percent of juvenile arrests
> involved white youth, 26 percent of the arrests involved black
> youth. However, of the age group of 10- to 17-year-olds, African-
> Americans make up just 15 percent of the group.
>
> Once they are in custody, black youth are more likely than
> whites to be formally charged and jailed, and far more likely to
> have their cases referred to adult courts. The study found this
> difference was present, even when black and white youth are
> charged with the same crime.
>
> White youth were more likely than black youth to be sentenced to
> probation.
>
> The study's authors say the data suggests the justice system is
> not "racially neutral" and states have not done enough to
> address racial disparities. They say recent trends to "get
> tough" on juvenile offenders makes dealing with the problem more
> important.
>
> "As the blurring of the line between juvenile and criminal court
> increases, so does the likelihood that these trends will
> disproportionately affect minority youth," the report says.
>
> Minority youth at a 'cumulative disadvantage'
>
> The study found that when white and African-American youth are
> charged with the same offense, black students are five times
> more likely to be detained. Custody rates for Latino and Native
> American youth are 2.5 times higher than those of white youth.
>
> Minority youth are also more likely to be tried in adult courts
> and incarcerated in adult prisons. In 1997, 7,400 youth under
> the age of 18 were sent to adult prison. Three out of four were
> minorities, the study says.
>
> The report, was conducted by Building Blocks for Youth, an
> alliance of child advocacy groups promoting fairer juvenile
> justice policies. Its authors studied state and federal data on
> arrests, juvenile court actions, detention and other factors.
>
> Complicated problem
> Some people have argued that a disproportionate number of
> minorities are in the justice system because minority youth
> commit more crimes than white youth. The authors of the study
> say the problem is "much more complicated." They say police
> policies, such as targeting patrols in certain low-income areas
> and group arrest procedures could impact minority and white
> youth differently.
>
> The report suggests broader social issues could be factors. It
> says crime victims may be more likely to think that offenses
> were committed by minority youth than white youth. The study
> also said policies requiring youth to be released to biological
> parents could put offenders who live in single-parent homes, or
> are in foster care at a disadvantage.
>
> The authors of the report called for a "nationwide effort to
> identify the causes of this differential treatment of minority
> youth."
>
>
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
> = = = = = = = =
>
>
> Re:
>
> Dr. Loic Wacquant
> Centre de sociologie europeenne du College de France
> University of California at Berkeley
>
>
> Wacquant's article, below, is MUST reading.
>
> He succeeds in showing clearly what
> the disproportionate representation of
> blacks and minorities (in America
> and Europe, alike) as wards of
> the criminal justice system
> is really all about -- with a great
> many non-whites being snared for drugs.
>
> This is a TIMELY piece of scholarship.
>
> It shows in numbers and stats a picture that we tend
> not to see in its entirety but only in snippets.
>
> These processes that victimize persons of foreign,
> non-European and/or minority descent, as presented here,
> take on a three-dimensionality.
>
> When a member of an underclass complains, he may well
> be accused of having a "victim complex" or of "playing the
> race card."
>
> This scholarship makes it all the more ludicrous that
> any Frenchman (or Dutchman or Italian or even
> Brit) could hold doggishly onto the delusion that
> their systems of criminal justice are immune to the
> pitfalls of the American -- vis-a-vis the underclasses.
>
>
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
> = = = =
>
>
> Wacquant writes:
>
> Prison and the branding it effects thus
> actively participate in the fabrication of a European category
> of
> "sub-whites" tailor-made to legitimize a drift towards the penal
> management of poverty which, thanks to a halo effect, tends to
> apply to the
> ensemble of working-class strata undermined by mass joblessness
> and
> flexible labor, regardless of nationality.
>
> On this account, imprisonment and the police and court treatment
> of
> foreigners, immigrants, and assimilated categories (Arabs
> and "beurs"* in
> France, West-Indians in England, Turks and Gypsies in Germany,
> Tunisians in
> Italy, Africans in Belgium, Surinamese and Moroccans in Holland,
> etc.)
> constitute a veritable litmus test, a shibboleth for Europe:
> their
> evolution allows us to assess the degree to which the European
> Union
> resists or, on the contrary, conforms to the American policy of
> criminalization of poverty as complement to the generalization
> of wage
> instability and social insecurity. Like the carceral fate of
> blacks in
> America, it gives a precious and prescient indication of the
> type of
> society and state that Europe is in the process of building.
>
>
> *****************************************************************
> *
>
> [Full Text]
>
>
> FOREIGNERS AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE PRISONS OF EUROPE
>
> In 1989, for the first time in history, the population consigned
> in prisons
> of the United States turned majority black. As a result of the
> decade-long
> "War on Drugs" waged by the federal government as part of a
> broad "law and
> order" policy, the incarceration rate of African-Americans
> doubled in a
> short ten years, rising from 3,544 inmates per 100,000 adults in
> 1985 to
> 6,926 per 100,000 in 1995, which is nearly seven times the rate
> of their
> white compatriots (919 per 100,000) and over twenty times the
> rates posted
> by France, England, or Italy. If persons sentenced to probation
> or released
> on parole are taken into account, it turns out that more than
> one of every
> three young black men (and close to two in three in the big
> cities of the
> Rust Belt) find themselves under supervision of the criminal
> justice
> system. This makes prison and its extensions the public service
> to which
> they have readiest access, well ahead of higher education or
> unemployment
> benefits for example. Based on the figures for 1991, the
> statisticians of
> the Department of Justice have computed that, over a lifetime,
> the
> cumulative probability that a black American has of being sent
> to prison
> (i.e., being sentenced to over a year of detention) exceeds 28%,
> compared
> to 16% for a Latino and 4.4% for a white man.
>
> If blacks have become the foremost "clients" of the penitentiary
> system of the United States, it is not on account of some
> special
> propensity that this community would have for crime and
> deviance. It is
> because it stands at the point of intersection of the three
> systems of
> forces that, together, determine and feed the unprecedented
> regime of
> carceral hyperinflation that America has experienced for the
> past quarter
> century following the denunciation of the Fordist-Keynesian
> social compact
> and the contestation of the caste regime by the Civil Rights
> Movement:
> first, the dualization of the labor market and the
> generalization of
> precarious employment and un(der)employment at its lower end;
> second, the
> dismantling of public assistance programs for the most
> vulnerable members
> of society (itself necessitated by the onset of desocialized
> wage-labor);
> and third, the crisis of the ghetto as instrument of control and
> confinement of a stigmatized population considered alien to the
> national
> body and supernumerary on both economic and political grounds.
> This leads
> one to think that, extreme though it may be, the carceral
> trajectory of
> blacks in the United States could be less idiosyncratic than the
> catch-all
> theory of "American exceptionalism" would have one think. One
> can even
> hypothesize that, the same causes producing the same effects,
> there is
> every chance that the societies of Western Europe will generate
> analogous,
> albeit less pronounced, situations to the extent that they, too,
> embark on
> the path of the penal management of poverty and inequality and
> ask their
> prison system, not only to curb crime, but also to regulate the
> lower
> segments of the labor market and to hold at bay populations
> judged to be
> disreputable, derelict, and unwanted. From this point of view,
> foreigners
> and quasi-foreigners would be "the blacks" of Europe.
>
>
> In point of fact, most of the countries of the European Union
> have
> witnessed a significant increase in their prison population,
> coinciding
> with the onset of the era of mass unemployment and the
> flexibilization of
> labor: between 1983 and 1995, the number of prisoners rose from
> 43,000 to
> 55,000 in England, from 39,000 to 53,000 in France, from 41,000
> to 50,000
> in Italy, from 14,000 to 40,000 in Spain, and from 4,000 to
> nearly 10,000
> in Holland and 7,000 in Greece. Despite periodic recourse to
> mass pardons
> (for example, in France on Bastille Day every year since 1991)
> and waves of
> early releases that have become commonplace (in Italy, Spain,
> Belgium, and
> Portugal), the continent's stock of prisoners has continued to
> swell and
> penitentiaries everywhere are overflowing with inmates. But,
> above all,
> throughout Europe, it is foreigners, so-called "second-
> generation"
> immigrants who precisely are not immigrants of non-Western
> extraction, and
> persons of color, who are known to figure among the most
> vulnerable
> categories both on the labor market and vis-a-vis the public
> assistance
> sector of the state, owing to their lower class distribution and
> to the
> multiple discriminations they suffer, who are massively over-
> represented
> within the imprisoned population, and this to a degree
> comparable, nay in
> some places superior, to the "racial disproportionality" that
> afflicts
> blacks in the United States (cf. Table 1).
>
> Thus it is that in England, where the question of so-called
> "street" crime tends to be confounded, in public perception as
> well as in
> the practices of the police, with the visible presence and
> demands of
> subjects of the Empire come from the Caribbean, blacks are seven
> times more
> likely to be incarcerated than their white or Asian counterparts
> (and
> West-Indian women ten times as likely). In 1993, persons of West
> Indian,
> Guyanese, and African ancestry made up 11% of all prisoners,
> while they
> represent a mere 1.8% of the country's population ages 18 to 39.
> This
> over-representation is especially flagrant among prisoners "put
> away" for
> possession or distribution of drugs, of whom more than half are
> black, and
> among those in for burglary, where the proportion approaches two-
> thirds.
> A similar phenomenon can be observed in Germany. In Northern
> Rhineland, for example, the "gypsies" originating from Romania
> sport
> incarceration rates more than twenty times greater than do
> native citizens;
> for Moroccans, the figure is eight times, and for Turks, between
> three and
> four times. And the proportion of foreigners among those
> awaiting trial in
> detention has risen from one-third in 1989 to one-half five
> years later.
>
> Indeed, in the Land of Hessen, the number of foreign prisoners
> has grown
> each year since 1987, whereas the number of nationals in
> detention fell
> each year. As for this swelling of the number of non-nationals
> behind
> bars, it is almost entirely due to infractions of the drug laws.
> In the
> Netherlands, whose prison population has tripled in fifteen
> years and
> comprised 43% foreigners in 1993, the probability of being
> sanctioned with
> an unsuspended prison sentence is systematically higher for even
> the same
> first offense when the person convicted is of Surinamese or
> Moroccan
> origin.
>
> Table 1. Foreigners in the prison population of the European
> Union in 1997
>
> Country Foreign Prisoners Proportion of Total
> Germany 25,000 34%
> France 14,200 26%
> Italy 10,900 22%
> Spain 7,700 18%
> England 4,800 8% *
> Belgium 3,200 38%
> Netherlands 3,700 32%
> Greece 2,200 39%
> Austria 1,900 27% *
> Portugal 1,600 11%
> Sweden 1,100 26% *
> Denmark 450 14%
>
> * Estimate
>
> Source: Pierre Tournier, Statistique penale annuelle du Conseil
> de l'Europe, Enquete 1997, Strasbourg, 1999.
>
> In France, the share of foreigners in the prison population has
> gone from 18% in 1975 to 29% twenty years later (whereas
> foreigners make up
> only 6% of the country's population), a figure that does not
> take account
> of the pronounced "carceral overconsumption" of nationals
> perceived and
> treated as foreigners by the police and judicial apparatus, such
> as the
> youth born to North African immigrants or come from the
> predominantly black
> French overseas dominions and territories. Which is tantamount
> ot saying
> that the cells of France have grown distinctly "colored" these
> past years
> since two-thirds of the 15,000-odd foreign prisoners officially
> recorded in
> 1995 originated from North Africa (53%) and Sub-Saharan Africa
> (16%).
> The "ethnonational disproportionality" that afflicts residents
> from
> France's former colonies stems from the fact that, for the same
> offense,
> the courts more readily resort to imprisonment when the
> condemned does not
> possess French citizenship, suspended sentences and community
> sanctions
> being practically monopolized by nationals. The demographer
> Pierre Tournier
> has shown that, depending on the charges, the probability of
> being
> sentenced to prison is 1.8 to 2.4 times higher for a foreigner
> than for a
> Frenchman (all persons tried taken together, without regard to
> prior
> records). Next, the number of foreigners implicated in illegal
> immigration
> has rocketed from 7,000 in 1976 to 44,000 in 1993. Now, three-
> fourths of
> those sanctioned for violating "Article 19," relating to
> unlawful entry and
> residence, are thrown behind barsfor one of the sixteen
> misdemeanors most
> often tried before the courts, this is the one most frequently
> hit with an
> unsuspended prison sentence: it is in effect repressed as
> severely as a
> felony. Thus it turns out that, far from resulting from a
> hypothetical
> increase in their delinquency, as some xenophobic discourses
> would have it,
> the growing share of foreigners in the prison population of
> France is due
> exclusively to the tripling in twenty years of incarcerations
> for
> violations of immigration statutes. In point of fact, if
> prisoners
> sentenced for this administrative infringement are excluded from
> carceral
> statistics, the ratio of overimprisonment of foreigners in
> relation to
> citizens in France drops from 6 to 3. As in the case of blacks
> in the
> United States, aside from the fact of a qualification that
> cannot be
> overemphasized that African-Americans have, on paper at any
> rate, been
> citizens of the Union for at least a century, the over-
> representation of
> foreigners in French prisons expresses, not only their inferior
> class
> composition, but also, on the one hand, the greater severity of
> the penal
> institution towards them and, on the other, the deliberate
> choice to
> repress illegal immigration by means of imprisonment. We are
> indeed
> dealing here with what is first and foremost a confinement of
> differentiation or segregation, aiming to keep a group separate
> and to
> facilitate its substraction from the societal body (it results
> more and
> more frequently in deportation and banishment from the national
> territory),
> as distinct from confinement of authority or confinement of
> safety.
>
> To the foreigners and quasi-foreigners held in jails and
> prisons, often in
> tiers segregated according to ethnonational origin (as at La
> Sante , in the
> heart of Paris, where inmates are distributed into four separate
> and
> hostile wards, "white," "African," "Arab," and "rest of the
> world"), one
> must still add the thousands of immigrants without papers or
> awaiting
> deportation, especially by virtue of "double sentencing",
> arbitrarily
> detained in those state-sponsored enclaves of non-existent
> rights, the
> "waiting areas" and "retention centersi"that have proliferated
> in the past
> decade throughout the European Union. Like the camps
> for "undesirable
> foreigners, Spanish refugees and other agitators" created by
> Daladier in
> 1938, the thirty-some centers presently in operation on French
> territory
> -they were less than a dozen fifteen years ago - are so many
> prisons that
> do not speak their name, and for good reason: they do not belong
> to the
> prison administration, their inmates are held in violation of
> Article 66 of
> the Constitution (which stipulates that no one can be detained
> arbitrarily
> ), and conditions of confinement in them are typically in
> violation of both
> the law and basic standards of human dignity. This is the case,
> inter alia,
> at the infamous center of Arenq, near the Marseille harbor
> station, where a
> dilapidated hangar built in 1917 and lacking in the minimum
> comfort
> necessary for human habitation serves to warehouse some 1,500
> foreigners
> deported each year to North Africa.
>
> In Belgium, where the number of foreigners imprisoned in the
> custody of the
> Office for Foreigners increased ninefold between 1974 and 1994,
> persons
> consigned in the detention centers for foreigners "en situation
> irregulier"
> fall under the authority of the Interior Ministry (in charge of
> public
> order) and not of Justice, and they are therefore omitted from
> the
> statistics of the penitentiary system. Five so-called closed
> centers,
> surrounded by a double row of barbed-wire fencing and under
> permanent video
> surveillance, serve as lauching pad for the deportation of
> 15,000
> foreigners each year: this is the official government target
> number given
> as express proof of the realistic immigration policy carried out
> with the
> supposed aim of cutting the ground out from under the far right,
> which
> meanwhile prospers like never before. In Italy, deportation
> orders
> quintupled in only four years to peak at 57,000 in 1994, even
> though there
> is every indication that illegal immigration has subsided and
> that the
> great majority of foreigners who do not have proper papers
> entered the
> country legally to fill "black market" jobs disdained by the
> native
> population as the government of Massimo d'Alema implicitly
> recognized when
> it increased by a factor of six the number of residence and work
> permits
> initially granted as part of the "regularization" program
> launched in early
> winter 1998.
>
> More generally, it is well documented that those judicial
> practices that
> are seemingly the most neutral and the most routine, beginning
> with
> preventative (remand) detention, tend systematically to
> disadvantage
> persons of foreign origin or perceived to be such. And "la
> justice
> quarante vitesses", to borrow the revealing expression of the
> youth of the
> declining housing estates of Longwy, knows too well how to shift
> into high
> gear when it comes to arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating
> the
> residents of stigmatized areas with a heavy concentration of the
> jobless
> and of families issued from the labor migrations of the thirty-
> year boom of
> the postwar period who settled into those neighborhoods now
> designated as
> "sensitive" by official state jargon. Indeed, under the
> provisions of the
> Schengen and Maastricht treaties aiming to accelerate juridical
> integration
> so as to ensure the effective free circulation of European
> citizens,
> immigration has been redefined by the signatory countries as a
> continental
> and, by implication, national matter of security, under the same
> heading as
> organized crime and terrorism, to which it has been grafted on
> the level of
> both discourse and administrative regulation. Thus it is that,
> throughout
> Europe, police, judicial, and penal practices converge at least
> in that
> they are applied with special diligence and severity to persons
> of
> non-European phenotype, who are easily spotted and made to bend
> to the
> police and juridical arbitrary, to the point that one may speak
> of a
> veritable process of criminalization of immigrants that tends,
> by its
> destructuring and criminogenic effects, to (co)produce the very
> phenomenon
> that it is supposed to combat, in accord with the well-known
> mechanism of
> the self-fulfilling prophecy. Its main impact is indeed to push
> its target
> populations deeper into clandestinity and illegality and to
> encourage the
> durable structuring of specific networks of sociability and
> mutual help as
> well as of a parallel economy that escapes all state regulation,
> a result
> that is evidently well suited to justify in return the special
> attention
> given to them by the police services.
>
> This process is powerfully reinforced and amplified by the media
> and by
> politicians of all stripes, eager to surf the xenophobic wave
> that has been
> sweeping across Europe since the neoliberal turn of the eighties
> by making
> an amalgam, sincerely or cynically, directly or indirectly, but
> with ever
> more banality, of immigration, illegality, and criminality.
> Ceaselessly
> blacklisted, suspected in advance if not in principle, driven
> back to the
> margins of society and hounded by the authorities with unmatched
> zeal, the
> (non-European) foreigner mutates into a "suitable enemy" to use
> the
> expression of the Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie at once
> symbol of
> and target for all social anxieties, as are poor African-
> Americans in the
> major cities of their society. Prison and the branding it
> effects thus
> actively participate in the fabrication of a European category
> of
> "sub-whites" tailor-made to legitimize a drift towards the penal
> management of poverty which, thanks to a halo effect, tends to
> apply to the
> ensemble of working-class strata undermined by mass joblessness
> and
> flexible labor, regardless of nationality.
>
> On this account, imprisonment and the police and court treatment
> of
> foreigners, immigrants, and assimilated categories (Arabs
> and "beurs"* in
> France, West-Indians in England, Turks and Gypsies in Germany,
> Tunisians in
> Italy, Africans in Belgium, Surinamese and Moroccans in Holland,
> etc.)
> constitute a veritable litmus test, a shibboleth for Europe:
> their
> evolution allows us to assess the degree to which the European
> Union
> resists or, on the contrary, conforms to the American policy of
> criminalization of poverty as complement to the generalization
> of wage
> instability and social insecurity. Like the carceral fate of
> blacks in
> America, it gives a precious and prescient indication of the
> type of
> society and state that Europe is in the process of building.
>
> Loic Wacquant
> Centre de sociologie europeenne du College de France
> University of California at Berkeley
> Revised 2/26/99
>
> Forthcoming in Punishment and Society (vol. 1, n.2, 1999)
>
> = = = = = = = = =
>
> * This article draws on a lecture given in December 1998 while a
> Visiting
> Professor at the Facult de Droit of the University of Paris I-
> Panth on (I
> thank Remi Lenoir and his colleagues at the Credhess for their
> kind
> hospitality). It is based on the last chapter of a forthcoming
> book, Les
> prisons de la misere (Editions Liber-Raisons d'agir, 1999). The
> translation
> from the French is by Tarik Wareh and the author.
>
> For a rigorous and in-depth analysis of the problem, cf. the two
> essential
> books by Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect: Race, Crime and
> Punishment in
> America, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995, and Jerome
> Miller, Search
> and Destroy: African-American Males in the Criminal Justice
> System,
> Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; for an analysis of
> the
> political determinants of the rise of ilaw and orderi during
> this period,
> Katherine Beckett, Making Crime Pay, Oxford, Oxford University
> Press, 1998.
> Thomas Bonczar and Allen Beck, "Lifetime Likelihood of Going to
> State or
> Federal Prison," Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report,
> Washington,
> BJS, March 1997, p. 1; more complete and updated data on this
> subject can
> be found in Marc Maurer, "Racial Disparities in Prison Getting
> Worse in the
> 1990s," Overcrowded Times 8:1 (February 1997), pp. 9-13.
>
> Loi c Wacquant, "L'ascension de l'etat penal en Amerique," Actes
> de la
> recherche en sciences sociales 124 (September 1998), pp. 7-26,
> and "Crime
> et chatiment en Amerique de Nixon a Clinton, Archives de
> politique
> criminelle 20 (Spring 1998), pp. 123-138.
>
> Pierre Tournier, Statistique penale annuelle du Conseil de
> l'Europe,
> Enquete 1997, Strasbourg, forthcoming (I thank the author for
> communicating
> these data to me in advance). For a more nuanced and in-depth
> analysis,
> Andre Kuhn, "Populations carce- rales: Combien? Pourquoi? Que
> faire?"
> Archives de politique criminelle 20 (Spring 1998), pp. 47-99,
> and S.
> Snacken, K. Beyens, and H. Tubex, "Changing Prison Populations
> in Western
> Countries: Fate or Policy?" European Journal of Crime, Criminal
> Law and
> Criminal Justice 3:1 (1995), pp. 18-53; and the classic work of
> Nils
> Christie, Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western
> Style, London,
> Routledge, 1994 (2nd expanded, edition, for which the author has
> revealingly dropped the question mark from the original title).
>
> For an overview, Hans-Joerg Allbrecht, "Ethnic Minorities, Crime
> and
> Criminal Justice in Europe," in Francis Heidensohn and Michael
> Farrell
> (eds.), Crime in Europe, London, Routledge, 1993. I link the
> rise in the
> imprisonment of foreigners to the "temptation" of the penal
> management of
> poverty in Europe in Les prisons de la misere,
> Paris, ...Editions
> Liber-Raisons d'agir, in press.
>
> David J. Smith, "Ethnic Origins, Crime, and Criminal Justice in
> England
> and Wales," in Michael Tonry (ed.), Ethnicity, Crime, and
> Immigration:
> Comparative and Cross-National Perspectives, Chicago, The
> University of
> Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 101-182; also, Ellis Cashmore and
> Edward
> McLaughlin (eds.), Out of Order? Policing Black People, London,
> Routledge,
> 1991; J.H. Smith, "Race, Crime and Criminal Justice," in The
> Oxford
> Handbook of Criminology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993.
> Hans-Joerg Albrecht, "Ethnic Minority, Crime, and Criminal
> Justice in
> Germany," in Michael Tonry (ed.), Ethnicity, Crime, and
> Immigration, op.
> cit., pp. 101-182, citation p. 87.
>
> Josine Junger-Tas, "Ethnic Minorities and Criminal Justice in
> the
> Netherlands," in Michael Tonry (ed.), Ethnicity, Crime, and
> Immigration,
> op. cit., pp. 257-310.
>
> The most insidious of these are not the shrill and paranoid
> delusions of
> the representatives of the Front National during their electoral
> meetings,
> whose excessive and hate-filled tenor "republicans" at heart are
> unanimous
> in deploring, but the soft-spoken discourses that are held
> within the state
> apparatus, for example in the National Assembly, courteously,
> between
> reasonable and respectable people, with all the juridical
> euphemisms and
> oratorical denegations that make for the charm - and the force -
> of
> official language (as shown by Charlotte Lessana in "La loi
> Debr : la
> fabrique de l'immigre" Cultures et conflits 31-32, Autumn/Winter
> 1998, pp.
> 125-159).
>
> Pierre Tournier, "La delinquance des etrangers en France:
> analyse des
> statistiques pe- nales," in Salvatore Palidda (ed.), Delit
> d'immigration/Immigrant Delinquency, Brussels, European
> Commission, 1996,
> p. 158.
>
> According to the ideal-typical distinction introduced by Claude
> Faugeron, "La derive pe nale," Esprit 215 (October 1995), pp.
> 132-144.
> * [Translator's note] The term "double peine" refers to the fact
> that
> foreigners can be and are frequently sanctioned twice by French
> law: first
> by imprisonment for the specific crime they committed and second
> by
> banishment from the national territory after they have served
> their prison
> sentence via administrative decree or judicial sanction (in
> violation of
> the European Convention on the Rights of Man).
>
> Jean-Pierre Perrin-Martin, La retention, Paris, L'Harmattan,
> 1996, and
> for a comparison between France, the United Kingdom, and
> Germany, as well
> as with the United States, see the issue of Culture et conflits
> (23, 1996),
> devoted to the theme: "Circuler, enfermer, eloigner: Zones
> d'attente et
> centres de retention des democraties occidentales."
>
> Laurence Vanpaeschen, Barbeles de la honte, Brussels, Luc Pire,
> 1998;
> Fabienne Brion, "Chiffrer, dechiffrer: Incarceration des
> etrangers et
> construction sociale de la criminalite des immigres en
> Belgique," in
> Salvatore Palidda (ed.), Delit d'immigration/Immigrant
> Delinquency, op.
> cit., pp. 163-223.
>
> Salvatore Palidda, "La construction sociale de la deviance et de
> la
> criminalite parmi les immigres: le cas italien," in Salvatore
> Palidda
> (ed.), Delit d'immigration/Immigrant Deliquency, op. cit., pp.
> 231-266.
> * [Translator's note] Literally "justice with forty gears,"
> implying
> grossly unequal treatment at the hands of the criminal justice
> system for
> different social categories and infractions. Longwy is a
> formerly
> monoindustrial town in the northeastern region of Lorraine
> plagued by high
> unemployment following the collapse of the steel industry in the
> seventies.
> Didier Bigo, L'Europe des polices et la securite interieure,
> Brussels,
> Editions Complexe, 1992, and "Securite et immigration: vers une
> gouvernementalite de l'inquie tude?" Cultures et conflits 31-32
> (Autumn-Winter 1998), pp. 13-38, as well as the other articles
> in this
> issue on the theme "Securite et immigration," notably Monica den
> Boer,
> iCrime et immigration dans l'Union europeenne" (pp. 101-124).
> Robert K. Merton, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy," in Social
> Theory and
> Social Structure, New York, The Free Press, 1968 (3rd expanded
> edition),
> pp. 475-490.
>
> On this process of the criminalization of immigrants, see the
> comparative works assembled by Allesandro Dal Lago (ed.), Lo
> straniero e il
> nemico, Genoa, Costa e Nolan, 1998; on the Dutch case, Godfried
> Engbersen,
> In de schaduw van morgen: Stedlijke marginaliteit in Nederland,
> Amsterdam,
> Boom, 1997; and on the German case, Michael Kubink, Verst ndnis
> und
> Bedeutung von Auslaenderkriminalit t: Eine Analyse der
> Konstitution
> sozialer Probleme, Pfaffenweiler, Centaurus, 1993.
>
> Nils Christie, "Suitable Enemy," in Herman Bianchi and Ren van
> Swaaningen (eds.), Abolitionism: Toward a Non-Repressive
> Approach to Crime,
> Amsterdam, Free University Press, 1986.
>
> The notion of "sub-white" is borrowed from the sociologist Andre
> a R a
> (who himself borrows it from the French rap band IAM), cf. "Le
> racisme
> europeen et la fabrication du sous-blanc , in Andre a R a (ed.),
> Immigration et racisme en Europe, Brussels, Editions Complexe,
> 1998, pp.
> 167-202.
>
> * [Translatoris note] Beur, a street slang (verlan) term
> for "arabe,"
> designates so-called second-generation No
> rth Africans, the French offspring of Algerian, Moroccan and
> Tunisian
> immigrants who came to France during the "thirty glorious years"
> of postwar
> economic growth.
>
> Pierre Bourdieu, Contre-feux, Paris, ...Editions Liber-Raisons
> d'agir,
> 1998, "Le sort des etrangers comme shibboleth," pp. 21-24.
>
>
> ......
>
>
> H E L P ~ R E Q U E S T E D
>
>
> BLACK PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE / HUMAN RIGHTS VICTIM
>
> Please help with a Human Rights case; go to:
>
>
> http://x46.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=619882664
> http://www.poboxes.com/justice
> http://members.aol.com/FreeBarry1/index.html
> http://www.poboxes.com/DROITS
>
> [Find prison address at above sites]
>
> As a tourist in France, Barry was wrongfully arrested and
> sentenced to 18 yrs without right to appeal. In July,
> he will pass his 7th consecutive birthday behind
> French bars, isolated, in a small space that does not
> even permit him to stretch out his 6'4" (1.93m) frame.
>
> Please help send cards and messages of encouragement and
> goodwill to him, and help send letters of protest to French
> (and American) officials. Sample appeal letters
> are provided at the above site.
>
> For info on this Human Rights case, or to join the Justice
> List, please E-mail to: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> ________
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>
> Internet: HATE LETTERS ~ Just a Nuisance, or a Very Bad Omen..?
>
> Help address the growing problem of abuse of the Internet
> and E-Mail as a conduit for racism and intolerance.
>
> An example of a typical HATE LETTER, and a range of
> reactions to it, can be found at:
>
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>
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