This serves as both an
open letter to Thurgood Marshall Jr, a PSA for those who didn’t know about his appointment
to CCA and a reminder about mass incarceration, and the overrepresentation of
black men in prison.
It came as a complete and utter shock to discover yesterday
that Thurgood Marshall Jr, son of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
Marshall and lawyer best known for his victory in Brown v. Board of Education,
sits on the Board
of Directors for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest
private prison owning company in the United States.
“What’s the big deal?” you ask? Well, in order to understand
the irony we must look at the incarceration rates of black men, private prisons
and CCA.
We’ve heard the
informative and compelling words of Michelle Alexander many times over the last
couple of years as she has stated, “Today there are more
African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation
or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out of prisons and
jails or under correctional control.”
African Americans
only account for 13.6% of the U.S. population, but 40 percent of the vast
prison population (over 2.5 million) is black. In 2010, black males were
incarcerated at the rate of 4,347 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents of the
same race and gender, compared to 678 inmates per 100,000 for white males. The
disparities in the prison population are absolutely devastating, especially
when factoring in that the majority of the individuals in U.S. prisons are
guilty of minor drug offenses.
What role does
CCA play in all of this?
CCA is the
largest private prison owning company in the United States and has amassed a fortune (reportedly
earning $1.7 billion a year) by incarcerating people of color, namely African
Americans. CCA has had so much success that in 2012 they
sent proposal
letters to prison officials in 48 states offering to purchase and manage
public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange for
their purchase, the proposal states that the prisons must include 1,000 beds
and states must agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run
prisons for the term of the contract, 20 years.
How does one ensure a 90% occupancy rate for 20 years? How is
this ethical? WHO will be among the 90%? Looking at the current laws that increase
our prison populations, the laws that ensure occupancy rates (three-strikes law)
and our failed war on drugs and unjust sentencing, we can ascertain that a
large percent of that occupancy rate will consist of black men.
According
to the Illinois Disproportionate Justice
Impact Study Commission, in some states, like
Illinois, African Americans are eight times more
likely to be incarcerated for a petty drug offense than white people, even
though African Americans and white people consume and distribute drugs at
similar rates.
At this point I’m not sure
what’s more disturbing, the fact that Thurgood Marshall Jr has been on CCA’s
board since 2003 or his statement in 2004 regarding his father in which he said,
"I also
like to think of his legacy as one of encouraging lawyers of every color to
contribute their skills to society." I wasn’t aware that this meant
using your skills to contribute to the mass incarceration of black men
throughout the U.S. As an attorney, and one whose father helped set the tone
for civil rights, I would think this meant using your skills to help fight
AGAINST the prison industrial complex and the devastating toll it’s taken on
the black family, not aid it.
Having all this information, carrying your fathers last name and legacy, I must ask, are you betting on or against black men?
