Reaching out to an African Human Rights Victim/Prisoner of Conscience
_________________________________________________________________
Please send a Message of Goodwill to help bouy up his moral and to help
keep him alive, for merely the price of a
stamp.
- 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
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E U R O P E ~ A M E R I C A
PATTERNS OF CRIME & PUNISHMENT ALONG RACIAL
LINES
Also, find below the research paper of Prof. Loic Wacquant, UC Berkeley:
"FOREIGNERS AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE PRISONS OF EUROPE"
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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
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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.
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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."
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Re:
Dr. Loic Wacquant
Centre de sociologie europeenne du College de France University of
California at Berkeley
More is found in Wacquant's book:
Les prisons de la misere (1999; Raisons d'agir)
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 doggedly onto the delusion that their systems of criminal
justice are immune to the pitfalls of the American -- vis-a-vis the
underclasses.
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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.
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*
[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.
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