They Can’t Afford to Stay Out of Jail : Justice: Who, besides the penal system, would provide health care, room and board to uneducated black males?

Residents of inner-city America probably think that a recent report disclosing that one out of four black males are under the control of the criminal justice system was at best unnecessary.

Nobody has to tell law-abiding citizens who live with steel bars or gates on their windows or three or four locks on their house or apartment doors that crime is rife in their community. If 25% of the young men are in jail, on their way to jail or have been in jail, these citizens are the victims of those crimes. And the 25% are their sons, husbands, brothers, fathers.

Those who live or toil in our nation’s inner cities know that the vast majority of black adolescents there are too under-educated and uneducated to obtain gainful employment outside the penal system. They cannot afford to live outside the penal system. In any major American city, a single adult living on his or her own needs a minimum annual salary of $21,000, realistically speaking, to maintain a decent standard of living. Very few prison inmates possess that kind of legitimate earning power. But in prison, inmates are given free health care, free dental care, free room and board and free entertainment and recreation. The average prison inmate cannot afford to stay out of prison. Furthermore, prison is the only thing for which most urban American public school systems prepare their students, and prisons usually replicate the failure of the public school system--they prepare these inmates to return to prison.

Inmates refer to their prison cells as “my house.” As any experienced parent can verify, it is very difficult to dislodge even college-educated progeny from the nest, despite a bachelor’s degree with which to face the world.

To the black youths who will populate the criminal-justice system, dealing drugs is considerably more lucrative and therefore more appealing than employment at McDonald’s or Burger King; very few sane people will choose to work for less than $5 per hour when they can earn $200 or more a day, even at the risk of going to prison, especially when there are no other legitimate alternatives. And jail is no serious threat. In this instance, it can be analogized to threatening to throw Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch. A more effective threat would be to eliminate the illegal drug market and threaten not to send to jail. We must devise ways to throw them out of prison and to keep them out and out of criminal activity.

Marc Mauer, author of the report by the Washington-based Sentencing Project, states that we now risk the possibility of writing off an entire generation of black men. The unabridged truth is that the deplorable situation on which the report focuses arose because the powers that be have been writing off an entire generation of African American men in inner-city public schools for the past four decades.

The ramifications of this gross social injustice have been manifold and profound in their impact on the national black community: Dealing crack has become the No. 1 alternative to futile employment in low-paying jobs in fast-food restaurants; man-sharing is becoming increasingly popular among young African American women; white men are becoming more appealing to successful black women, and the establishment of an inner-city tradition of criminal pursuits as acceptable and even preferable vocations.

I am compelled to disagree with Mauer when he says that “we really don’t know what it will mean for the future,” referring to his report, “because we have never had a situation like this before.”

One does not have to be psychic to know that this current social condition will produce a dearth of fathers and husbands for this generation and the next generation of African Americans. There will also be increased hostility and suspicion of national policy-makers by black leaders, accompanied by increasing acceptance by some of the black genocide conspiracy theory.

Several years ago, while teaching a creative-writing course in one of New York state’s correctional facilities, I met an extremely gifted inmate for whom I was certain I could obtain a book contract with a major publishing house. When I expressed my desire to write a letter to the inmate’s parole board, informing it of Jeff’s literary potential, he was obviously amused. I assured him that I was serious about the letter. He apologized for chuckling at my offer and said, “My parole board ain’t been born yet.” When I asked him to elaborate, he responded, “Man, I’m doing triple life.”

Jeff was 24 but appeared to be no more than 16. What a pity that some truly dedicated teacher did not discover and cultivate Jeff’s talent before he killed three people in cold blood.

McDonald’s puts more black teen-agers to work than any other employer in America, including the federal government. But according to Lee Dunham, president of the Black McDonald’s Operators Assn., 80% of the inner-city teen-agers employed by the chain are unable to cope with elementary arithmetic. “If I didn’t have computerized cash registers, these kids would give the store away in a couple of weeks.”

Life is much easier in prison. Even the most rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic is unnecessary; one merely has to know how to maintain a “bad dude” image. Thus prison is a less challenging and intimidating environment for the African American youths of urban America, whom the public schools have failed. It is imperative that the country’s urban school systems be rendered affective, from kindergarten up, or abolished as too burdensome, economically and in human costs.

Prisons are the ideal place to begin this educational process. They have captive student bodies, ample time and few distractions. But we must be ready to pay maximum salaries for gifted teachers. Every inmate should be compelled to learn a salable skill or trade and earn at least a general-education diploma.

They will comply if the proper motivation is provided. Major corporations should be given tax incentives to adopt cell blocks or other prison units whose inmates are from families that have never had a high school graduate; that have been on welfare for two generations or more; that have a history of teen-age parenting for three generations or more, and resolve to have those negative histories end with this inmate’s generation and with this inmate.

Perhaps within the next 10 years, such a program could be expanded to include entire prison and non-prison populations. State and federal governments could gradually assume sponsorship of such programs.

A Burger King franchise owner in Detroit has instituted a program of paying college tuition for his young workers. He also pays to train them for better jobs elsewhere, such as computer programming. He will pay tuition for training costs of up to $10,000. With this program, he saves $41,000 a year in trainee costs. His employee turnover rate drops from 41 persons a year to nine, and the $10,000 is tax deductible. This is a great program for the nation. It should be advocated for all businesses.

We must act now. If America’s prison population doubles in the next decade as it has in the preceding decade, where will we put the inmates, and how will we finance their incarceration? It is more responsible and less expensive to train and educate that disgraceful 25%. Frankly, we can no longer afford to send them to jail.