The bill goes on to inform its purpose “...is to provide grants for criminal justice reinvestment strategies.” A data-driven program; however, it seems the $35 million to be appropriated by the bill is sorely misappropriated. In fact, the above statistics offer sufficient data-driven information to inform any reasonably intelligent policy maker that the “prison industrial complex” is driven by high finance. It is a money-maker, an employment opportunity program, and a tool for social control of “minorities”and the poor.

Beyond that, there are a plethora of data-gathering institutions offering statistical information on theP.I.C., enough to prohibit this kind of wasteful duplication. For example, the U.S. Department ofJustice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) consistently releases information dissecting every aspect oft he P.I.C.; the Sentencing Project and the ACLU continuously make and issue reports on the P.I.C.;this includes the NAACP reports. The various states make statistical analyses of their prisons, if for no other purpose than budgeting and spending concerns.

Therefore, a closer look at this bill may conclude this is just another spending mechanism in support of the P.I.C.; essentially to fund another institution, statistics-gathering nonprofits and businesses in the service of the P.I.C. It is certainly obvious this bill is not seeking to lower minimum sentences, reduce impediments to the granting of parole, or the actual closing of prisons.

Rather, the greater probability is that this bill seeks to further refine the criminal justice mechanism to further target specific groups of Americans for incarceration, further refining the “New Jim Crow” laws, now that Michelle Alexander has raised the racist foundation of the P.I.C. into the national debate.Hence, we must be vigilant in opposing policy makers’ “double-speak” when they attempt to appropriate funding for data-driven studies that will ultimately target our communities and our youth.They are certainly NOT seeking solutions that serve to direct resources to our community that will lessen the incarceration of our youth and ultimately deny the P.I.C. the human resources its multi-billion dollar industry depends upon.

As Michelle Alexander warns: “It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the UnitedStates from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by marginalization (mass incarceration). While marginalization may sound far preferable to exploitation, it may prove to be even more dangerous.Extreme marginalization, as we have seen throughout world history, poses the risk of extermination....” (page 207)

If this thought is not diabolical enough, then consider the rider bill attached to the original H.R. 4080.

The second H.R. 4080 of 2/17/12, “The Unknown Slave” bill, is to “solicit bids and enter into an agreement for the creation of a statue of “The Unknown Slave,” which is “for permanent display inEmancipation Hall in the Capital Visitor Center.”

A statue to immortalize America’s inhumane history of African chattel slave trade fails to capture the reality that slavery has not been abolished; it has been institutionalized, pursuant to the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, in the prison system. Prisoners are slaves of the state in accord with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ruffin v. Commonwealth, 62 Va. 790, 796 (1871), a precedent which reads in part:

Therefore, there is no “Unknown Slave”; in fact, there are over 2 million very documented slaves across the United States. Rather than immortalizing the slave trade with a statue, let’s continue the fight to end slavery in the United States by putting an end to the new Jim Crow, demanding the abolishment of the Prison Industrial Complex. Call your Black Congressional Caucus representative and tell him/her “NO to the Unknown Slave statue” until all forms of slavery have been abolished in the United States!

In Fierce Struggle,

Jalil Muntaqim

3/22/12