by Curtis Bunn
In Pennsylvania, Secretary of the Department of Corrections John Wetzel recalled how this crack disparity caused the prison population to grow.
“There was a significant difference in how we reacted to the cheaply produced urban crack cocaine crises versus how criminal justice treated possession and use of cocaine, a more expensive white suburban drug,” Wetzel said.
According to the Drug Policy Alliance: “Despite the fact that the chemical structure of powder cocaine and crack cocaine is nearly identical, the punishment for crack possession or sales is far greater than that of cocaine. Until 2010, this sentencing disparity was 100 to 1, which means that while just 5 grams of crack would carry a 5-year mandatory minimum, it would take 500 grams of cocaine to trigger the same 5-year sentence. While the law was changed in 2010, there continues to be a disparity of 18 to 1.”
President Bill Clinton’s 1994 federal crime bill included $9 billion for prison construction and expanded the federal death penalty, mandatory minimum sentencing, and “truth in sentencing” incentives to encourage states to adopt harsh punishments and limit parole. The Clinton bill also supported federal legislation denying food stamps, public housing, and financial aid to college students convicted of drug felonies.
Joe Biden was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which largely wrote and shepherded the bill through Congress. While some Black leaders were dissatisfied with the expansion of the death penalty, Clinton met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and was able to garner enough votes to get the bill passed into law.
Although mass incarceration is caused by policies enacted by both Democrats and Republicans, Wetzel said, “Bill Clinton put mass incarceration on steroids and the situation was worsened by federal monies making military equipment available to law enforcement.”
Indeed, the increase in incarceration had already begun before the crime bill. The “Fact Sheet in U.S. Corrections” by the Sentencing Project said, “Since the official beginning of the war on drugs era in the 1980s, the number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses has skyrocketed from 40,900 in 1980 to 443,200 in 2018.”
The harsher sentences and mandatory minimums have also resulted in keeping people in prison for longer stretches, almost three times longer today than the average in 1986.
Half the people in federal prisons are serving a sentence for a drug offense. Most are not big-time drug dealers, and most have no criminal record for a violent offense. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost half a million people, and police still make more than 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences. Still, when you combine prisons and jails, four out of five people are locked up for something other than a drug offense, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit organization that produces research to expose the harm of mass incarceration.
However, incarceration is just one part of a larger system of correctional control. The U.S. justice system controls almost 7 million people, more than half on probation. Black people are 2.6 times as likely to be on probation and nearly four times as likely to be on parole as white people.
“Today, a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a freed slave or a black person living ‘free’ in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow,” wrote Michelle Alexander in her classic book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. In the book, Alexander further illuminates how the criminal justice system functions as a new system of racial control by targeting Black men through the “War on Drugs.”
This control continues after incarceration through community supervision like parole and probation, both of which require a person to be supervised and follow certain rules and guidelines. Criminal justice advocates recommend fewer rules and less supervision for people returning home, so that they can have more flexibility to get to work, go to school, or care for family members.
And Alexander warns against the shift toward using “e-carceration” devices such as electronic monitoring and viewing them as criminal justice reform. Like other supervision, the electronic ankle bracelets limit the person’s mobility.
“If our goal is not a better system of mass criminalization, but instead the creation of safe, caring, thriving communities, then we ought to be heavily investing in quality schools, job creation, drug treatment and mental health care in the least advantaged communities rather than pouring billions into their high-tech management and control,” she wrote in the New York Times.
It is impossible to fully measure the devastation mass incarceration has caused Black communities and families. Often an employer rejects an application of an ex-offender—or the opportunity available pays less than their qualifications warrant. But those instances are difficult to show in data. Nevertheless, America’s appetite to punish Black people and the structural racism that has supported this has assisted in broadening the gap in wealth and health between Blacks and whites.
For formerly incarcerated Black people the average loss in lifetime earnings is $358,900; for whites in this group, the loss is $267,000. The difference of nearly $100,000 between the two can mean a substantial difference in the quality of life; whether or not a person can become a homeowner, or how much they receive in retirement benefits or Social Security.
Structural racism, in fact, has created a system that results in Black people with no criminal record earning less annually than socioeconomically similar white people with a record.
Race remains a major factor in determining which communities become wealthy in America, and the wealth gap between Blacks and whites will continue to widen as long as Black people are disproportionately incarcerated.
Free from a Cage, but Not Free
Steve Blackburn earned college degrees, got married, raised his children, and had a successful career directing family services and running youth programs. But one day, nearly forty years after he was convicted of first-degree murder, decades after he completed his prison term, he was told his record meant he would have to be removed from the position he loved.
He was offered a new position. Blackburn didn’t lose any income. But he lost the work he was passionate about. He felt disrespected.
“As unfair as it was, I took it on the chin. I had had a good run. It had been a blessing,” Blackburn said.
It didn’t matter to the school that Blackburn had gotten out of prison in 1991 and had not committed a crime since his release.
It didn’t matter that he was a noted community activist in Philadelphia and had co-founded a nonprofit agency, X-Offenders for Community Empowerment, which assisted formerly convicted people in getting clemency.
“When I came home, I found out that freedom is not just freedom,” Blackburn had proclaimed once to a local newspaper. “You still have restrictions; you still have barriers so you’re not free.”
Blackburn served sixteen years of a life sentence before the governor commuted his sentence. He was twenty-four when he went to prison in 1975; he was forty when he came home.
His stepfather, Clifford Shannon, whom he calls his father, and his mother, Gertrude Shannon, died while he was incarcerated. His daughter, Stephanie, was four when he left. She was twenty when he returned. In prison, he earned twelve cents an hour at a prison job, which barely made a dent in what was needed to care for his child.
He grew up in North Philly, about five blocks from Temple University, in a house his parents owned. He had one sibling, a brother ten years younger, but his mother raised three of her nephews, so there were five boys in the house.
“We were poor, but I never went hungry, even when we ate syrup sandwiches,” Blackburn said.
His mother kept the family together. His stepfather was an alcoholic. He never knew his biological father, so his stepfather filled the role.
He graduated from St. Joseph’s Preparatory School run by the Jesuits, but he had to navigate his way through a war zone of four different gang territories to get there.<
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“On any given day, those guys from the gangs came around to rob or pick on people,” said Blackman.
Despite everything, he graduated in 1968 and went to Drexel University.
“It was crazy times. Civil rights. Vietnam. Hippies. Drugs,” Blackburn said. “I was radicalized, anti-establishment, leaning toward Black militancy, affiliated with the Nation of Islam.”
He began doing drugs—acid, pills, marijuana. He quit school after one semester. He worked “low-paying jobs.”
“I got more involved with a particularly corrupt, vicious crew,” he said. “We hustled marijuana and cocaine.
“I started leaning toward a more violent personality because that was my understanding of how things went. You had to be a wolf or a sheep. I didn’t want to be a sheep.”
A guy stole money from his crew, and when Blackburn found him the two got into a fight. He took a crew member with him, and that member brought along a friend. When the guy Blackburn was fighting ran away, the “friend” he didn’t know pulled out a gun and fatally shot the man.
“I didn’t shoot the guy,” Blackburn said. “That wasn’t my plan. I figured I’d beat his ass. I had known him for years, and it wasn’t that big an amount of money.”
In court, the shooter pled guilty and received a sentence of eighteen months to ten years.
“It’s my first offense. They find me guilty [and] I get life,” said Blackburn. He added, “My lawyer wasn’t very expensive—and he wasn’t very good.”
Blackburn was sent to Graterford Prison, forty miles from Philadelphia. When his father died in 1986, Blackburn said his counselor came to him and said, “I got bad news. Your father had a heart attack.”
“My mom was diagnosed with cancer. She visited until she got too weak and then we talked mostly by phone.”
As she deteriorated, he was allowed to visit her bedside, a rare privilege for a prisoner. Blackburn was handcuffed, and a sheriff escorted him. When they got to his mother’s house, his grandmother was present, and the sheriff recognized her.
“He took the handcuffs off, and I saw her at her bedside. He even took a nap while I was with my mom for an hour. It was very humane,” Blackburn said.
When his mother died, the prison allowed him to attend her funeral, another unusually humane act.
To avoid depression, Blackburn said he had “to compartmentalize life and focus on one thing at a time” so that everything didn’t crash down on him at once.
“In that environment you already face life or death every day,” he said. “My mom was my one and only supporter. My baby brother was away attending the University of Colorado. My cousins my mother raised, a lot of them got caught up in the crack epidemic.”
But he believes his mother sent angels for him. She left money to her Catholic church, and she had asked her priest to fight for her son.
“The priest and nun came to visit. The priest said, ‘I loved your mother, but I wasn’t signing blank checks. I needed to see what kind of guy you are.’”
The priest began to fight for Blackburn’s release. Blackburn’s lawyer joined them, determined to get him out, especially since the real triggerman got a much lighter sentence.
Meanwhile, he had earned a good behavior record in prison. He helped rescue a “female civilian” who was attacked by one of the inmates. He was president of the “lifers” organization; he earned an associate degree from Villanova University, and he started the Prison Literacy Project, which taught prisoners to read.
His brother returned to the East Coast and came to visit. His daughter and her mom moved back from the West Coast and began visiting him as well.
“I had always corresponded with her, mostly by mail. I sent cards and photos,” Blackburn said of his daughter. “We developed a strong relationship by mail.”
Then what he calls “a miracle” happened: Governor Bob Casey Sr. commuted his sentence—and Blackburn was free.
He went to a halfway house for eleven months, a period he found beneficial because he received welfare and medical insurance. His brother encouraged him to continue his education. Blackburn enrolled in Temple, majoring in social work. Someone he met in prison helped him get a job at the mayor’s office.
He graduated summa cum laude from Temple in 1994. A month later he married a woman who had grown up in North Philly. And he continued college, receiving a master’s degree in social work.
He has been married for twenty-six years. In addition to the daughter he had before he went to prison, he and his wife have two sons, twenty-seven and twenty-five years old.
He works for a nonprofit school in family services, supervising five case managers. He also created various programs and was on the founding coalition that created Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School, where he is president of the board of trustees.
What he has seen as a social worker and what he experienced as a prisoner combine to influence his opinion about the country’s criminal justice system.
“When I got to prison, I was an outsider,” Blackburn offered. “My background was different than most of the other guys. I had a pretty good family. I didn’t have the hardships they had.
“My observation was that for a majority of the men in prisons, their institutionalization began much earlier than prison—in juvenile facilities. Instead of talking about elementary, middle school, and high school, they talked about going to juvenile facilities and then to prison.
“The problem didn’t start with the crime, but how that crime was handled by the system. I had a hard enough time as a grown man in prison. I can’t imagine how it would affect me if I had been much younger. I am sure there is a lot of trauma young people carry for the rest of their lives.”
Ironically, Blackburn said, he observed some of the younger men succeeding in prison in a way they had not been able to outside. In prison, they got their first jobs and were mentored by elders and counselors. They responded to that attention, earned a solid reputation, developed their self-esteem, and freed themselves from childhood demons.
He was aware of all he missed while incarcerated and how fortunate he was for the way his life has turned out. He said he has tried to spend his freedom doing good, despite the continued judgment by an unforgiving society.
“In retrospect, I think about the hardships my daughter had to endure, because I missed so much of her growing up. She’s solid now, though. I have two granddaughters who have graduated from college. I think the relationship my daughter and I established through letters made us close on a spiritual level.”
At age seventy, he said he is looking forward to the unfolding of an upcoming journey: retirement.
“I’ve been blessed,” Blackburn said.
We Must Become More Humane
For decades, the United States has maintained a corrections system based on punishment rather than rehabilitation. This violent and brutal system has severed parents from their children and left neighborhoods void of generations of potential.
To change such a system will take time. But there must also be a will to do so, a belief that incarcerating millions of humans does not make our society safer, and, in fact, probably sets it up for even more violence.
“Where life is precious, life is precious,” prison abolitionist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore has been fond of saying.
There are some justice reformers who look to more progressive countries for examples of what is possible, pushing for the adoption of at least some of the simple, less costly policies that could be a beginning.
“It doesn’t cost for guards to say, ‘good morning’ or ‘thank you’ or to let inmates wear their own clothes,” said Elena Vanko, a senior program associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit and advocacy group that has sponsored trips to more progressive prisons abroad for corrections leaders, justice advocates, and journalists.
“One of the values of the prison system in Norway is normalization,” said Vanko, who visited two prisons in Norway in 2013.
; Normalization means that inside the facility should resemble a “normal” life outside, so that transitioning back to the community is not difficult.
Halden Prison, just outside of Oslo, Norway, has been called “the most humane prison in the world.” It bears no resemblance to a U.S. prison. There are no bars. The grounds look like a campus. The people incarcerated are called “inmates,” but they have their own bedrooms with a private bathroom and doors they can close. Windows give inmates a view of nature, and instead of the concrete and steel used in U.S. prisons, Halden features softer materials such as cork and wood, and other textures that help absorb sound.
In general, the longest sentence in Norway is twenty-one years, though there is a thirty-year maximum for some crimes. There is a rarely used indefinite sentence, where the person is examined every five years to be reconsidered for release. Instead of mass incarcerations, the corrections system in Norway mostly uses fines and community-based sentences.
Prison guards are expected to talk to inmates and socialize with them, play games, watch television, and hold conversations so they can motivate them and know when they are troubled and how they are progressing.
“Each person is treated as a human being with human dignities,” Vanko said.
This sense of humanity was obvious in the way Norway handled the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. While the U.S. was slow to take measures to reduce or halt the spread of the virus among incarcerated people, Norway, which has a much smaller corrections system, nevertheless made some quick decisions that reduced the spread of the virus. The country released some prisoners or gave them alternative sentences, sending them home with ankle monitors. Many two-person cells were turned into single bed, one-person cells.
Meanwhile, the corrections system in the U.S. basically ignored criminal justice reformers who asked for thousands of early releases to reduce the prison population and allow people who were elderly, near completion of their sentences, or in ill health the chance to go home. By the end of 2020 at least 275,000 prisoners had tested positive and more than 1,700 had died. At one point, one in five state and federal prisoners had tested positive. And, of course, this highly contagious disease spread from prisons and jails into communities.