Chuck Nasmith of Averill Park protests the state prison system Monday with the New York State Prisoner Justice Network and Capitol Area Against Mass Incarceration in cooperation with more than 40 prison justice organizations across New York. Mike McMahon — The Record
ALBANY >> Opponents of prison “mass incarceration” and solitary confinement held a protest Monday led by Cornel West, a philosophy professor and media celebrity whose resume includes acting in the “Matrix” movies
“When it comes to the Jim Crow Jr., the ‘New Jim Crow’ system, we say it is a crime against humanity,” West said in a fiery speech outside the state Capitol. “That’s what it is. Solitary confinement is torture, it is a crime against humanity to lock folks up when 60 percent of them are there for soft drugs.”
He was referring to the 2010 book, “The New Jim Crow,” that argued U.S. society is disproportionately locking up blacks and labeling them as criminals to perpetuate a racial caste system. The book said about a third of young black men in the U.S. are in prison or on parole or probation, with incarceration rates higher than other industrialized nations.
“Everybody knows 12 percent of those on the chocolate side, 12 percent of those on the vanilla side of flying high in the friendly skies every week taking drugs, but 65 percent of the convicteds (on drug offenses) are chocolate,” he said. “That just lets us know that the legacy of white supremacy is still operating in America.
“But it’s not just that, it’s also a class issue. Everybody knows that it not just our precious white vanilla brothers and sisters, but if middle-class young folk of any color were going to jail at the same level of intensity as our precious poor brothers and sisters disproportionately chocolate, there’d be a town-hall meeting every week. It’d be on ABC, NBC, MSNBC — maybe even Fox News would have to carry it.”
He said justice cannot be denied to prisoners.
“I come from a people who been terrorized, traumatized and stigmatized for 400 years, but we still understand what it is to stand up for justice,” he said.
Monday’s speech followed a news conference to show support for the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act , which would ban being held in isolation cells for more than 15 days at a time.
“For those who present a serious threat to prison safety and need to be separated from the general population for longer periods of time, the legislation creates new residential rehabilitation units, high-security units with substantial out-of-cell time, and programs aimed at addressing the underlying causes of behavioral problems,” the sponsors said in a news release.
Legislators said “about 3,800 people are in special housing units, or SHUs, with many more in other forms of isolated confinement in New York’s state prisons on any given day, held for 23 to 24 hours a day in cells smaller than the average parking space, alone or with one other person. More than 800 are in solitary confinement in New York City jails, along with hundreds more in local jails across the state.”
The bid to sharply restrict solitary confinement and ban isolation of longer than 15 days was endorsed by the New York State Bar Association.
“New York’s correctional system makes too much use of solitary confinement,” State Bar President David M. Schraver said in a statement released Monday. “Prolonged solitary confinement is inhumane and not worthy of our justice system.”
Schraver, a Rochester lawyer, cited studies linking long terms in solitary to suicides and increased violence by inmates once they are released.