e-commentary

America warehouses far too many Americans, particularly Black and Brown citizens, in prison.  However, there are some White hooligans who should be afforded some publicly-financed down time.  Sending a Black (or Brown) kid to prison has a negligible deterrent effect on the kid and on other young Black (or Brown) kids.  By contrast, sending one White guy to prison has a tremendous deterrent effect on the individual and on White society.  Sending a corporate executive, politician, lobbyist or inside trader to prison triggers tremendous fear, anxiety and reflection in the White community.  The sentence dominates conversation on the links and in the locker room.

Paris, the amateur porn star and celebrity who is famous just for being famous, earned a spot in the pokey.  Scooter is scheduled to be scooted off to the hoosegow, although Bush will pardon him.  Charles Colson, one of Nixon’s buddies, left prison committed to serious prison reform.  Perhaps the “Paris and Scooter Foundation” may undertake much needed prison reform in America (PSprisonproject.org).

While we are at it, Sandy Berger also should have done some down time for his theft of documents, but he too is White and well connected and well above the law.

Bumper sticker of the week:

If you don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime

This entry was posted on June 4, 2007 at 9:29 am and is filed under Prison/Criminology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.