(ThyBlackMan.com) If you live in this country, or anywhere in the world, you have probably seen or heard of the happenings in the Conrad Murray trial; that’s the guy accused in the death of Michael Jackson for anyone living under a rock. The trial has been shocking, heart wrenching, and intriguing for fans of the late King of Pop. It has been as much a spectacle in the absence of the best to ever do it as was the spectacle that surrounded MJ from the time Joe knew the boy could sang. The parade of girlfriends and doctors slurred phone calls and intimate secrets about what happened in Michael’s bedroom during his last living day on Earth has provided a bit of insight into the troubled star; the conflicted genius we all grew up with but never really knew.
Should someone be held accountable for his death. Umm… Duh. Will that 
person be Conrad Murray… Probably. (I’m not really sorry or feel some kind of compromised journalistic integrity for convicting him here) But what’s this business about him not serving prison time or jail time or any time?
Last week while driving home I was listening to the Tom Joyner morning show. Tom, Sybil and Jay were of course talking about the trial. That day’s nugget: the fact Doctor Murray may serve his prison time as house arrest because of overcrowding.
First thought: “Prisons are not supposed to be overcrowded.” Second thought: “Something is really wrong with this picture.”
Less than a week later I’m at work looking for content and I see a story on the Associated Press about new debate among states about what to do with prison inmates serving life in prison. The story discusses new research that shows when older criminals are released they are less likely to commit crimes. It also points out the fact that the number of inmates serving life sentences has jumped 22 percent in just the last five years. The reason: the number of offenses legislators have attached life sentences too.
This same day I see another story. A preview of the CNBC documentary Billions Behind Bars: Inside America’s Prison Industry that aired last Tuesday. The pre-packaged piece discussed how many states are turning toward private prisons to house their inmates because states no longer have the money to buy and build the number of beds for the rising number of criminals. Here overcrowding and state budgets play a role into making prison a booming billion dollar business when for all intents and purposes it should not be. What bothers me about these stories, these bits of news nuggets, is that this particular issue disproportionately affects Black people; specifically Black men.
“The disproportionate representation of black Americans in the U.S. criminal justice system is well documented. Blacks comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison. Nine percent of all black adults are under some form of correctional supervision (in jail or prison, on probation or parole), compared to two percent of white adults. One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 was either in jail or prison, or on parole or probation in 1995. One in ten black men in their twenties and early thirties is in prison or jail. Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws…
…In every state, the proportion of blacks in prison exceeds, sometimes by a considerable amount, their proportion in the general population. In Minnesota and Iowa, blacks constitute a share of the prison population that is twelve times greater than their share of the state population. In eleven states — Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming –the percentage of the prison population that is black is more than six times greater than the percentage of the state population that is black.
Clearly the prison industrial complex is alive and well.
“There is no other country in the world that has imprisoned more people of color than the United States. The entire population of the United States only represents five percent of the world’s population and over twenty percent of the world’s prison population. Incarcerating poor people in large numbers has become big business for the United States. As a matter of fact, more African American males are locked up in prisons throughout the United States than were slaves in 1850. This is a larger prison population than that of the top 35 European countries combined.”
Attorney General Eric Holder has taken steps to minimize the incarceration rate of Black males with lowering the punishment disparity between a drug dealer or addict caught with crack and one caught with cocaine. Instead of the laws being 100 to 1 as they were in the Reagan 80s it is now 18 to 1. But it is not just crackheads and crack dealers being locked up. Everyone isn’t Nino Brown or Pookie. Black men are being locked up for foolishness if they aren’t killed first. If Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates can be arrested for disorderly conduct inside his own home, and Princeton professor Cornel West can be arrested twice in the same week for being Cornel West loudly advocating for the 99 percent at Occupy Wall Street rallies, we must know that life isn’t any better for your average Black man with a mean mean mug and a little too much swag in his walk.
This is not to say that Dr. Conrad Murray — with whom we began this post — should not serve time if convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Dr. Murray should not be the symbol of the Black man fighting the power if he is found to be absolutely negligent in the death of the greatest entertainer to ever live. He should go to prison. My concern — or wonder rather is that there is possibly someone else in prison, another Black man, that probably shouldn’t be there. Is there some two-bit criminal who robbed a home and brandished a gun at the age of 16 was tried as an adult and is now doing 20 to 25 years for a stupid decision made at a time in his life where he was more prone to stupidity than reasonability.
Instead of making the citizens of this nation productive and trying to rehabilitate them we lock them up with disregard for their future or even our own as a nation because locking people up is profitable. That is until it isn’t. Privatizing the prison industry has nothing to do with our capitalist society meeting a demand and everything to do with our society shirking its responsibilities on a moral issue.
Prisons are not supposed to be overcrowded. States should not build prisons based on third grade reading scores. Black men should not be locked up for congregating while black when pariahs like Bernie Madoff are allowed to roam the streets in Bentley’s and fly the skies in leer jets for decades.
Conrad Murray should serve time if found guilty because he is then responsible for killing a man. That’s a big deal to only get house arrest. Lindsay Lohan actually should go to prison for like a year because maybe she’d stop getting arrested and wasting our time. Lehman Brothers’s Dick Fuld, Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein, J.P. Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America’s Ken Lewis, the succession of CEO’s at AIG and many other big bankers and Wall Street traders should all face charges for what they did to this country and the politicians and Presidents that allowed the legislation; H.W., Clinton, and W should also be held accountable. They should be tried before a “jury of their peers” and forced to face the real life consequences of ruining lives for no other reason than to make more money than they will ever spend, pay taxes on, give away, write off, or leave in a trust for future generations to come.
There are people in this country that do deserve to go to prison and not just when it is politically convenient. There are Black men and White men both corporate and blue collar that sometimes do deserve to go to prison. But there are others who can be rehabilitated. There are others who can be integrated into society and become a productive and contributing member to the country and the economy.
For example, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez faces life in prison in the death of his 2-year-old half brother. The case is right out of Jacksonville, Florida where I live. It has sparked national outrage. At 12-years-old Fernandez now spends 23 hours in isolation. The State Attorney and Fernandez’s defense are haggling back and forth over a plea deal that will hopefully spare the child’s future. As it stands now Fernandez will be tried as an adult and could spend the rest of his life in prison. At 12-years-old most of us don’t even know what we want to do with our lives yet here is this little boy that is learning that it is possible for the rest of his life he will be doing nothing but wasting away behind bars in a maximum security prison. Where is the justice in that?
Can Fernandez be rehabilitated? Possibly. Will he allegedly kill again? Possibly. But why take away his options at 12 instead of investing the time in alternatives.
Crime will happen because we are human. It is human to err and sometimes those errors include crime; petty, white collar, or violent. However, not everyone that commits a crime is a sociopath or life-long criminal that will only escalate over time. Our justice system is no longer about justice and all about sentencing; being tough on crime and no-nonsense with criminals. That is not the way society should work. It is unfortunate that it does.
As the spectacle grows around the Conrad Murray trial remember that he may not face any time what-so-ever if convicted of killing Michael Jackson, yet your brother with his loud music, flashy car, and get-the-fuck-out-my-face attitude may be jailed for driving while Black and face a slew of other trumped up charges that could land him a three day stay at the free hotel for just being himself. Where is the justice in that?
We know why our prisons are bursting at the seams and why Black communities have been ripped apart. The question is will anything be done to reverse course; or is everyone to busy making money off of someone else’s misery?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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