Prologue:
Prisoners are the least popular segment of society and prison the most
disreputable place. As a result, few think or talk about prisons or prisoners. Most of us never see the inside of a prison or talk with anyone who readily admits to having lived there. Offenders deserve punishment, so why should we care?
The United States now has over 7,300,000 people in its correctional population,
an economically and socially debilitating number of convicts and offenders. With
only 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25% of its prisoners. If the
correctional population were a state, it would be America’s thirteenth largest state by population. Grossly inefficient state slavery, which is what incarceration amounts to, is worse than people think, and is bad for the public, taxpayers, crime victims, prisoners, the economy and the families of the victimized and incarcerated. We can
reduce the number of Americans in prison and fight crime at the same time, but our tactics need to change. History and science will reveal a different way of thinking.
Antebellum slavery (chattel slavery in the U.S. before Emancipation, “before the war”) succeeded in a number of ways and was less gruesome than failed “new age
slavery,” a name for mass incarceration or state slavery. The plantation regime did not incarcerate antebellum slaves. Colonial officials disciplined whites with methods other than incarceration, too. Antebellum slaves had more virtue than is recognized
today. Slaves were usually non-violent, hard working, polite, sober, spiritual and
safe: the opposite of criminals today. Antebellum slaves created and lived in a much better private enterprise world than new age slaves. We should admit our modern failures and pay proper attention to successful people and organizations throughout
history, especially in American history.
Because the institution of slavery did not meet American standards of constitutional liberty, and because a racist rationalization pervaded most writings saying anything positive about antebellum slavery, we ignored and repudiated the antebellum methods of promoting work and keeping people out of prison. This book asserts racial equality and proves race and crime are not truly related.
From a strident moral perspective, the absolute condemnation of antebellum
slavery holds that antebellum slavery had no humane aspects. You will hear from
400 slaves and ex-slaves, original sources, whose names are in bold. The ex-slaves
quoted in this book do not say what politically correct modern experts want them to
say, but those who endured slavery are the real experts. After stripping away the
multiple and opposing biases, political agendas, contradictions, myths and
exaggerations about the subject of antebellum slavery, we can see antebellum life
from a new perspective. Isolating the positive aspects of slave life allows us to spot methods that will be of value today.
No one can deny the inhumane side of slavery. I do not advocate resurrecting
any unjust aspects of antebellum slavery. My burden of proof is low. All I have to
prove is that American antebellum slavery was more productive, benign and
comfortable than modern mass incarceration – and without question, in most
instances, it was. Antebellum slavery was inhumane and humane at the same time,
but profoundly unfair. What if we could fairly apply its methods? Instead of
applying procedures to oppressed slaves on a racial basis, what if we applied those same methods in a racially neutral way, to those who deserved it? Justice for a change.
Many think we abolished slavery, but it survived in grotesque forms. Antebellum slavery first relapsed into a brutal convict leasing system and much later into what we have today: state slavery through mass incarceration. Numerous modern slaves of the state, prisoners of all races, live horrendous lives compared to white colonial offenders and antebellum slaves. Twenty-first century state slaves fare worse than privately held antebellum slaves did, for the same reasons free enterprise triumphed over communism. Millions of Americans caught up in slavery today need better direction. The United States pays a very steep price for new age slavery and cannot ignore the workable solutions in this book.
By no means is this book an effort to “bring back slavery” – just the opposite.
New age slavery is already here – big-time – and it’s growing. Over 2,300,000
Americans are now incarcerated slaves of the state, more prisoners in absolute numbers and as a percentage of our population than any other nation in the world. The number of living Americans in the U.S. correctional population, including those on probation and parole, far exceeds the American slave population in 1860. America’s wasteful penitentiaries subject forgotten prisoners to concealed punishment, an ineffective crime deterrent. This time around, slaves stay inactive, sleep, scheme with their gangs and watch TV more than they work, are isolated from family and friends and cost their slaveholders billions of dollars. In the last five years, California’s budget for corrections shot way ahead of their spending for higher education, and California is still in a crisis while spending 45% more on prisons than universities. After prison, prisoners enter a lower caste of convicted felons and face what some now call a New Jim Crow regime. Most of us do not
equate prison life with antebellum slavery, but the words of the Thirteenth
Amendment abolishing slavery do. The Thirteenth Amendment did not really
abolish slavery, but merely restricted “involuntary servitude” to convicted criminals: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any
place subject to their jurisdiction.
I never set out to be an advocate for prison reform. It was the surprising
consequence of historical research into colonial and antebellum practices, although
winning methods appear in many settings. Famous reformer of inner-city Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, Joe Louis Clark, depicted by Morgan Freeman in the 1989 movie Lean On Me, demonstrated the same things that made Southern plantations successful, including unquestioned leadership, starting work
early, removing troublemakers, encouraging work and making it fun, firm discipline of young people, working six days per week, keeping bad influences out, spiritual and musical encouragement, cleanliness, constant supervision, ownership of problems, addressing family problems that interfere with work and having a clearly defined goal. The reforms suggested in this book would increase public safety, save
billions of dollars for government at all levels, compensate crime victims, reduce the prison population, improve the lives of prisoners, weaken gangs and boost the American economy. This book is a way forward to solve the current prison crisis, by keeping younger people out of prison, providing hard labor for prisoners and teaching felons how to work. Only through private enterprise and a work orientation will prison reform achieve political and economic viability. Leaders have issued calls for frank debate about race, mass incarceration, reparations and our criminal justice and prison systems. This book is just such a discussion.
Successful societies over time eventually find economically viable ways to
punish their criminals. After over a century of failure, change is coming. What we
are doing now does not make sense. We can fundamentally change our criminal
justice and penal systems in ways that will help the United States preserve its
exceptional place in the world.
