Customer Reviews

Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The United States is one of the richest countries in the world. Despite this it does not have a universal system of health care or a level of income support for the poor associated with most developed nations. Its criminal justice system is unusual as it still retains the death penalty, routinely executes people who would be regarded as juveniles in other countries and also executes mentally disabled people.

Michael Tonry has written a book which looks at the fairness of the criminal justice system and how it affects Afro Americans. The number of Afro Americans in the overall population in the United States is some 13%. They now however represent a majority of the population who is imprisoned. These figures alone rather flatter the reality of the situation. The Afro American community is split into an affluent group and an underprivileged group. One of the points that Tonry makes is that of that underprivileged group some 80 of males will be charged with a criminal offence. A huge proportion of that group will be jailed.

The reason for this is the war on drugs. In 1988 faced by a decline in the use of drugs and a stable crime rate President Bush announced a war on drugs. This involved the transfer of tremendous resources to policing the creation of tough penalties mandatory penalties and the removal of discretion from the courts. In the United States low level drug traffickers who would get a penalty of around 6 months in Australia routinely get penalties of 7 years. The effect has been a tripling of the prison population.

Studies of drug use in the States show that white people and Afro Americans abuse illegal drugs at around the same rate. It is difficult to police drug use in the white community as it occurs indoors. The poorer sections of the Afro American community live in crowded conditions and buy their drugs on the streets. It is thus far easier to arrest the poor. Thus the major effect of the war on drugs has been a massive increase of low level Afro American drug offenders being imprisoned for longer and longer periods. The cost of jail construction has been massive and in some states is greater than the higher education budget.

The political basis of the war on drugs was the use of the Willie Horton case to destroy Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign. Willie Horton was an Afro American who had been jailed for violent offences. He was released on a furlough a type of leave then permitted by the state of Massachusetts. Horton brutally raped and murdered a woman and the fact that he was released whilst completing a sentence was used by Bush to suggest that Dukakis was soft on crime.(Despite the fact that the program had been up to that time routinely successful) Since that time American politicians including Clinton have emphasized their toughness on crime.

This book is well written and contains a depth of statistical material which makes it compelling. The sense of outrage is palpable on each page. It is short some 200 pages but the depth of its research and the clearness of its arguments make it a must read.

"Malign Neglect : Race, Crime, and Punishment in America" is one the more revealing and informative books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. In looking at America's racist crime policies over the last couple of decades, Tonry illucidates what has been a virtual war against minorities and the poor.

Tonry effectively points out that the elite intelligensia who have crafted these racist programmes knew exactly that they were scapegoating minorities - specifically young Afro-American men. A tremendously important book in terms of understanding the history of class conflict and racism and their current guises as manifest in contemporary society.

Michael Tonry takes an in-depth look into the racism that permeates every level of the criminal justice and law enforcement institutions in this country. Tonry's book covers racial profiling, racially targeted crime policy, the unnecessary War on Drugs, punishment, sentencing policy, and the like. Reading Malign Neglect can lead to the basest of conclusions: that "The Burden on Black Americans" is vast and deeply entrenched.

Tonry's discussion of the history behind the War on Drugs, while leaving out the Nixon input, faults policy makers who knew the disparate impact it would have on black Americans. Seeing that when the official war on drugs was launched, the overall drug use in the country was decreasing, yet there was a change in norms, illustrates just how calculated the negative effects of the "war" were. The only population where drug use was not on an overall decline was the disadvantaged inner city populations. Therefore, with increased surveillance and increased punishment, it is malign neglect to assume all people will be treated equally by this "war."

Tonry does an excellent job explaining that there are no unfortunate accidents in terms of policies that over target African Americans. He makes the point that it is such policies that lead to the disintegration of communities based on the over-incarceration of black men. Tonry does not imply that crime should be ignored, but that it is un-Constitutional to target races for policies designed in the veil of universal.

Tonry supports jury nullification which is the setting free (with the exception of violent crimes) black defendants as a method of evening the score, so to speak, for the mistreatment of blacks by the justice system to date.

Tonry explores many issues that answer topics that Randall Kennedy attempts to tackle in "Race, Crime, and the Law. I would recommend reading them together.

This book was forced on me in a political science class. If you love left-wing propaganda and dogmatic party-line thinking, you'll love this book. It's filled with half-truths, opinions stated as facts, and outright lies. By the end I felt physically ill. You won't find solutions in this book for the problem of blacks committing the majority of crime in America, only pathetic excuses. The author also dismissed a priori the idea that poverty does not necessarily lead to crime, rather a third factor may lead to both regardless of race: low I.Q. (p. 134) (The Bell Curve). The author shows his elitist attitude when he characterizes the electorate as dupes (p. 179) and advocates punishing law abiding gun owners (p. 200) because of the actions of criminals.... truly frightening and an excellent example of left-wing authoritarianism