It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation by Asante Jr M.K

Author:Asante Jr, M.K. [Asante Jr, M.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2008-09-15T21:00:00+00:00

— TUPAC SHAKUR, “MILITARY MINDS,” BETTER DAYZ

In the early 1990s, with crack drenching deep into the ghettos of America, the federal government and twenty-three states ratcheted up the mandatory-minimum concept another notch by passing “three strikes” laws dictating prison sentences of twenty-five years to life for third felonies. These laws have undoubtedly taken some violent offenders out of circulation—but they have also handed out life sentences to thousands of people for petty crimes such as possession or stealing a spare tire.

Not only did the War on Drugs lock up an inhumane amount of Blacks, but it ensured that they would stay in jail for abnormally long periods of time. Now, “it’s less about more people going in than about people staying longer,” says Allen Beck, chief of the Corrections Statistics Program at the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Take, for example, California’s three-strikes law, which eliminates the possibility of parole for repeat offenders and mandates life in prison for persons found guilty of three felony convictions. The Sentencing Project reports that one out of every eleven people imprisoned are serving life, 25 percent of them without parole. Many of these people are in jail for nonviolent drug crimes, minor robberies or thefts, or are found guilty by association. In California, for example, more people are serving life in prison under the three-strikes law for simple marijuana possession than for kidnapping, murder, and rape combined. Further, under three strikes, more people have been sentenced for drug possession than for violent offenses. To give a personal example, when I was a graduate student at UCLA, I was the editor-in-chief for Nommo. Nommo, a newsmagazine founded in 1968 at the height of the Black liberation struggle, is a historic institution and the first non-HBCU newsmagazine for Black students. Every day, without fail, at least two dozen letters like this one would arrive:

READ ME READ ME READ ME!

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.