Cops, etc

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Feb 16 17:34:23 PST 2000


Kate:


>>The less cops, prison guards, & soldiers we have, the better. The more
>>money spent on cops, prison guards, & armed forces, the less money we have
>>for schools, health care, etc. It's a zero-sum game. Moreover, the more
>>individuals have law enforcement jobs, the more likely the war on crime is
>>to continue, since organized cops, etc. lobby for tougher laws on crime &
>>less civil liberties. The general interest of the working class and the
>>particular interest of the armed agents of the state are inherently
>>contradictory.
>
>On this view the appropriate response is to push for the privatization of
>the state by calling for all of it to be run, basically, as a business.

It does *not* follow from the idea that "the general interest of the working class and the particular interest of the armed agents of the state are inherently contradictory" that "the appropriate response is to push for the privatization of the state by calling for all of it to be run, basically, as a business." "Privatized" prisons *are* funded by the government, and it cannot be otherwise, for instance.

Besides, Carrol's question (to which I responded) concerns law enforcement jobs in general, including private security guards. The less people are employed in this industry, the better for the working class.

<<On your account it would appear that there is no way in which unionization can be conceived of as political practice for, if it were, then surely you would want to unionize cops, etc. I guess practice does not shape consciousness after all.>>

Show me *empirical evidence* that unionized cops are more sympathetic & feel solidarity toward workers than non-unionized cops. You can't, can you, for there is no difference between how unionized cops deal with strikers on the picket and how non-unionized cops deal with them. The only difference is that unionized cops become a powerful interest group with a stake in the continuation of the war on crime, as Mike Davis argues in _Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster_ (NY: Metropolitan Books, 1998):

***** Staff at Calipatria [State Prison] speak with measured awe of CCPOA [California Correctional Peace Officer's Association] president Don Novey, a former Folsom prison guard, who has made the Correctional Officers the most powerful union in the state. Under his leadership, the CCPOA has been transformed from a small, reactive craft union into the major player shaping criminal justice legislation and, thereby, the future of the California penal system. Part of the secret of Novey's success has been his willingness to pay the highest price for political allies. In 1990, for example, Novey contributed nearly $1 million to Pete Wilson's gubernatorial campaign, and CCPOA now operates the second most generous PAC in Sacramento. [96]

Novey has also leveraged CCPOA's influence through his sponsorship of the so-called victims' rights movement. Crime Victims United, for example, is a satellite PAC receiving 95 percent of its funding from CCPOA. Through such high-profile front groups, and in alliance with other law enforcement lobbies, Novey has been able to keep Sacramento in a permanent state of law-and-order hysteria. Legislators of both parties trample each other in the rush to put their names at the top of new, tougher anticrime measures, while ignoring the progressive imbalance between the number of felons sentenced to prison and the existing capacity of Department of Corrections facilities. [97]

This cynical competition has had staggering consequences. Rand Corporation researcher Joan Petersilia found that "more than 1,000 bills changing felony and misdemeanor statutes" had been enacted by the legislature between 1984 and 1992. Taken together, they are utterly incoherent as criminal justice policy, but wonderful as a stimulus to the kind of carceral Keynesianism that has tripled both the membership and the average salary of the CCPOA since 1980. While California's colleges and universities were shedding 8,000 jobs, the Department of Corrections hired 26,000 new employees to guard 112,000 new inmates. As a result, California is now the proud owner of the third largest penal system in the world (after China and the United States as a whole). [98]

[96] Cf. _LAT_ 6 February 1994; Joe Dominick, "Who's Guarding the Guards?" _Los Angeles Weekly_ 2 September 1994; and Vincent Schiraldi, "The Undue Influence of California's Prison Guards' Union," _In Brief_ (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, San Francisco), October 1994.

[97] Ibid.

[98] Joan Petersilia, "Crime and Punishment in California," in James Steinberg et al. (eds.), _Urban America: Policy Choices for Los Angeles and the Nation_ (Santa Monica, 1992).

(415-6) *****

<<PS Do you honestly think that _any_ education will do as long as it's well-funded? Do you honestly think that the health care system does not police our behavior? And do you honestly think that that same health care system will always be better as long as it is better funded? If so, color me shocked.>>

*Whoever* said "_any_ education will do"? No one said anything of the sort. Do you honestly think that it doesn't matter if *you* are in school or prison since schools police your behavior anyhow?

Yoshie



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