Every year, the President of the U.S. stands up before the Congress, and gives a highly visible speech about his own successes, and highlights "problems" that he hopes to pass legislation about for the rest of the year. Everyone applauds a lot, and takes the speech seriously.

I've come across a lot of information lately regarding the state of the United States. It is not quite so rosy as the President would have us believe. I present it here, a tale of human rights abused, oppressive racism, the revocation of key aspects of citizenship, and drastic economic inequality.

Pardon Me, But Your Boot Is on My Neck

Amnesty International has recently begun a campaign to reform human rights in the U.S., releasing a lengthy report of its current research. A main problem with the report is its lack of hard data or statistical evidence, although this is understandable; corrupt government agents rarely keep journals of their atrocities ("March 21: kicked an old woman, tortured a political dissident, raped a prisoner"). To supplement the largely trend-based and anecdotal AI report, I will cross-reference it with a similar report released by the group Human Rights Watch, covering roughly the same time period (1997-98). The AI report is huge, so I can only skim the surface.

One difference between the two is that the AI report is focus on international issues. The AI report lists several international human rights treaties signed by the U.S. that U.S. agencies routinely violate: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and a number of UN standards and protocols.

Both reports deal extensively with police brutality. Citizens file thousands of excessive force and harassment complaints against the police, and millions of dollars are awarded to plaintiffs in lawsuits each year. Add to that the presumably huge number of people who are too afraid to make such complaints, and... AI cites cases where unresisting "suspects" were beaten or killed, often after abuse with usually non-lethal weapons (e.g. batons, chemical spray, electroshock devices). There have also been a number of deaths due to improper restraints. A common practice that some police departments have now abolished is "hogtying," where a suspect is left face-down, with his or her wrists and ankles bound together. This position restrains breathing, and a number of suspects have died as a result of "positional asphyxia" (a San Diego report claimed that 94 people had died in the ten years up to 1992 in this way. The AI report does not say whether this number was just in San Diego, or nationwide).

Both reports also find that racial minorities are much more likely to be the victims of police brutality than whites. Part of this is due to the police practice of "profiling," where the officers investigate or pull over individuals who fit a certain "profile" of a criminal type, usually with a racial component (sometimes called the crime of "driving while black"). Minorities are also convicted and sentenced at a much higher rate. In 1996, black men were 8.5 times more likely to be imprisoned than white men. Black men were also imprisoned at a rate of 3,098 per 100,000 compared to 370 per 100,000 for white men. And in the past ten years, the rate for black men has increased ten times faster than the rate for white men.

Abuse of prisoners was a common finding of the two reports. Some guards let prisoners attack each other, or occasionally encourage fights. Sometimes the guards themselves inflict the pain through physical violence, or via chemical or electroshock weapons. Female prisoners are sometimes raped, or even forced into prostitution by the guards. Many inmates do not receive adequate medical treatment. Some prisoners are kept in tiny solitary confinement cells for long periods of time.

More than 1.7 million Americans are in prison. More than 60% of the prisoners are ethnic minorities, and more than 50% are African-Americans, despite the fact that they are only 12% of the U.S. population. 75,000 of the prisoners are women. Many prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. Most of the above conditions violate national and international standards of human rights. There is also little independent review of prisons to inspect the conditions, and what little oversight there is has little power to demand change. HRW points out that many states are also returning to prison labor (a.k.a. "chain gangs," or as prison officials prefer to call them, "secured work groups"). Some chain gangs are actually secured with shackles, some with stun belts.

The HRW report's primary focus is on the treatment of immigrants to the US seeking asylum. Often they are detained in much the same way as American convicted criminals. The Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 made it much more difficult for asylum-seekers to plead their case. AI, HRW, and the UN see the right to seek asylum as a fundamental human right; this U.S. law seems to violate the spirit of that concern.

The reports of both groups show their concern about the death penalty, which also violates international human rights conventions. In the US, the death penalty is not applied systematically and, as with most of the American criminal justice system, shows high racial bias. Forty-two percent of those on death row are black. At the same time, laws are being pondered to execute juveniles; laws already exist to execute the mentally ill and people who committed crimes when they were juveniles.

AI also rebukes the US for its selective support for human rights in various other nations; I won't remark much upon that. This practice is essential to U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. government only supports human rights when it's a matter of national self-interest or the interests of business; otherwise, they turn a blind eye. AI is also concerned with the sale of U.S. weapons to countries with known human rights abuses. AI is also deeply concerned with the use of electroshock weapons and restraints; AI seems to feel that these devices will naturally lead to abuse. Some U.S. prisons use these weapons, and some are made in the U.S. and exported to other countries (even those in which law enforcement has a history of abusing people with electroshock devices).

Felony Disenfranchisement

So we see the awful, and frequently racist treatment that African-Americans face in this nation. But it gets worse. The effects of prison can extend beyond physical incarceration. 46 states (and the District of Columbia) have laws that prohibit inmates from voting, 32 states prohibit parolees from voting, 29 prohibit citizens on probation, and 10 even prohibit felons who have finished their sentence from voting permanently (4 more states disenfranchise some ex-inmates, and Texas revokes voting rights for 2 years after release). Some states do have provisions for regaining the right to vote, but it usually involves a special pardon by the state governor or a parole board). Since African-Americans, particularly African-American males, are arrested and imprisoned so much more often than other groups that this group is in danger of becoming politically disenfranchised. A recent report by Human Rights Watch and the Sentencing Project shows that 1.4 million African-American men currently cannot vote because they are in prison, or because of laws that permanently bar them from voting (a total of 3.9 million Americans are permanently barred from voting by these laws, or 1 in 50 Americans). This amounts to 13% of the black male population in the United States (no figures were given for black females).

In Alabama and Florida, more than 31% of black men cannot vote. This can significantly affect the outcome of state and local elections. Even nationally, in 1996 4.6 million black men voted, and 1.4 million were ineligible due to these disenfranchisement laws. At current rates, three in ten black men can expect to lose their right to vote at least temporarily at some point in their lives. HRW and the Sentencing Project fear that this figure will soon rise to four in ten.

And why? Can anyone think of a legitimate reason for permanently denying someone the right to vote because they committed a crime? I can't.

African American Unemployment

Black men not only have to worry about prison and losing their voting rights, they also have to worry about finding work in the real world. And their chances aren't very good. A study by economics professor Robert Cherry has found large distortions in official unemployment rates, especially among black men (again, no figures were given for African-American women. Sexism in research? Maybe). While the "official" unemployment rate in the United States is 4.5% (which Cherry also feels is underestimated), Cherry theorizes that actual unemployment rates among African-American men is much higher. Unemployment statistics do not count those who have stopped looking for work, those who are in prison, those not counted in the census, and geographic differences in population distribution. When all this is taken into account, Cherry claims that the unemployment rate among African-American men is a shocking 25.2%!

Economic Inequality

And let's finish this off with some facts:

- The top 1% of American households own 39% of the wealth. This is about the same amount of wealth owned by the bottom 95%.

- The average young family (headed by someone under age 30) has seen their income drop 33% since 1991.

- 19.9% of American children live in poverty, up from 14.4% in 1973.

- 13.3% of Americans live below the official poverty line (11% of whites, 26.5% of blacks, and 27.1% of Hispanics). Some analysts believe that the poverty line should be increased by at least 50%. 22.5% of Americans would live below this new poverty line (19.7% of whites, 39.8% of blacks, and 43.9% of Hispanics).

- To properly compensate workers for gains in productivity since 1973, wages should have increased by 24% of the 1973 rate. Instead, they have increased 9%. Workers are averaging about 14.2% less money per week in 1997 than they were in 1977.

Conclusions

So what can we say about the state of the United States? Our "law enforcement" and "justice system" often defame the concepts they are supposed to represent. They violate numerous international treaties and conventions regarding the rights of human beings. Minorities, especially African-Americans, suffer terrible racism from powerful government institutions, even being deprived of key elements of their citizenship. Inequality in wealth is accelerating, with huge numbers of people living in poverty and suffering from high rates of unemployment, where again, minorities suffer the worst.

Sources: Amnesty International's "Rights for All: The United States of America," AP Oct 23 98, Dollars & Sense Nov/Dec 98, Human Rights Watch World Report 1998, Human Rights Watch/The Sentencing Project's "Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States," Z Magazine Nov 1998.