Phil Vischer and Mass Incarceration
Thomas Sowell has been quoted many times as saying, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” This is the reality of economics and politics. But few politicians are willing to publicly admit this because it isn’t the kind of statement that normally garners votes. Today’s heated debate on mass incarceration involves a lot of blame-casting and conspiracy theories, but very little real talk about the all-too-present danger of unintended consequences in governing.
Newer books written on this subject, like The New Jim Crow, which Vischer uses as his source for much of his video on race, tend to have a very specific agenda of proving that mass incarceration is solely the fault of white Americans who were afraid of black people. Vischer states:
Throughout the 1970s, white America became increasingly concerned by images of black violence shown on TV and in magazines. Drugs were the problem! Drug dealers and drug users were the enemy!
We decided to treat the drug epidemic not as a health crisis, but as a crisis of criminality.
But is this picture accurate? While I tend to agree with him that it was a health crisis, very few people, white or black, saw it that way back then. This sentiment is a fairly modern notion. In reality, most of the people who were suffering under high crime in the 1970s and even into the 1990s, wanted drug dealers off the streets and were desperate for action. It wasn’t some white delusion that people made up while watching TV in the suburbs. This article does a good job of giving historical context. It is short, and I would highly recommend reading the entire thing, but I’ll quote some of it below:
“Voting records show that many black lawmakers supported some of the most punitive drug-war-era laws in America. But even some people who have long opposed harsh sentencing laws understand where supporters were coming from. The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime pastor in New York, once was addicted to heroin and served time. He's convinced that black leaders who embraced the drug war did serious harm to the community, but says a lot of African-Americans were desperate for ways to make their neighborhoods safe again. "If you're the victim, then you don't want to hear anything about treatment, just, 'Get this guy off the street.'
“But eventually, even some of the staunchest supporters of mandatory minimums saw that these policies had badly backfired, in part because they lumped addicts and small-time dealers with drug kingpins and violent gang leaders. And they also consigned countless African-American men to prisons across the country.”
Another error that Vischer makes is to talk about drug laws as if they were passed by presidents. Congress is the branch that makes laws. Presidents certainly helped shape policy and allocate resources, but Congress is the body with ultimate authority on these things. It was Joe Biden who actually wrote the crime bill that has been pointed to as the most harmful piece of legislation in regard to mass incarceration.
Though I disagree with some of its points, this article gives a good explanation of the history surrounding the crime bill.
But let’s get out of the past for a moment and look at who is trying to change these laws. Rand Paul has been a long-time critic of mass incarceration and has fought hard to protect individual liberty. Despite being a Republican, I have seen his name listed on many social justice websites who encouraged people to support his bills. Senators Corey Booker (D) and Tim Scott (R) have worked together on this issue.
This amendment will require state law enforcement agencies to keep track of critical details like name, race, description of event, and overall circumstances that led up to a weapon being discharged.
The Walter Scott Amendment has points for which the NAACP has been fighting for throughout the decades. This legislation is long overdue but we applaud Senator Scott for moving forward with this bill and for the US Senate passing this bill.”
I’m no Trump apologist, but he did champion these reforms, as well as go to bat to free people like Alice Marie Johnson and Crystal Munoz. He also asked NFL players to give him cases to look at where they thought people had been treated unjustly. This was laughed off by the media, but it probably wouldn’t have been laughed off by people who could have been on that list and received their freedom.
In my opinion, the person willing to take the most political risks to champion the cause of those who have been hurt by the criminal justice system is Tim Scott. He gives his view of why his most recent legislation on this issue was not passed in the video below.
