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The Cincinnati Beacon
The Dean’s Speech to the Cincinnati NAACP
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
This evening, the Cincinnati NAACP voted to oppose the proposal by Commissioners Pepper and Portune for a Comprehensive Safety Plan. At the meeting, Pepper was given ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes from No Jail Tax PAC’s Suhith Wickrema, and five minutes by your humble Dean. Here is the text of the well-received speech I delivered.
Just a quick look back at the history of this project will show a kind of obfuscation the opposite of the openness and transparency Commissioner Pepper made a centerpiece of his campaign.
First, Commissioner Todd Portune opposed Heimlich’s jail tax last year. He called it a regressive tax, and he said it was a burden placed on the backs of children and the poor. A regressive sales tax means that billionaire Carl Lindner pays the same amount of tax for toilet paper as a janitor who makes only $28 dollars a day.
So Portune rallied against this regressive tax. He wrote columns in the Enquirer, and spoke against it every opportunity he found.
And then, when the vote came before the commission, he supported the Heimlich tax, which was defeated soundly at the polls last November.
We were told the new Democratic majority on the Commission would herald a new era. Many hoped that this Democratic majority would represent the interests of the working class and the poor. Instead, what is the first major policy move Commissioners Pepper and Portune have sought to implement? More of the same: a great big new jail with a price tag approaching one billion dollars.
As a citizen of Cincinnati, I have watched as my leaders have threatened to pull funding for human services, for health clinics, and for swimming pools in what has become the hottest summer in memory. So where are our priorities? In building a bigger jail?
They say this plan is an improvement due to all the rehabilitation it will allegedly provide. But little is said about how taking treatment programs out of the community and sticking them in jail is an improvement. Does someone need to go to jail to get the help they need?
And behind the banner of the good work they claim this new jail will perform in rehabilitating prisoners, there are weird surprises no one talks about. Video arraignments will prevent prisoners from seeing judges and families face to face. Who knows what might be happening off camera in those kinds of circumstances.
And what about the increased Sheriff’s patrols? Don’t get me wrong—no one wants more crime—but doesn’t this just create an end-run around the collaborative agreement, by funding more officers not beholden to it?
And the plan itself—with a title inspired by either George Orwell or George Bush—calls itself “comprehensive.” But there is nothing comprehensive about it. We are being asked to pay nearly one billion dollars for something that someone will figure out later.
This vague outline of a plan to make a plan creates a large pot of money with which future politicians and bureaucrats will be able to play. The criminal injustice system is broken, and poor people are disproportionately locked up mostly for non-violent offenses.
And don’t forget the difference between a prison and a jail. Murders and rapists are sent to prison, but they are saying we need to build a new jail. So when they say violent criminals are being released early, they are not talking about murderers and rapists. Don’t fall for their rhetoric of fear.
We’re now being told to trust politicians who have proven they don’t trust the voters. First, they tried to get a special election so there would be low voter turn out, and when that didn’t work they tried to impose it anyway. (Congratulations to everyone in this room who stopped that from happening.)
In my opinion, this is not the kind of open and transparent government Commissioner Pepper promised when so many of us cast our ballots for him.
We should demand a County government that puts the interests of people first, and not the interests of unnamed contractors and concrete manufacturers chomping at the bit to get a big check for building a big jail. We need investments in the people of Hamilton County, and not in a prison industrial complex notorious for perpetuating an injustice system against the poor for the benefit of the rich.
Members, I ask that you vote against the jail tax plan.
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