A Modest Proposal: Jail All Young Black Men

A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents and country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.

...instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, and partly to the cloathing of many thousands.  Johnathan Swift, 1729

Most recently, Police Chief Police Chief Nannette Hegerty, reflecting on violent crime in Milwaukee said, "This is a problem bigger than law enforcement, I think we have a societal crisis."

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel acknowledged in an editorial last Saturday:

...it (the police) needs help. More jobs in the inner city would be the No. 1 cure - a task beyond the reach of the police. After-school programs curb teen crime - a reason to contribute to such programs, via the United Way, for instance. And yes, crime is an individual responsibility. Parents must raise children right and true.

Hegerty is not off the hook. But stemming the hopelessness fueling this crisis is a job bigger than the police.

But this dose of reality was met with skepticism in some quarters. As one Milwaukee blogger put it:

She's right, by the way. It is a societal crisis, and police can't do it all. But I'm sick of the fingerpointing and excuses coming from this chief. (emphasis added as usual)

Maybe it is time to end the agony and uncertainty.  After all Wisconsin already has the highest rate of incarceration of blacks of any of the fifty states.

As noted by The Black Commentator, in its July 14, 2005 cover story, The Ten Worst Places to Be:

Wisconsin leads the nation in the percentage of its black inhabitants under lock and key.  Just over four percent of black Wisconsin, including the very old and the very young of both sexes, are behind bars.  Most of the state’s African Americans reside in the Milwaukee area, and most of its black prisoners are drawn from just a handful of poor and economically deprived black communities where jobs, intact families and educational opportunities are the most scarce, and paroled back into those same neighborhoods.  So Wisconsin, and in particular the Milwaukee area justly merit the invidious distinction of the Worst Place in the Nation to be Black. 

Lets just get it over with and lock up all the young black men in Milwaukee. After all, that is what our public policy is designed to do. It would save time and money.

When I served as Madison mayor in the 1990's, a significant number of young black men were arrested and incarcerated. But there are several important distinctions:

• Many of them were part of out town gangs trying to make inroads into Madison's drug market.
• We had neighborhood resources that were part of a team that was more than law enforcement.
• There was extensive programming and a considerable amount of money spent, effectively, to create access to jobs, training and educational choices, and a non-violent culture.