(Photo: Bob Jagendorf /
creative commons)

The young man killed the other day by a police officer turns out, as sadly expected, to be an African American young adult with a history of severe mental illness. Although he has been in and out of jail and the mental health complex he had never received treatment for his illness. The police chief said in his statement, the “system had failed him.”

I read a story in the online publication, Common Dreams about Skyrocketing Prison Population Devastating US Society. The 464-page report delivers a round indictment of four decades of skyrocketing incarceration that has quadrupled the prison population and torn apart families, communities, society, and the lives of the incarcerated people. “The rising numbers do not correspond to an increase in violence, but rather, are driven by politically-motivated policy changes, including: the imposition of “mandatory minimums” in the 1980s, longer sentences for repeat convictions, and increased criminalization of drug offenses due to the War on Drugs.” The incarcerated come from poor, racially segregated neighborhoods like North Central Milwaukee.

Mass incarceration of mostly young male minority adults for nonviolent crimes and at times for mental illnesses, agitates and deepens the problems of this local income racially segregated neighborhoods.

When traditional sources of support, like the Catholic Church and the St. Vincent de Paul Society abandon the areas in the name of going with white suburbs in order to help the poor in the name of finances it only deepens the problem. “Trickle down” economics” or “racist polices” that run from the poor rather than go to the poor for answers makes for larger suffering and more misery.

I joke that someday Milwaukee will build a wall around North Central Milwaukee,the poorest, most segregated part of the city in order to protect the people in North Central Milwaukee and people outside the area is sadly coming true. It is not a wall of concrete and barb wire like Israel is building around itself but it is a real wall of isolation, stigma, labeling, policing, poverty, racism and criminalization. The bigger the wall becomes, with mass incarceration, lack of funding for public schools, unemployment the more the self-fulfilled prophecy of how poor and violent the area is becomes true.

How to stop it? When racism was overt it was easier for people to see and expose. But when racism is subtle and in the name of doing good it is hard to see and expose. When will we ever learn that ignoring and neglecting a crisis only makes it worse?

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