Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

A crisis is coming!

Due to changes in US drug policy – 2 States have de-criminalized Marijuana and the new national ethos is that drug users are victims more so than villains (See VIDEO below) – incarcerated drug felons will have their sentences reduced. For those that are non-citizens, the likelihood is that they will be immediately deported to their homelands. Notice the trend, the US federal government will not want to pay billions of dollars to maintain these prisoners in the system or out of the system. So they would rather send them “home” and make them someone else’s problem. For the inmates with Caribbean heritage, that “someone else” would be the Caribbean member-states.

By: Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News

Many drug inmates who get break under new plan to be deported.

Thousands to land back in Mexico after early release.

Thousands of federal prisoners set to be released early thanks to a change in drug rules will most likely be quickly deported to their home countries next year.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, a group that controls advisory sentencing guidelines for federal judges, voted last week to shave an average of two years off the sentences of up to 46,000 inmates jailed for drug crimes. The first ones will be released on Nov. 1, 2015.

The group has begun to reverse older policies that sent people away for decades for nonviolent drug crimes, part of a larger criminal justice reform push that has attracted bipartisan support. In 2007, the group lightened sentences for crack offenders. Inmates will have to apply for the sentence reductions with the help of public defenders, and federal judges will have a year to decide who qualifies for early release.

But many of the people who will benefit from the change in policy will likely be deported as soon as they qualify for the sentence reduction. A quarter of all the qualifying inmates are not U.S. citizens, according to the group’s analysis, complicating the picture many have of drug offenders as gang-affiliated young men in run-down, poor urban neighborhoods. Many of the offenders, in fact, were caught with drugs in their vehicles as they tried to cross the border and were prosecuted in Texas. The Lone Star state has nearly 21 percent of all the prisoners who will benefit from the early release. Of those 10,296 prisoners in Texas, up to a third will be deported once released.

The hefty noncitizen portion of offenders could cut the state a break, since the criminal justice system does not have enough probation officers and halfway homes to handle the influx that’s expected when the first releases begin in November 2015.

“There wouldn’t have been enough facilities to absorb the number of people who would be released,” said Maureen Franco, public defender in the Western District of Texas, which covers much of the state’s border with Mexico.

Giving the judges a year to consider the early release petitions will also allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement time to make sure it has enough beds for the prisoners while they await their deportation.

Franco said her immigrant clients are just as eager for early release as those who are citizens, despite the deportation that awaits them. She’s already heard from some of them who are emailing her and asking when they can get out.

This might be in part because immigrants living illegally in the U.S. are not eligible for many programs in federal prison — they also can’t live in lower-security facilities. “It’s a much harsher sentence,” said Marjorie Meyers, federal public defender in the Southern District of Texas.

Ricardo Hinojosa, a vice chair of the Sentencing Commission and a federal judge in Laredo, brought up concerns before the group’s vote that the offenders who are sent back to Mexico will not be rigorously supervised by that country’s probation system. “Many of them will be tempted to come back, and maybe quicker, because of the fact that many of them have families on this side of the border,” Hinojosa said.

Those who are caught trying to come back over the border face up to 10 years in federal prison. They might fear the violence in Mexico, particularly if they were involved in drugs, more than detention in America, where at least they are safe.

Prisoners who had legal immigration status but were not citizens can try to fight their deportation, but it’s a long shot. “It’s very hard to fight,” Meyers said.
Yahoo News Online Source (Retrieved 07/22/2014) –
http://news.yahoo.com/many-drug-inmates-who-get-break-under-new-plan-to-be-deported-134758280.html
Photo Credit (Above): Andrew Burton – Getty Images

Video Credit (Below): White House National Drug Control Strategy:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/drugpolicyreform

Ready or not, here they come!

For the Caribbean, the answer most likely is “Not Ready”!

This is a crisis that is looming. The book Go Lean…Caribbean declares that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and that we should not waste this opportunity to elevate our own security engines in the region. If we do it right, we can even profit from the crisis as well. The overriding theme of the foregoing news article is the need for a prison industrial complex – the field of “penology”. With this coming crisis – November 2015 – the publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean see opportunities for commerce.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). With 2 American territories in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico & the US Virgin Islands), an immediate plan to host US federal prisoners is not so radical. Plus, this could mean billions of dollars for the Caribbean.

The Go Lean book goes further and posits that the region must prepare its own security apparatus for its own security needs. But while we are building facilities (prisons, jails, and detention centers) for our own needs, we can employ the strategy of over-building and insourcing for other jurisdictions. Had we been ready now, with this Go Lean roadmap, we would have been able to embrace the opportunities presented by the US Drug Policy Change. These unwanted “inmates” could have been guests in Caribbean facilities now – for a fee; a lower fee than the US federal government currently incurs, but more revenues than the Caribbean currently generates.

So then what happens when these US drug inmates are released?

“Mejor el diablo sabe que el diablo no tiene” – Spanish expression. The English translation is “Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t know”.

The Go Lean roadmap asserts that it is better to structure crime intelligence analysis around a population that we know is a “risk” than to watch/monitor everybody. At some point the Caribbean Diaspora in US Federal prisons will be sent home. We want to be prepared for them. If not only to offer them new chances of productive citizenship, then at least to closely guard against their post-incarceration activities. We already know these ones have a preponderance to engage in illicit activities, so it is prudent to “watch” them.

This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. The Federation must allow for facilitations of detention for convicted felons of federal crimes, and should over-build prisons to house trustees from other jurisdictions.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The goal of Go Lean…Caribbean, roadmap is to confederate under a unified entity made up of all 30 Caribbean member-states. Then provide homeland security for our neighborhood, contending with man-made and natural threats. The CU security goal is not for world dominance, or promotion of idealistic concepts. No, it is simply for public safety! The CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through a number of missions. The Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

This Go Lean roadmap calls for the establishment of professional penology arts and sciences, a Caribbean prison industrial complex. This will include the prison/jail/detention facilities and the rest of the eco-system: bail enforcement, witness protection, probation/parole, anti-recidivism, intelligence gathering, job training/placement and in-prison labor options. There are lots of lessons (from global examples) to learn and apply in perfecting the Caribbean model. For one, we do not want the profit motive – the book speaks of learning from “Peonage Past and Ensuring Corporate Governance” (Page 211); rather we want to be motivated by the Greater Good. The CU security directive should always be in support of growing Caribbean society, not leading the charge – no police state – but rather supporting the lead or “bringing up the rear”.

In recent blog submissions, this commentary highlighted the security provisions that must be enacted to improve homeland security, as soon as possible:

Look seriously at the issues in the foregoing news article.

These inmates in Federal prisons are persona non-grata in the US. So they will have no choice but to come home…eventually. Whereas these are not the type of new residents we may want in the Caribbean, ready or not, they are coming. It is better to be prepared. What’s worse, these ones may now have even better-tuned-skills and abilities for operating in the illicit world – many criminals learn how to be better criminals in prison.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide increased public safety & security in the Caribbean region:

We console with the communities that have to deal with this impending crisis – a lot of the inmates are identified as Mexican; while this is not in scope for the CU, there are a lot of lessons that the Caribbean can learn from this country’s dysfunction in dealing with its public safety, especially along the US border. This region is near Failed-State status.

The Go Lean roadmap is the Caribbean’s aspiration to mitigate against Failed-State indices. This is underlying to the prime directive of the CU, to elevate the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean. This is not an easy task; this is heavy-lifting, and thus the book features the turn-by-turn directions to implement the appropriate provisions. This is a sensible roadmap to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!