Brooks Overcomes Death Threats And Presses On

TRENTON-- In a recent interview, local activist tells all about his recent bout with the New Jersey State Parole Board.

Daryl Brooks, a longtime Trenton political freedom fighter and now member of the Tea Party who served a three and half year bid in prison for flashing two minors (a crime he insists he did not commit), decided to sit down for an in-depth interview last week.

During the interview, Brooks spoke out in a way that he hasn't done before. The brash and outspoken political firebrand was in rare form last week as he opened up about his longstanding fight against injustice and persecution.

Since being released from prison, Brooks has sought to bring about social and political change within his community. According to an Occupy the Hood New Jersey blog, Brooks was the first person to run for U.S. Senate from Trenton, New Jersey. Although his campaign proved unsuccessful, he has coordinated numerous community organizing activities to stop violence and bring different people together.

Despite his efforts, Brooks has experienced problems with the State Parole Board and the public at large. In May, the Parole Board required that he attend counseling sessions. In these sessions, Brooks reports that he was required to admit guilt for a crime that he insists he did not commit.

After not complying with their request, he was ordered to take a polygraph exam or lie detector test as a part of the Parole Board’s Containment Approach that monitors the activity of individuals that are on parole for sex offenses. This test was required despite Brooks having had no parole violations since being released from prison according to Philadelphia Tribune reporter Linn Washington. Once he was given the lie detector test, Brooks reports that he was told by the Parole Board that he failed.

Brooks speaking at rally

Brooks subsequently requested a copy of the results to determine why he failed but was denied. The Parole Board confirmed this. When a parolee fails a lie detector test, they can have stricter restrictions placed upon them. The political activist questions the results and has voiced concern over how the lie detector was administered. He has expressed concerns involving the use and application of testing equipment, the recording of information, and the polygraph examiner’s impartiality.

Research bears out what Brooks is saying. According to Polygraph Specialist Joseph Buckley , the polygraph technique is highly accurate, but at the same time, errors can and do occur.

Most errors happen when the examiner fails to prepare the subject properly for the examination or by misreading the physiological data on the polygraph charts. This makes it all the more important that the examiner be properly trained. According to a State Parole Board representative, parole officers can and do administer polygraph examinations because they have gone through training and are required to undergo recertification every two years.

Brooks and another parolee that spoke on the condition of anonymity both question the accuracy of lie detectors. They wonder why the results of these tests can be used to restrict an individual for Parole Board purposes, but cannot be used in a court of law. Mother Jones journalist Brendan Koerner confirmed this finding when he reported that polygraph test results are generally inadmissible in court.

Through these issues with the lie detector test and by refusing to comply with the Parole Board’s requirement that he admit guilt for a crime he claims he did not commit, Brooks was now in violation of his parole which meant jail-time. In a previous interview, Brooks said the possibility of going back to prison was “terrible”.

Brooks went on to call his experience with the Parole Board an instance of 'persecution' citing that it was unjust to have this happen to him, because he has already served his time and he has had no parole violations since being released.

Brooks in Mississippi with poor children

Along with this travesty of justice, the political gadfly spoke out about countless situations where he was spit on, threatened with violence, and physically attacked by members of the Black community, a community that he has consistently fought for over the years with his protests and rallies. It came to a point where even his daughter was threatened by others in his community. Indeed, the Trenton activist had serious concerns that someone was going to kill him and that he was going to have to maybe kill someone to defend himself or his family.

In the interview, Brooks describes how utterly disappointed he was in the Black Community because of the way he was treated. He could not understand why they hated him when he did so much to improve things in the Black Community. It came to a point where the political activist threw up his hands and said, “my own people are trying to destroy me”.

After this, it came to a point where 'enough became enough' for the political activist. 

After years of fighting injustice, facing fierce opposition, and wrestling with the possibility of going back to prison for something he deemed to be unjust, Brooks says that the pressure became overwhelming and he came to a fork in the road where he felt a life or death decision needed to be made.

In the interview, the political malcontent said that the night before he was arrested in May, he sat in his room all night staring at a bottle of prescription pain pills that was lying around his house, contemplating whether or not to take them. His intentions were to take the pain pills as a way to end his misery and cut his life short. That particular night, all sorts of thoughts ran through his head as he glanced as that bottle of pills. However, something stopped him from taking them.

Brooks says that the only thing that prevented him from taking his life that night was listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermon But, If Not, a 1967 speech that highlights the importance of what King called civil disobedience where one refuses to abide by an order of the government because your conscience deems it unjust.

The political activist said that he had no worries that following morning when he received a 7 o’clock call from parole because he knew that he never “walked alone”, God was with him always. So that following morning, Brooks buried those pain pills saying that he felt strong and inspired, like Martin Luther King, Jr. before he was escorted to that Birmingham Jail in 1963.

Brooks being interviewed for U.S. Senate

Brooks went on to say that despite the persecution he is currently going through, history is ultimately on the side of right and that justice will eventually prevail. However, the political activist is still concerned about the social implications of others going through a similar ordeal with the Parole Board that he went through.

The Trenton born activist expressed concern regarding the Parole Board's use of power. In the interview, he makes the case that the State Parole Board is abusing its power whenever it administers a lie detector test, but does not provide the parolee with a copy of the test results. Brooks fears that the Parole Board may begin to require others that have been convicted for non-sex offender related crimes take these same sorts of tests and not be given a copy of the test results either. The political firebrand thinks this could have damaging social effects as it relates to one’s civil liberties.

Brooks says, "Are they [the Parole Board] testing this out for the next line of individuals? This may start off with people with sex offense and lead to people with regular crimes. This could be the start like when we used drones in other countries, now that was a test, now let's see what its like to use drones here in America. Now let’s do it [lie detectors] with people that shoot people, drug dealers, people that do a regular crime, let’s test it out on a group of people that people are going to despise because they're not really human".

In general, this issue brings up questions about how we treat parolees. Does society care about how people on parole are treated since they have already served their time or does society think that it doesn't matter how these individuals are treated because they committed crimes against society? Are parolees being pushed around by the Parole Board or are their rights being protected under the law?

By Anwar Salandy  http://anwarsreflections.blogspot.com/

It's time to fix our broken prison system and save money doing it

Can we finally bring an end to the madness of incarcerating so many Black men?

The budget crises faced by states might be the key to breaking our nation’s abhorrent incarceration rates for Black and Latino men.

We’ve all heard powerful arguments about the high social cost of keeping men of color locked up:

• the price paid for raising children without fathers
• relegating men to low-income jobs because they have a record or spent their prime working years in prison
• voter disenfranchisement
• broken families
• broke communities

All of these problems have social costs and real economic costs.

But somehow, the arguments are always pounded down by the law-and-order politicians who make specious arguments about public safety.

(Our “post-racial” society that is still automatically suspicious of dark-skinned brethren hasn’t been sufficiently outraged about inequities in the criminal justice system to do much about it either.)

Well, maybe this time the tune will change. Because this time it’s about big money. Not just the people’s money, not just the money lost by low-income communities. But BIG money, as in many billions of dollars.

State and local governments all across the country are facing budgetary crises. And they could cut billions out of their expenditures by reducing incarceration rates.

Governments could make quick use of an extra $16.9 billion a year, the amount that could be saved by cutting the number of jailed nonviolent offenders in half.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research released a new report on the potential savings to state and local governments if they cut the prison population, with virtually no risk to public safety.

Over the last 30 years, violent crime and property crime rates have gone down. Over the same period, incarceration rates have exploded. In other words, crime is not the reason more people are in jail. It’s a political choice.
Even for 2009, in the midst of the recession, FBI statistics show crime rates falling. They keep going down despite hard economic times, which we often think will drive people to take desperate measures.

In 2008, federal, state, and local governments spent about $75 billion on corrections, according CEPR. Nonviolent offenders make up about 60 percent of those in jail or prison, so cutting that group in half could offer substantial savings for strapped states and localities.

Take a cue from the downward trend in juvenile incarceration. States have been closing juvie facilities because arrests are down, as the AP reported.

Since it costs about $200,000 a year to hold a juvenile, there’s a potential for considerable savings. As states are laying off teachers, benching firefighters, and leaving poor children without health insurance it seems like a good time to reevaluate our priorities.

The juvenile justice system is taking a different approach than the adult one, with an emphasis on rehabilitation rather than punishment, the AP points out.

The juvenile system is focusing on the worst offenders, and steering those convicted of lesser crimes to other programs.

The result is that between 2000 and 2008, the number of juvenile offenders dropped 26 percent, from about 109,000 to 80,000.

While juvie facilities are losing residents, adult facilities are getting more crowded. Take one of the biggest governmental budgets anywhere: the state of California designates 11 percent of its state budget to prisons, while just 7.5 percent goes to higher education. Prisons here are so crammed they operate with double the number of inmates facilities were built to handle. And it's expensive, California spends about $50,000 per year per inmate. Other states spend around $22,000 per year per inmate. If those prisoners were out earning a living, even on a modest salary, they'd easily offset such costs.

Couldn’t California find a better use for $8 billion a year? Couldn’t all states find more productive ways to spend the billions they allocate for corrections.

Even for those who are deaf to the social well-being arguments, can we get your attention if we just talk about the dollars?

Alyssa Giachino is an economics writer for TheLoop21.com. She has worked as a reporter in New York, New Jersey, Mexico City and California covering stories on labor, the environment, immigration and politics.