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Page 4 Saturday, October 11, 1980 The Michigan Daily

dI1igaf ai1y
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan

Vol. XCI, No. 33,

420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, Ml 48109

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Editorials represent a majority opinion of The Daily's Editorial Board

Touch but don't look

WELL, YOU'RE damred if you do
and damned if you do, at least
according to Pope John Paul II.
If you look with concupiscence
(strong or excessive sexual desire) at
a woman who is not your wife, you've
strayed from the road to
salvation-that's old news. But now, if
you look with concupiscence at a
woman who is /your wife, you've also
taken a wrong turn on that magic road.
It's enough to drive Jimmy "Lust in
My Heart" Carter crazy.
The Pope's latest advice for the
Catholics of the world was issued Wed-
nesday 'during his weekly general
audience, intended to protect women
from being treated as objects. It has
drawn sharp criticism from feminists
around the world.
And well it should.
To suggest that husbands should not
look at their wives-or, by ex-
trapolation, that women should. not
look at their husbands-in any but an
ascetic way is to be so chauvinistic, so

anachronistic, that the Catholic Chur-
ch cannot help but draw scorn.
"Every day (the .pope) is taking a
step backward to the Dark Ages," an
Italian author observed this week.
This is the twentieth century, Pope
John Paul. Catholics-and most
everyone else-have enough trouble
living in 1980 without outdated, im-
practical commands . from a major
spiritual leader.
It is not surprising that the Catholic
Church has trouble attracting and
keeping members when its rules are so
constraining.
The Pope has condemned abortions
as well as birth control, the ordination
of women as priests, homosexuality,
divorce, and now the coveting of thy
own wife.
A Vatican-based U.S. prelate defen-
ded the pope's views, saying in part,
"The pope did not say the wives should
wear chastity belts or anything like
that."
Well, not yet, anyway.

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Do we need more

'The improper Bostonians

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, like
the rest of the universe, has
progressed chronologically for a cen-
tury since the abolition of slavery. It
has the further advantage of lying
hundreds of miles north of the Mason-
Dixon line: Still, thousands of its white
citizens have persisted in behavior;
wofthy of circa 1800 Southerners.
Ever since the Supreme Court
demanded in 1954 that the nation's
public schools, including those in
Chelsea, Southie, Charlestown, and
Dorchester, begin integration efforts,
including busing, blacks have been
subject to racist scor&-n
The white occupants of the city that
spawned- the American Revolution
have engaged their black neighbors in
bitter modern rebellions of their
own-but these battles have had a
regressive thrust. These twentieth-
century Bostonians by and .large
eschew the forward-looking aims of the
Founding Fathers. Jim Crow is an idea
to which they much more willfully
cling.
Some high school students at once
all-white high schools in parts of
Boston have been boycotting classes
lately in an attempt to get the city
school board to put metal detectors in

the entranceways of the schools. But
by press accounts, the blacks atten-
ding the schools have been quite
peaceful; the demands for the devices
look like just another segregationist tool.
Boston's Mayor Kevin White has,
issued some surprisingly honest
remarks- on what may be the uh-
derlying causes of the racial strife Jn
the New England hub. "When I com-
pare the institutions around town, I say
it's a joke. There's no access in this
town to institutions, for minorities."
White admitted that Boston is "a racist
city."
Boston's blacks, like those in other
American cities, have a great deal to
be angry about. They have endured in-
ferior education, inferior human ser-
vices, and countless other problems for
painfully long years. The humane
reaction would be compassion and the
extension of a helping hand. The actual
reaction too often has been hostility
and antagonism on the part of-the bet-
ter-off whites.
No simple solution seems evident for
Boston 's racial troubles. But if some of
the people who put Mayor White in of-
fice would join him in recognizing the
sources of black discontent, the
situation might be slightly
ameliorated, at least. It's their move.

On November 4,, Michigan voters will
decide whether to approve Proposal E, which
would establish four new prisons, each
housing about 550 inmates. If the ballot
proposal is approved, the state income tax
will be increased by .1 percent for the next
five years bringing in a total of $250-$350
million.
The revenues from the ballot proposal
would finance state and local correction
programs; some of the funds would be
allocated for community-based alternatives.
The proposal would also require the
demolition of the decaying Ionia Refor-
matory.
GOVERNOR WILLIAM Milliken cites
overcrowding in Michigan prisons as a reason
to support Proposal E. The state's present,
prison, population is in excess of 15,000 in-
mates, well over the 13,700 inmate capacity
level.'
New prison construction, however, is not a
long-term, effective solution to the problems
of either overcrowding or crime. Prisons
punish but they do not deter. The evidence
suggests there is no relationship between the
rate at which a state imprisons people and its
crime rate. Our prisons have failed to reduce
our shockingly high recidivism (repeating of
criminal acts) rate.
Our prisons foster crime, they don't abolish
it. Nondangerous offenders often turn violent
through sheer exposure to the violent offen-
ders who populate our prisons. Prisons
change the committed offender, but the
change is much more likely to be negative
than positive. If we had alternatives, many
criminals cduld be diverted from permanent
attachment to a life of crime that the ex-
perience of prison often produces.

By Steve Berkowitz
IN FACT, A great many convicts would of-
fer no violent risk to society if they were at
large. According to the Congressional Budget
Office, in 1977 only 11 percent of federal
prisoners were committed for violent crime.
A vast majority of the inmates could and
should be allowed the more humane and ef-
fective policy of treatment under community-
based alternatives.
While Proposal E does order uselof funds for
community-based alternatives, there is no
guarantee that the legislature will actually
finance such programs. According to the
American Friends Service Committee,
"Proposal E only defines the use of additional
funding as being ,for 'other state and local
corrections purposes. Besides community-
based corrections, this can include operating
costs for prisons, new jail construction, state-
operated corrections centers, and other
programs."
Another weakness of Proposal E is that
building more prisons may only ensure
judges will eventually fill them. According to
the Law Enforcement Assistance Ad-
ministration, most serious crime declined
between 1973 and 1978. The prisons, however,,
were filling up-not because of an increase in
crime but because the beds to hold inmates
were readily available.
MANY EUROPEAN countries are using
programs such as day fines, community-ser-
vice orders, probation, residential programs,
and restitutions. These alternatives should be
used for nonviolent offenders (e.g., property
and drug offenders) and if their use were ex-
panded in Michigan and across the United

prisons?
States justice system, they could significantly
reduce the prison population and the
economic costs of corrections.
Community-based efforts offer more hope
of rehabilitation because they strive to main-
tain the family and social ties of non-
dangerous offenders by placing them in
programs in their home communities. Com-
munity service offers an opportunity for con-
- structive activity in the form of personal ser-
vice to the community: Probation would hold
offenders accountable for responsible perfor-
mance in the community 'and restitution
would compensate Victims for losses suf-
fered.
THESE ALTERNATIVES to imprisonment
should not apply for those convicted of.
dangerous crimes such as murder, rape, or
violent offenses. But for drug use, vandalism,
car theft, burglary, fraud, robbery, and sim-
ple assault, the alternative types of punish-
ment are better than prison.
As stated by the National Advisory Com-
mission on Criminal Justice Standards and
Goals, "Prisons should be repudiated as
useless for any purpose other than locking
away persons who are too dangerous to be
allowed at large in a free society."
Whether or not Proposal E is approved in
November, Michigan will face an immediate
crisis in its corrections system. But there are
alternative measures that could be im-
plemented by the legislature that could
alleviate this condition and prove less costly,
more humane, and more effective in reducing
crime.
Steve Berkowitz is an LSA senior
working as an investigator in the Student
Legal Services Office.

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Cuba syoung misfits spurned


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FORT McCOY, WISCONSIN -
Behind two rows of 12 foot fences,
reinforced with coils of razor-like
wire, the kids cavorted up and
down. Inside the barracks some
gambled at cards, showing off
piles of Lucky Strike packs they
had won, though none smoked.
They hugged their guards, and
the turned around and 'spilled
every garbage can in the com-
pound when told a promised
bowling trip had been cancelled.
They are 140 Cuban refugee
teenagers, ages 15 to 17, who
came to the United States by
themselves, with 'no relatives,
from the Cuban port of Mariel in
May and June. They were bran-
ded misfits in Cuba. And no one
knows what to brand them, or do
with them, here.
MOST OF THE Cuban youths
here came out of Cuban refor-
matories where they were held
for offenses such as truancy and
vagrancy. Many fell into a gap in
Cuban society where compulsory
school ends at age 15 but work
doesn't begin until 17. They
became street kids. At least eight
are homosexual. They don't care
much 'about communism or
capitalism, though they are
vulnerable to political
proselytizing. They just thought
the trip from Mariel would get

By Julia Preston

resettled, usually with spon-
soring relatives. The remaining
3,234 adults were transferred to
Fort Chafee, Ark. Those minors
left have no relatives here and
haven't received state sponsors
because the ambigious im--
migration status conferred on
Cuban refugees by the Carter
Administration has meant that no
one has legal custody over them.
Two State Circuit Court
Judges, James Rice and Ness
Flores, held hearings recently in
a tumultuous barracks cour-
troom to place the minors in the
legal care of the state of Wiscon-
sin. "I'm listening all day to
angry, scared kids," said an irate
Judge Flores. "And the Im-
migration and Naturalization
Service tells me that technically,
they are still in Cuba. It's
ludicrous."
Neither the judges nor the
State's Public Defender,- David
Niblack, have been able to get a
list of all the minors in Ft. McCoy
from the INS or the State
Department, which is in charge
of the juveniles' compound. Thir-
ty or more are elsewhere in the
camp and some have been in
maximum security detention,
even isolation, in a jail closed to

Over the s'ummer a governor's
task force, public health service
researchers, and other observers
charged that juveniles at McCoy
had been subjected to beatings
and multiple homosexual and
heterosexual rape and had made
frequent suicide attempts.
Since July, their treatment has
improved a little, to judge from
three days at the beginning of the
month. On September 30, it was
disclosed that two Cubans, a boy-.
and a girl, both 17, had been han-
dcuffed, arms outstretched, to an
outside chain link fence for five,
hours the night before. The two
said they had gotten into a fight
with two security guards who were
ransacking the possessions of
three gay minors accused of
stealing from the mess hall.
Those three were sprayed with
chemical mace and held in
isolation overnight, though they
were never questioned about the
incident.
ON OCTOBER 1, thirteen
Cuban minors packed in one cell
in. "Hotel Por Gusto" punched a
hole through the wall into a
bathroom. Public defender David
Niblack, who saw the scene
minutes later, said, "The kids
had been stripped naked and

vising psychiatrist said that he
would be kept under chemical
constraints.
The Cubans who live in the
compound don't speak English.
They have had few structured ac-
tivities to calm them or prepare.
them for life in the United States.
A few are illiterate in Spanish,
but on the whole they are well-
educated for their. ages, with
some performing at U.S. college
level on tests.
OVER 600 times during the
summer, Cubans, including kids
and adults, have jumped the fort
fence and fled. In; the vast
majority of cases they returned
voluntarily. They had no place to
go.
Amidst the pandemonium in
the compound, Alcibiades
Davila, 17, when asked what he
most wanted, said, "All I need
right now is five quiet minutes to
be alone, and try to figure out
what's going to happen."
"They need care," says lawyer
David Niblack: "The Cuban
government has dealth with these
problem kids by using them to
play a political joke on the U.S.
And now our federal government
is giving them worst treatment
with no moral justification."
On Oct. 2, Judge Rice ordered
that the kids be removed from the

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