Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
We’ve got a great cover story this week—Arts Editor Kris Vagner wrote an excellent profile of Karen Gedney, a retired doctor who worked for decades in the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City. Gedney recently published a memoir about her experiences doing a tough, often terrifying job.
Prisons are violent, horrific places built with taxpayer dollars. I’m glad that we don’t have private prisons in Nevada, but the fact that they exist anywhere in this country is revolting. The nonprofit Sentencing Project puts the number of people detained in private prisons as of 2015 at 126,272. Considering that Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed Obama-era policies meant to phase out private prisons, that number has likely increased dramatically. There are certain things, like umbrellas and pizza, that benefit from a free-market economy. Human incarceration is not one of them.
And a disproportionate number of prisoners are African Americans or other persons of color. As great as it is that cannabis is now legal in this state, there are still thousands serving prison sentences here for the ridiculous crime of possessing a plant. Anti-drug laws are often used to prosecute “undesirable” people—even while privileged people indulge in the same activities undeterred. Another example of this kind of thing was the application of the anti-prostitution Mann Act, which was often used to prosecute black men who consorted with white women. Perhaps the most famous example of such a prosecution was boxer Jack Johnson, who fought here in Reno in 1910.
Trump pardoned Johnson on May 24, which is great. But, in light of Trump’s comments about the NFL, it seems like a ruse. It seems he’s only willing to pardon outspoken black athletes for convictions from 100 years ago.