Roderick Dean was arrested on Aug. 11, 2005, for possession of narcotics. The reason he was telling his story outside of the Greyhound Bus Station on International Human Rights Day last December is that the drug he possessed was hydrocodone, which had been legally prescribed by his doctor for his medical condition. He was waiting for the out-of-state medical records to come through - at which time the authorities assured him his case would be dropped - when Katrina blew the dysfunctional New Orleans criminal "justice" system, Mr. Dean's rights and much else away.

I call the system dysfunctional because New Orleans has the highest incarceration rate of any large city in the nation, a rate that is double the national average. On an average day, 60 percent of the prisoners in the Orleans Parish Prison are there on attachment, traffic violations and municipal infractions, which boil down to failure to pay a fine. Like Mr. Dean, 90 percent of them are Black. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, women are the fastest growing segment of Louisiana's prison population.

For all of the misguided, hysterical political reaction to the crime problem, we are none the safer. The first law of holes says that when you are in one, stop digging. Critical Resistance is a national organization which is building a grassroots movement to demand that we abolish the system of punishment that is so expensive and has not worked.

In its place we could create genuinely safe, healthy communities that do not rely on prisons and policing to respond to harm done to people or property. As one step out of the hole, Critical Resistance issued a Special Report on Dec. 10 calling for Amnesty for Prisoners of Katrina, nonviolent people accused of "crimes of survival" or people like Mr. Dean whose legal safeguards and basic bodily protections were washed away by the storm.

When his cell at Orleans Parish Prison became a death chamber, Dean saw people fall into the filthy water and never come out. He was maced for urinating into the water and maced while he prayed. Eventually he was sent to the Winn Correctional Facility in Winnfield, La., where he was raped repeatedly by other inmates. Dogs with fleas and ticks roamed his hospital ward. He had no access to a lawyer or to a telephone and no way of finding out where his family was. Winn is known by the locals as Guantanamo on the Bayou.

Two years after the storm, we rightly complain about the slow pace of the reconstruction of the infrastructure of our city and poor planning before the storm. But in the criminal "justice" area, there was definitely a plan. "We're going to keep our prisoners where they belong," declared Sheriff Marlin Gusman before the storm struck. He had the backing of Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Vertical evacuation of an overcrowded jail three stories high was Plan B in case of a flood.

While many schools and houses have yet to be reconstructed, Louisiana officials constructed a make-shift jail just five days after Katrina made landfall. Angola State Prison Warden Burl Cain used prisoners from Angola to build cages out of chain-link fence topped with razor wire in the back parking lot of the Greyhound Bus Station on Loyola Avenue. Cain called Camp Greyhound "a real start to rebuilding New Orleans."

Those arrested - 1,200 during the six weeks that it was open - slept on the pavement and were guarded by correctional officers from Angola. Many accepted guilty pleas and sentences of community service just so that they could get out, see their families and begin rebuilding their lives. But they were left with a criminal record.

Meanwhile, prisoners like Mr. Dean, abandoned for days in a flooded jail and held at gunpoint on a freeway overpass, were sent willy-nilly to prisons around the state. After being locked up for three months, Mr. Dean, who studied Russian language and culture at Norwich University in Vermont, graduated from the police academy in 1987, worked as a correctional officer and retired from Chrysler in Detroit in 2003 as a supervisor on the assembly line, was given paper and pencil and allowed to contact his family. As a result of a massive letter writing campaign, but without legal assistance, he secured his release on Dec. 8, 2005.

Attorneys Denny LeBuff, former chair of the public defense office, and Monique Harden of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights point out the United States has signed on to three international treaties that prohibit the kinds of human rights abuses seen so widely after Katrina. (The report can be read at www.criticalresistance.org.) They believe that amnesty is the only thing that will partially remedy this situation, that it needs to be part of the recovery and that amnesty can fundamentally change the ways in which we approach true public safety.

LeBuff emphasizes that the Critical Resistance proposal, which incorporates expungement and pardon, remedies already built into Louisiana law, is modest, not extreme. It is a workable, practical suggestion for moving ahead by removing impediments to housing and employment for people whose human rights have been violated. Regarding amnesty for nonviolent offenses, she says, "The mechanisms are here, useable, and only need to be enhanced." LeBuff herself was the beneficiary of amnesty when her arrest record as a Vietnam War protester was expunged so that she could get her college degree and go on to become a lawyer.

When Mr. Dean was released after 117 days, he found himself in a city under martial law and a curfew, with rumors of vigilantes, thugs and all sorts of chaos. "I was released into a city I had been removed from for four months," he says. "I didn't even recognize the city. I was afraid, hungry; I had no provision, no direction. I didn't know what to do next. I prayed for my safety. If it had not happened to me, I would not have believed that it could happen in the United States to anybody."

Amazingly, after all that, Mr. Dean, who lives in uptown New Orleans, has come to love our city and has made it his home. His relatives wonder why. He has taken an active role in its recovery. Deploring a leadership vacuum, in 2006 he ran for mayor. He has joined Critical Resistance and Safe Streets Strong Communities, where he can work with others most directly impacted by imprisonment and policing to help us elevate our lives and our notions of justice.

It makes no sense, in a flood-prone, crime-prone city, to just continue to lock more and more people up - digging that deeper hole.

Orissa Arend is a mediator, psychotherapist, and community organizer in New Orleans. You can reach her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Contact Critical Resistance New Orleans at 930 N. Broad Street, New Orleans, LA 70119, (504) 304-3784, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it To learn more about CR's Amnesty for Prisoners of Katrina campaign, visit www.criticalresistance.org/katrina. If you or someone you know was locked up during or after Katrina, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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