More handpicked essays just for you.
War on drugs racism
Mass incarceration amongst African American males
How Did Segregation Effect Black People In The Usa
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: War on drugs racism
The reason for overcrowding is the disproportionate amount of black men to white. It is evident that,“Communities of color are politically marginalized by laws that disenfranchise voters for felony convictions and provide economic incentives for rural communities to embrace prisons as a form of economic development” (Smalls). This ties in with the war on drugs, the police targeted young black men as a method to keep them off of the streets,“...the consequence of criminal justice policies and law enforcement actions that disproportionately target young black men from economically disadvantaged urban communities” (Warde 463). Young black men from poor families are stopped because they look suspicious and arrested for a maximum sentence on minor charges. This problem in the U.S. legal department shows the long-standing segregation and tension between black America and law enforcement. …show more content…
Black men are usually the providers of their families, especially young black men, like Bigger, taking care of their mothers and siblings. Often times because their fathers are already victims of the system, or worse, victims of the streets. So, when police target these men and take them away from their homes, it directly affects everyone they know. The women have to become independent and go find work and try to raise a family by herself, it causes many black families to become poor and in need of
In many nation states, it is noticed that there is a disproportionate number of black people especially those youngsters going through the criminal justice system. The overrepresentation is illustrated by related data released by the U.S. Department of Justice and the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. In America, almost 3500 per 100,000 residents of the black male were sent to jail in 2013 which was over seven times more than the ratio their white counterpart had and in England and Wales, 8.5% of young black people aged between 10-17 were arrested during the same period .This essay aims to explore the reasons behind the ethnic overrepresentation in the criminal justice system and believes that the higher rate of offending for some race groups and the existence of systematic racist which partially stems from the contemporary media distortion are attributive to the overrepresentation.
“On the run: Wanted Med in the Philadelphia Ghetto” by Alice Goffman (2009), explores the dysfunctional relationship between individuals in “ghettos” and the criminal justice system. Incarceration rates in the United States have increased seven times over 40 years among Black men with limited education (Goffman 2009:339). Incarceration leads to the discrimination and disadvantage of Black males; socially and economically (Goffman 2009:339). Additionally, increased incarcerations influence the amount of policing in communities. Subsequently, increased incarcerations of individuals from poor communities, results in increased policing in their neighbourhoods. Goffman (2009) focuses her study on the rate of incarceration and police
The over-representation of black people in the UK prison population became an issue which needs to be addressed. The prison statistics shows that black people are over-represented and by analysing their population in the UK and a prison statistics it can be noticed that their number increases massively comparing to white and Asian people. The statistics focuses on adult male population, but by considering women and young black people, the evidences show that across all levels black people are over-represented. However, black people are not over-represented only in prison statistics, police practices shows that they are a main target for their actions such as stop and search under section 60 or when fighting in “war on drugs” even that their drug usage is lower than white people. Matthews (2009) and Sampson (1987) provide evidences that one of the reasons for over-representation is institutional racism within Criminal Justice system, police service as well as areas such as Council, education and housing. Newburn (2013) presents that there are specific crimes for which black people are more likely to commit as well as black people are less likely to plead guilty, including that often they leave in inner city cause that judges in those locations are more likely to give “heavier” sentences (Newburn 2013). Furthermore, turning point is given by Wacquant (2001) and his idea of hyperghettoization, he looks at the massive privatisation of prison and provide evidences that the prisons are turning into “ghettos” to keep uneducated, unskilled young black offenders in one place (Wacquant, 2001).
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. The ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system is caused by mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism.
Nationwide, blacks are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” This difference in proportionality does not necessarily involve direct discrimination; it can be explained by a number of combined factors. Correctional agencies do not control the number of minorities who enter their facilities. Therefore, the disparity must come from decisions made earlier in the criminal justice process. Law enforcement, court pre-sentencing policies and procedures, and sentencing all have a direct effect on the overrepresentation of minorities in the correctional population.
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001.
In the United States, the rate of incarceration has increased shockingly over the past few years. In 2008, it was said that one in 100 U.S. adults were behind bars, meaning more than 2.3 million people. Even more surprising than this high rate is the fact that African Americans have been disproportionately incarcerated, especially low-income and lowly educated blacks. This is racialized mass incarceration. There are a few reasons why racialized mass incarceration occurs and how it negatively affects poor black communities.
Although black men have been and still are being ridiculed and proposed to be a mugger, rapist, drug dealer, or a subject of someone’s crime, it is not always true. All black men are not and should not be seen as a hazard to another life. Some men of color are trying to make it out, aside from being a statistic of being an uneducated man that gets through by selling drugs. Some men are trying to make it to the top of the food chain, rather than remaining at the bottom and never moving elsewhere. These men are those who are most offended by others who consider them to be hazardous or a threat to them.
Staples successfully begins by not only admitting the possible faults in his practiced race but also by understanding the perspective of the one who fear them. Black males being opened to more violence because of the environment they're raised in are labeled to be more likely to cause harm or committing crime towards women but Staples asks why that issue changes the outlook of everyday face to face contact and questions the simple actions of a black man? Staples admits, "women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence," (Staples 384) however...
For the past two decades, the criminal justice system in the United States has been undergoing a tremendous expansion. There are now more than one million black men in jail and that one out of every four black males will go on prison in there lifetime. Knowing these statistics it put a burden on the black community because many families are left with single family home, the unemployment rate for black male go up, they can not vote and now they make jail seem like it is fun to go to.
Racism still exists today in this day and age. African American men are particularly stereotyped to be drug dealers, criminals, and gangsters. People have there on opinion about black men, if someone is sitting in their car, and a black man walks by they’re going to lock their door, because they’re scared there going to get robed. The stereotypes about African American men are not true. There are educated African American men just like any other race. Two articles “Black Men in Public Space” and “Right Place, Wrong Face” deal with the issue of two educated African American men that get treated differently, because of the color of their skin. The articles are focused on times when both
In the short essay, “Black Men in Public Space” written by Brent Staples, discusses his own experiences on how he is stereotyped because he is an African American and looks intimidated in “public places” (Staples 225). Staples, an intelligent man that is a graduate student at University of Chicago. Due to his skin complexity, he is not treated fairly and always being discriminated against. On one of his usual nightly walks he encountered a white woman. She took a couple glances at him and soon began to walk faster and avoided him that night. He decided to change his appearance so others would not be frightened by his skin color. He changed the way he looked and walked. Staples dressed sophisticated to look more professional so no one would expect him to be a mugger. Whistling classical music was referred to the “cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country”(Staples 226). The cowbell is used to protect hikers from bears. But in Staples case, it was to not be stereotyped and show that he is harmless. The general purpose of Staples essay was to inform the readers that stereotypes could affect African Americans and any other races.
From the article, Davis’s main argument is that the mainstream society has developed the perception the black men are to blame for the