The United States’ prison system is filled with unjustifiable, blatant racism. However, as stated in the documentary 13th, many U.S. residents do not realize the corruption assimilated into their prison system. Due to how secretive the U.S. prison system is, the mistreatment of ethnic minority groups, specifically African-Americans, is not prevalent to the public. Nevertheless, this documentary indicates the mass incarceration of African-Americans in the United States and how its prison system accomplishes it. With its depiction of modern-day slavery, the U.S. prison system is at fault for the vast inequality in state prisons. Similarly, as noted in the article The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons by Ashley Nellis,
Most black Americans are under the control of the criminal justice today whether in parole or probation or whether in jail or prison. Accomplishments of the civil rights association have been challenged by mass incarceration of the African Americans in fighting drugs in the country. Although the Jim Crow laws are not so common, many African Americans are still arrested for very minor crimes. They remain disfranchised and marginalized and trapped by criminal justice that has named them felons and refuted them their rights to be free of lawful employment and discrimination and also education and other public benefits that other citizens enjoy. There is exists discernment in voting rights, employment, education and housing when it comes to privileges. In the, ‘the new Jim crow’ mass incarceration has been described to serve the same function as the post civil war Jim crow laws and pre civil war slavery. (Michelle 16) This essay would defend Michelle Alexander’s argument that mass incarcerations represent the ‘new Jim crow.’
Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
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
In the wake of President Obama’s election, the United States seems to be progressing towards a post-racial society. However, the rates of mass incarceration of black males in America deem this to be otherwise. Understanding mass incarceration as a modern racial caste system will reveal the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy America. The history of social control in the United States dates back to the first racial caste systems: slavery and the Jim Crow Laws. Although these caste systems were outlawed by the 13th amendment and Civil Rights Act respectively, they are given new life and tailored to the needs of the time.In other words, racial caste in America has not ended but has merely been redesigned in the shape of mass incarceration. Once again, the fact that more than half of the young black men in many large American cities are under the control of the criminal justice system show evidence of a new racial caste system at work. The structure of the criminal justice system brings a disproportionate number of young black males into prisons, relegating them to a permanent second-class status, and ensuring there chances of freedom are slim. Even when minorities are released from prisons, they are discriminated against and most usually end up back in prisons . The role of race in criminal justice system is set up to discriminate, arrest, and imprison a mass number of minority men. From stopping, searching, and arresting, to plea bargaining and sentencing it is apparent that in every phases of the criminal justice system race plays a huge factor. Race and structure of Criminal Justice System, also, inhibit the integration of ex offenders into society and instead of freedom, relea...
Intersectionality is best described as the “interaction between gender, race, and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power” (Davis) It is a vehicle through which social psychology is able to view the differences between, gender, race class, and sexuality, and, furthermore, asses their compounded effect when an individual is disadvantaged by more than one of these forms of oppression. The conceptions of race, gender, and class have all played roles in shaping the United States Industrial Prison Complex and those who are subject to its injustices.The state of Louisiana, alone,
“Most modem sentencing systems in the United States express an explicit commitment to ensuring that a defendant 's sentence is not affected by the defendant 's race or gender (Hessick, 2010).” Even though individuals are protected through the Bill of Rights and Sentencing Reform Acts, there are still disparities in sentencing within the criminal justice systems. Often, race and gender bias negatively affects sentencing.
In Ava DuVernay’s film 13th she analyzes the pioneering events that led up to this toxic system known as the Prison Industrial Complex. She critically examines how the same golden ticket that, supposedly, granted our freedom was the same rabbit hole that kept black Americans in a cycle of slavery. DeVernay illuminates the ideology that if this system of “militarism, racism, and capital” could somehow manage to criminalize black Americans their institutions could continue and perhaps excel. Jordan Camp & Christina Heatherton’s Policing the Planet expounds upon this ideology that allowed those systems of “militarism, racism, and capital” to maintain power. Broken windows policing, “emerges as an ideological and political project,”(2) ideological in the sense of DeVernay’s examination of embedding criminality on the character of the
In the documentary 13th they shed some light on the history of racism in recent years. They say that the prison system is used to oppress the African American population, and they present the statistic that 1 in 3 African American males are expected to go to prison during their lifetime. One example they use is president Reagan’s War on Drugs. They say that it was actually a way to disguise putting massive amounts of African Americans in jail. How the Reagan administration did was by enforcing the law against the use of Crack, a drug popular in poor urban communities. These communities were where a large number of African Americans lived so the strict law tore apart a lot of colored families. Another example of the criminalization of black people came right after the civil war. With the lack of civil rights for African Americans it was easy for others to throw them in jails and use them as a type of slave labor while they were in
Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System “We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment,” stated Senator Russ Feingold. Even though racism has always been a problem since the beginning of time, recently in the United States, there has been a rise in discrimination and violence has been directed towards the African American minority primarily from those in the white majority who believe they are more superior, especially in our criminal justice system. There are many different reasons for the ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system between the majority and the minority, but some key reasons are differential involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism to why racial disparities exist in Institutional racism is racism that is shown through government organizations and political institutions. In a report done by David Baldus in 1998, he discovered that when it comes to the death penalty, blacks are more likely sentenced to death than whites, and those who kill whites are more likely to be given the death penalty than the killing of blacks (Touré).
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.
In 13th it reveals how companies like ALEC profit from mass incarceration. Prison equals profit. Chdeiac Joyce states, “Legislation that enables financial gain from prisons, such as mandated harsh sentences for nonviolent crime, were actually written by the prison profiteers, then passed by legislatures in their pay” (‘Punishment for profit’). It’s cheaper for prisoners to do the work which could be the reason of people getting laid off from their jobs. The main goal of mass incarceration is locking people of color out of the mainstream of society for petty offenses. Katie Rose Quandt expressed, “It’s well known that people of color are vastly overrepresented in US prisons. African Americans and Latinos constitute 30 percent of the US population and 60 percent of its prisoners” (Why There’s an Even Larger Racial Disparity in Private Prisons than in Public Ones). As opposed to profiting off inmates there should be reforms put into place to help reintegrate former criminals. The criminal justice system should aim to reduce recidivism, the tendency of a convicted criminal to
Black Incarcerated Males For the past two decades, the criminal justice system in the United States has been undergoing tremendous expansion. There are now more than one million black men in jail and one out of every four black males will go to prison in their lifetime. Knowing these statistics puts a burden on the black community because many families are left with single family homes, the unemployment rate for black males goes up, they can not vote and now they make jail seem like it is fun to go to. Black men in jail are having drastic effects upon the black community.
This research essay discusses racial disparities in the sentencing policies and process, which is one of the major factors contributing to the current overrepresentation of minorities in the judicial system, further threatening the African American and Latino communities. This is also evident from the fact that Blacks are almost 7 times more likely to be incarcerated than are Whites (Kartz, 2000). The argument presented in the essay is that how the laws that have been established for sentencing tend to target the people of color more and therefore their chances of ending up on prison are higher than the whites. The essay further goes on to talk about the judges and the prosecutors who due to different factors, tend to make their decisions
The most problematic conclusion about Mass Incarceration, whatever the causes or practices, is that currently America has had the highest national prison rates in the world; furthermore, the rates of minorities (particularly African Americans) are extraordinarily disproportionate to the rates of incarcerated Caucasians. Despite the overall rise in incarceration rates since the 1980s, the crime rates have not been reduced as would be expected. Researchers, activists, and politicians alike are now taking a closer look at Mass Incarceration and how it affects society on a larger scale. The purpose of this paper is to examine the anatomy of Mass Incarceration for a better understanding of its importance as a dominant social issue and its ultimate relation to practice of social work. More specifically the populations affected by mass incarceration and the consequences implacable to social justice. The context of historical perspectives on mass incarceration will be analyzed as well as insight to the current social welfare policies on the