According to John Kuroski, assistant editor of All That is Interesting, “the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, it has almost 25 percent of the world’s prison population” (Kuroski). This figure is astounding, and there are many contributing factors to why the U.S. holds so many of its citizens in prisons. These issues span a wide range, from racism and classism, to flawed ideas of prisons for profit. Colorado recently had an amendment on the ballot to remove the exemption of slavery for people in prisons from the Colorado constitution, unfortunately it lost by an extremely small margin. According to Ballotpedia, an informative website for voters, the end results were 50.32% no and 49.68% yes (Colorado Removal). …show more content…
According to John Kuroski, assistant editor of All That is Interesting, only thirteen percent of the U.S. population is Black, although our prisons have about triple that amount of Black men at thirty-seven percent (Kuroski). The racial disparity in prison is a troubling issue. When minorities are highly over-represented in prison populations it is necessary to look at the regulations, laws and practices that perpetuate this problem. When a minority population is jailed at triple the amount than should be expected, things need to be delved into more deeply to find underlying causes. Kuroski’s data shows that Black men are five times more likely than white men to be put behind bars (Kuroski). This system, that the U.S. has perpetuated, of continually exploiting the Black population is horrifying, while also easy to ignore if one is not constantly aware of the issue. This may be in part to the continuing racial discrimination laws such as stop-and-frisk, which often targets young Black men. According to Kuroski, African-Americans are imprisoned at ten times the rate for drug offences, even though whites are five time more likely to be using drugs (Kuroski). This data shows the racial biases held by law enforcement and the U.S. judicial system. The War on Drugs was a devastating, calculated governmental attack on minorities. This notion
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.’
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.
Michelle Alexander asserts that mass incarceration in contemporary American society is the result of targeting African Americans in the “War on Drugs” and serves to maintain a racial caste system similar to the system that existed during pre-Civil War slavery and has been propelled by what Michael Cohen calls “Jim Crow political logic” of Southern
The documentary, 13th, characterizes our criminal justice system and political institutions as corrupt institutions focused on exploiting the human rights of, primarily African Americans but also other minority groups. The documentary showed that the 13th amendment gave freedom to all citizens except criminals and allowed the criminal system to exploit incarcerated African Americans’ rights and still allowed slavery to take place. After the civil war, slavery continued by arresting African Americans for minor offences such as littering. Starting in 1970’s up until today, the war on drugs directly increased the mass incarceration that occurred throughout that time. In class, we learned that there was a huge increase in the incarceration
According to Mark Early, president of the Prison Fellowship International, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows that there are 19 states that have prisons operating at 100 percent capacity and another 20 are falling right behind them. There is no wonder why the overcrowding of prisons is being discussed everywhere. Not to mention how serious this predicament is and how serious it can get. Many of the United States citizens don’t understand why this is such a serious matter due to the fact that some of them believe it’s not their problem. Therefore they just don’t care about it. Also, some Americans may say that they don’t care about what could happen to the inmates due to repercussions of overcrowding, because it’s their own fault. In order to cure this growing problem people have to start caring about what’s going on, even if it’s to people who might deserve it.
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 theory if this trend continues it is estimated that about 1 in 3 black males being born can be expected to spend time in prison and some point in his life. One in nine African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently incarcerated. Although the rate of imprisonment for women is considerably lower than males African American women are incarc...
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.
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
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
In my opinion the trend in racial disparities in incarceration is of a strategic planning process designed by government officials in a political system that governs and regulates the corrections policy. Not to mention the money that is generated and the people who profit from it. Don’t misunderstand me some criminals belong behind bars to make the streets safe. But the system has mistreated minorities for decades and for this reason people of color has been marked to become victims of circumstance. Thus a criminal record hinders their future. Theses established government agencies have the authority to impose penalties to arrest more minorities than whites for committing the same crimes such as using and selling drugs no matter what communities
ABSTRACT: The topic of incarceration often relates to conversations of systematic oppression and culture of policing and profiling in America. Within the United States, Tennessee is one of the states with the highest rates of incarceration; Tennessee’s incarceration rates are consistently higher than the national average. The composition of those incarcerated in Tennessee was the primary intention of this research and analysis of data. Prior to conducting analysis of the data, we hypothesized that a disparity would exist between incarceration rates of African American residents and those of White residents. The data used are from the Vera Institute of Justice and the Tennessee Department of Corrections, specifically incarceration statistics