Disparity In Prisons

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law

African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004)

Racial disproportionality of United States prison populations have been a controversy for several years. It is not entirely evident that the racial disproprtionality is cause to discrimination; however it does contribute to the conditions are the prisons. The criminal involvement of blacks and other minorities seems to be linked to the racial disproportionality of the prison populations. The types of crimes that are committed especially in the black community are addressed in the journal. The differences in the involvement of black offenders as it relates to more serious crimes as robberies and homicides which is a major contributor to the larger percentage of the prison system. The more serious crimes also tend to account for more of the disproportionality between black and white incarceration rates.

There is tremendous racial disproportion that exists within the population of incarcerated men between the ages of 25 and 29 years. In 2003 the US Justice Department reported at midyear that about 10.4% of the entire African-American male population in the United States aged 25 to 29 was incarcerated. This represented the largest racial or ethnic group, by comparison to 2.4% of Hispanic men and 1.2% of white men in that same age group. What makes these numbers more alarming is that blacks make up only 12.7% of the U.S. population yet they make up 48.2% of adults in federal, state, or local prisons and jails while Hispanics represent 11.1% of the U.S. population and18.6% of the prison population. It is important to note that whites were often over counted in the prison population when the “white” Hispanics for example, are counted among them. This may cause variations in statistical data depending on who, where, when and how data was collected. This data is representative of the prison population at midyear 2003 but the trend continues currently as there was little shift in the midyear 2007 statistical data. Up to 2002 the Justice Policy Institute reported that African American male prison population had grown some five times what it was twenty

By understanding explanations of racial incarceration disparity present in U.S. Society. Marxist or economic theories of racial incarceration disparity propose that the real bias incarceration is not race, but economic class(Yates 97). Moreover, they posit that, “because of historical disadvantages, black are disproportionately represented in the underprivileged class”. As a result, Economic elites cite the criminal justice system to control the “problem” segment of society as black are urban poverty-stricken and unemployed.

In 2010, the American Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that the African Americans had the rate of imprisonment that was almost seven times greater compared to the white men’s incarceration rate. In addition, the

The demographics of the prison population in America are very discouraging with a very high unbalanced proportion of the prison population being African-American. Although approximately 12% to 13% of the American population is African American, African-Americans make up over 40% of the prison population. This number is so unusually disproportionate that many critics believe that the African-American community is judged harsher than it would the Hispanics or the Caucasians. The same critics also believe that it is because many of the policies related to incarceration were designed specifically to target the African-American community. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses were directly targeted towards these communities. Much of the time drug enforcement officers go into the African American communities and set up sting operations that entrap

Currently there are over 1.5 million individuals in the United States that are behind bars. The highest population of incarcerated individuals in the world. Since the passing of the War on Drugs and Crime under President Nixon the rate at which individuals especially African Americans are incarcerated has dramatically increased. 1 in 3 African American males are expected to be incarcerated at sometime within their lifetime. With the War on Drugs and different acts such as mandatory minimums and three strike policies in place the rate at which people are incarcerated will continue increasing at alarming rates. This paper will further explore these issues and ways in which this issue can be solved.

The growth of incarceration in the United States Prison grew over the last four decades. The trend is historically unprecedented and is unique to the world. The majority of those incarcerated come from disadvantaged populations and comprises of main minorities below the age of forty. The communities have the number of people engaging in crime, drug abuse, alcohol addiction, physical and mental illness and lack of employment. The African Americans and Hispanics form the largest prison population compared to the non-Hispanic whites. The high incarceration has the huge impact on the American society since its inception in the 1960s and 1970s. The changed political environment led to policy changes. All levels of the government altered

Forty-nine percent of African-American males will serve some time in prison. This translates to lost time with families, friends and loved ones and causes many of the issues we see in education and monetary means. The negative effects of not having a good education and few job opportunities encourages a lifestyle contradictory to what the law states. Today, African-Americans make up 37 percent of prison inmates, 42 percent of Death-Row inmates, and 45 percent of drug offenders in prison (Norris 94-95). Blacks are also not equally represented at an early age as two-fifths of incarcerated youths are African-Americans (Kerby). In a study done in 2009 by Heather West, black males are 6 times more likely to be in a federal prison than white males (2). Unfair punishment for blacks is the area farthest from equality; the most racial segregation occurs in this category.

Since the war on drugs, the system targets, prosecutes, and convicts racial minorities more than their white counterparts (Alexander 108).  In 2015, 69.7% of people who got arrested were whites, 26.6% were blacks, and 3.6% were other races (Uniform Crime Report). Whites make up the highest percentage of arrests while blacks make the highest percentage in prison. In 2015, 7.4% of black males and 6.7% of white males were in a state or federal prison for more than one year (Carson 2015). Moreover, blacks are more likely to go to prison than whites for the same or similar crime offenses. In 2015, out of 69,000 offenders, 51% (35,190) of blacks and 40% (27,324) of whites went to a federal prison for more than one year for drug charges (Carson

The United States holds a quarter of the world’s prisoners while only holding less than five percent of the world’s population. Approximately more than 60 percent of people in prison are of color. In the last thirty to forty years the numbers are higher even though the crime rate is at a historical low. Over the past three decades, the U.S. population has skyrocketed, with six times as many people in prison today as in 1972. Recent numbers have showed that one of every fifteen black men are held in jail, state, or federal prison compared to one of every one-hundred and six white men. With so many black men being incarcerated at a higher rate this affects many aspects of their community such as their families; father-child relationships as

The film 13th gives way to issues that continue to plague our nation. This idea that the worlds prison population is disproportional to that of the overall world population. According to this film, “ Five percent of the worlds population makes up twenty-five percent of the prison population” (DuVernay, 2016). This statistic is astounding and due in part to, according to the film, the exclusion of criminals from the thirteenth amendments abolishment of slavery. The disproportionality in prison population, not only of people but also of the race make up of people, compared to their world population numbers is something that was started many years ago and still to this day, 2016, is an issue worth addressing.

Only 53% of state and 7% of federal prisoners served sentences for violent crimes in 2013. 59% of females and 50% of males in federal prisons and 24% of females and 15% of males served for drug violations in the same year. By the end of 2013, approximately 16% of prisoners in state prisons were convicted on drug charges. 57.6% of those convicted on drug charges were minorities—African American or Hispanic. As these statistics show, drug policies and other sentencing regulations have resulted in disproportionate imprisonment of minorities and high overall prison populations.

The war on drugs was what caused an increase of arrests and people going to prison. The incarceration boom in the early 1970’s, where African American’s, mostly young men, were twice as likely to get arrested for drug crimes as were a white male. However, when the sentencing standards changed on the federal level to mandatory sentencing, a black male was now four times more likely to get arrest on drug crimes than a white male (Clear, 2007). These changes were made to attempt to make the streets and the communities safer from drugs. What the law and policy makers were unaware of was how these changes would bring about widespread incarceration of young black adults, which would disrupt the families of these offenders, mainly in the inner cities of America.