Is Georgia A Criminal Justice Major?

Many jail cells and prisons hold more African Americans than colleges and universities. This is a major problem for younger men and women that have to witness this because if this is all they are exposed to then this will be all they know. It does not only affect younger children or teenagers but close family members, wives, and parents. The mass incarceration of African Americans is becoming the norm for our men and women because the ¨white man¨ or the government is subliminally fighting to oppress African Americans and hold them back from any chance of prosperity that they have.

The U.S. Census Bureau found that though blacks only make up 13 percent of the United States population they account for 40 percent of the U.S. incarcerated population. On top of that, an Urban Institute report found that that more than half of all inmates in jails and state prisons have a mental illness of some kind. Furthermore, since the 1990s suicide rates among black children have nearly doubled.

Research Question #1: Why do we have a higher rate of incarcerated Blacks in the United States?

Mass Incarceration in the United States has been a large topic of choice because rapid growth in the prison and jail populations, the long sentences the inmates face, and the inability for some inmates to incorporate themselves back into society. Since the 1970’s the U.S. prison population quadrupled from 158 to 635 people per 100,000, causing the U.S. to gain the title of country with the highest incarceration rate. (Massoglia, Firebaugh, & Warner, 2013, p. 142; Muller, 2012) As the growth of the U.S prison and jail population rapidly increased, so did the growth of the three major contributors to that population – African Americans, Hispanics, and whites – with African American and

Human Rights Watch research shows that in every state, the proportion of blacks in prison exceeds, sometimes by a considerable amount, their proportion in the general population. In Minnesota and Iowa, blacks constitute a share of the prison population that is twelve times greater than their share of the state population. In eleven

The disproportionate numbers of African Americans in the prison system is a very serious issue, which is not usually discussed in its totality. However, it is quite important to address the matter because it ultimately will have an effect on African Americans as a whole.

Mass incarceration has been an ongoing problem in America that became prevalent in the 1960s and still continues today. The reason this mass incarceration is such a crisis in our country is because it has been ripping apart the family and impacting all those involved. This epidemic affects those of every race, but more specifically, African Americans. Many researchers attribute this prison boom to police officers cracking down on crime, but only focusing on the inner city which is often times it is made up of a predominately black population. Because of this, America saw such a rise in the number of African American males in the system in at least some way; whether they were in prison, jail, or probation the numbers were astounding. When a father is removed from a home it impacts the family whether that is the wife, girlfriend, child or stepchild, it has proved to have some short and long term psychological affects on them. It is impossible to parent behind bars, so all the parenting is left up to the mother while the father is locked up. In addition, when a person goes to prison it leaves a mark on the inmate as well. Mass incarceration among African Americans is an ongoing problem impacting thousands of people, both directly and indirectly, and because of this, it is breaking apart the family structure and taking a psychological toll on the loved ones involved.

There are many different causes for the disproportionate minority male incarceration rates in the U.S. There is irrefutable evidence that blacks comprise a disproportionate share of the prison U.S population.The United States cannot and should not tolerate laws that systematically target communities of color. 1.6 million children have a father in prison.The war on drugs , racial profiling, and the school to prison to pipeline system is causing minority males to be incarcerated. A solution to reduce the male minority incarceration rate is programs such as HOPE , that help black youth and men create goals and find something to do with life.African Americans are incarcerated six times the rate of whites. Some contributing factors are the “ Get Tough on crime and war on drugs policies , the zero tolerance policies at school adverse affect on black children African Americans adverse affect on black children. “African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.5 million incarcerated population nearly 44% of the entire prison population.

All societal groups are affected by the issue of imprisonment, but it is a far more likely occurrence among marginalized cultural groups, particularly African Americans. As the United States celebrates the nation's triumph over race with the selection of Barack Obama as the first African American male president, a majority of young black males in major American cities are locked behind bars, or categorized felons for life (Alexander, 2010, p. 1). Bonczar and Beck (1997) report that:

Mass incarceration is a large-scale problem that has emerged in recent decades. The reason for this lies in new laws and policies that crackdown on drug-related offenses. Since these policies have taken effect, the percent of people in prisons and jails has grown by 500% (The Sentencing Project). The 2015 population of inmates in either prison or jail was 2,173,800, this makes the United States the world leader in number of incarcerated people (The Sentencing Project). However, the rise in jail and prison populations has not spanned equally among races. The population of prisoners in 2015 was 1,476,847, with 523,000 of those prisoners being African American (The Sentencing Project). African Americans make up 13% of the population in the United

Mass Incarceration of African American men has become a social injustice of our time. It can also be proclaimed to be known as a civil rights issue of our time. From the first time Africans were taken from their homeland and stripped of all human rights to become slaves, they- or we perhaps- have never truly possessed any real social justice. What does mass incarceration really mean to our black America? How does it affect our communities? When we really look at it, mass incarceration means a lot more than being placed in the back of a police car with handcuffs clinching your bones. It means a lot more than sitting in a jail or prison cell waiting for your time to be served.

African American’s make up nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, and they are incarcerated at nearly 6 times the rate of whites. (NAACP, 2009-2015) There are many reasons that play a factor in racial disparities in jails and prisons, and although some of these reasons are out of our control, some hold room for major reform. In order to understand why there is such disparity, we need to look at all of the possible contributing factors, and in order to make changes, we need to start from the bottom and work our way up.

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness goes into great detail on race related issues that were specific to black males, the mass incarceration, and how that lead to the development of institutionalized racism in the United States. She compares the Jim Crow with recent phenomenon of mass incarceration and points out that the mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that have been working together to warrant the subordinating status of black males. In this paper I will go into a brief examination of the range of issues that she mentions in her book that are surrounding the mass incarceration of black male populations.

The United States has the highest number of prisoners compared to any country in the world according to Denis J.Madden published in the America Magazine. Imprisoning hundreds of thousands African Americans has been significantly effective in society for several years. The criminal justice system enforces the law strictly in the African American society with brutal prosecution. As a result, the rate of poverty and unemployment in the African American community have been increasing for the last couple of decades as reported by

There are so many more African-Americans than whites in our prisons that the difference cannot be explained by higher crime among African- Americans - racial discrimination is also at work, and it penalizes African- Americans at almost every juncture in the criminal justice system.1