Mass Incarceration Of Poor Black Male

In today’s modern world, many people would be surprised to find out that there is still a racial caste system in America. After witnessing the election of a black president, people have started believing that America has entered a post-racial society. This is both a patently false and dangerous mindset. The segregation and stigma of race is still very much alive in our society. Instead of a formalized institution such as slavery or Jim Crow, America has found a new way to continue the marginalization of blacks by using the criminal justice system. In Michelle Alexander’s book “ The New Jim Crow”, she shows how America’s “ War on Drugs “ has become a tool of racial segregation and how the discretionary enforcement of drug laws has

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

“The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. The cost of housing all those inmates: $80 billion a year” (Whitaker, 2016). The United States (U.S.) has been fighting an unwinnable war for the past thirty years. The U.S. government and the War on Drugs has disproportionately impacted African Americans and the prison population has quadrupled over the last thirty years. The U.S Government polices of the war on drugs have contributed to the mass incarceration of African American males due to sentencing and race disparities, over-policing, and anti-drug policies.

In today’s society, discrimination is an issue that is considered to be a thing of the past. In a country with such diversity it is hard to believe that people living in the “land of the free” face issues of racism. This paper will focus specifically on the social problem of mass incarceration of minority groups and how the criminal justice system targets these groups. Although this social problem can be linked to specifically African Americans, the impacts of mass incarceration can be felt by almost everyone. I have chosen three articles that focus on how the criminal justice system is masking mass imprisonment a major problem in minority communities.

Mass incarceration became a public policy issue in the United States in the 2000s. Now in 2016, there are still many questions about America’s incarceration rate, 698 prisoners per 100,000 people, which is only surpassed by Seychelle’s at 868 for every 100,000. They concern the phenomenon’s beginning, purpose, development, and essentially resolution. In her book published this year, assistant professor of history and African and African-American studies at Harvard Elizabeth Hinton challenges popular belief that mass incarceration originated from Reagan’s War on Drugs. Mass incarceration’s function as a modern racial caste system is discussed in a 2010 book by Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, civil

The “War on Drugs” established that the impact of incarceration would be used as a weapon to combat the illegal drug problem in this country. Unfortunately, this war against drugs has fallen disproportionately on black Americans. “Blacks constitute 62.6% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons in 1996, whereas whites constituted 36.7%. The drug offender admissions rate for black men ranges from 60 to an astonishing 1,146 per 100,000 black men. In contrast, the white rate begins at 6 and rises no higher than 139 per 100,000 white men. Drug offenses accounted for nearly two out of five of all black admissions to state prisons (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” The disproportionate rates at which black drug offenders are sent to prison originate in racially disproportionate rates of arrest.

Of the many tribulations that plague Americans today, the increase in the amount of African American men and women in prisons is unbelievable. It would be naïve to say that the increase is due to the fact that more African Americans are committing crimes now than before. When in actuality it has very prevalent connections to a systematic plan to incarcerate a race of people by creating harsh drug laws to

The United states has a mass incarceration problem with 1 out of 4 of the total population being incarcerated. With the highest incarceration rate in America makes up five percent of the world's population but holds twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners.The rate of incarceration has increased greatly over the last 50 years and continues to grow .The prison systems have become obstreperous, expensive, and destructive to society. African Americans account for fifty six percent of the people incarcerated. The discrimination of black men in the justice system has escalated in the last 50 years causing mass incarceration, broken family systems with distrust of the government, and increased mental health problems in the black community.

Mass incarceration-a term most commonly used to define the alarming growth in population of incarcerated citizens in the United States.This epidemic has grown larger than ever before in the last four decades and its main focus? The black community. As an ever-growing society we like to think of ourselves as “colorblind” and remain convinced that the color of one's skin does not determine how we treat them. Contrary to popular belief this is surely not the case after centuries of slavery and discrimination for something only the eyes can see. Since the dawn of time African-Americans have been strategically placed into a broken system of poverty that

“since the 1980s, the War on Crime and the War on Drugs have taken millions of Black young men out of school, work, and family life, sent them to jails and prisons, and returned them to society with felony convictions. Spending time in jail and prison means lower wages and gaps in employment” (Goffman, On The Run, p. 3)

Author Doris Provine notes that the war on drugs in America could not be fully maintained without societal racism and the manipulation of racial stereotypes to make drugs something to be feared (Provine, 2011, pp. 41). Additionally, within society and within the criminal justice system, the war on drugs can essentially be traced to its

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “African Americans make up an estimated 15% of drug users, but they account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.” These statistics show that minorities, especially African Americans have to pay the price, using their lives by going to jail or prison. Other races are just as guilty with the drug war but minorities are targeted more than the other races.

Conventional “War on Drug” policies are hurting communities. With more severe penalties to drug users, more incarceration rates in the United States are occurring. Statistics have shown that the United States houses 25% of the world’s prisoners where 1 in 3 is involved in drug trade (International Centre for Science in Drug Policy). In the United States, the policies of drug prohibition were meant to implement an idea of becoming “tougher on crime” to decrease usage. Unfortunately, the high rate of incarceration has

Societies all around the world are culturally infused and, in many ways, defined by the “War on Drugs”. So, a question I had always wondered ever since I had begun D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) in elementary school was how can such a war be won? President Nixon declaration of war on drugs during his presidency in 1971, sparked mass incarcerations for those deemed unfit for society through the possession, use, or dealing of illegal substances such as heroin, cocaine, etc. Between 1980 and 1997, the number of people in prison for non- violent drug related offenses skyrocketed from about 50,000 to more than 400,000 (Nadelmann,1 ). This astronomical spike is evident that this war on drugs was definitely having an effect on the general population of American, but as statistics show, not evenly. An examination of prisons in America showed that in 2010 one out of every one hundred and six white males, one out of every thirty six Hispanic males, and one out of every fifteen black males were imprisoned in U.S. jails, nearly half of whom were incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes (Sledge, 1). This racially unequal number of incarcerations goes to show the ineffectiveness of the War on Drugs at handling the current social economic status of many lower income area; such areas in which drugs run rampant due to the limited availability of sources of income. The problem in regards to these areas is that many people coming from low economic statuses and suffer form poor

In the work racial politics, racial disparities, and the war on crime, the author Tonry describes how the criminal justice and system in America has always been biased against the black Americans (Tonry, 1994). There has to be a number of studies related to the disparities in the criminal justice. As per the author, stereotyping plays a major role; however, it's also the drug policies and political corruption which leads to more black people being imprisoned (Tonry, 1994). Since the 1980s, the war on drugs encouraged incarceration. The bias against Blacks was particularly brought about by the Reagan and Bush administration, according to the author. The increasing pattern of racial disparities in American prison is evidenced by the percentage of black jail inmates.