- One in three African-American males will go to prison in their lifetime, they constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million imprisoned population, and this is not simply because they commit more crimes than other racial groups. African-Americans drug offenders are 20% more likely of being sentenced to prison than white drug offenders, whilst Hispanics has a 40% greater chance of being sentenced. African-Americans make up 12% of the nation’s drug users, but represent 34% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 45% of those in state prison for such offense as of 2005.
The Mass Incarceration in the United States is a major topic of discussion in our society and has raised many questions about our criminal justice system. There are few topics disputed as much in criminal justice as the relationship between race, ethnicity, and criminal outcomes. Specifically, the large disparities that minorities face regarding incarceration in our country. Minorities such as Hispanics and African Americans are sentenced at far higher rates than their white counterparts. There are multiple factors that influence this such as the judicial system, racial profiling by law enforcement, and historical biases (Kamula, Clark-Coulson, Kamula, 2010). Additionally, the defendants race was found to be highly associated with either a jail or prison sentence; with the “odds increasing 29 percent for black defendants, and 44 percent for Hispanic defendants” (King, Johnson, McGeever, 2010).
Statistics show that African Americans commit only fifteen percent of drug offenses, yet they comprise up to 90% of incarcerations for drug offenses in communities throughout the country. Besides that, although the
The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth in the American incarceration rate. Importantly, some scholars have suggested that the rate of prison growth has little to do with the theme of crime itself, but it is the end result of particular U.S. policy choices. Clear (2007) posits that "these policy choices have had well-defined implications for the way prison populations have come to replicate a concentrated occurrence among specified subgroups in the United States population in particular young black men from deprived communities" (p. 49).
A proponent of racial profiling’s use stand firmly on the empirical data, which suggests that Blacks are more likely to criminally offend than whites more generally and especially with regard to the drug courier profile. These groups point to research that indicates that racial minorities commit more criminal offenses, no doubt, in part, because of their higher exposure to social factors that provide opportunity and motive for criminal behavior. Blacks are highly over-represented in arrest rates and imprisonment, although whites still compose the majority of incarcerated persons and those arrested overall. Seventy percent of those arrested in 2000 were white. This result in
The trend of African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 has seen a dramatic increase of incarceration. Attention has been focusing on areas of housing, education, and healthcare but the most prominent problem for African American males is the increase in the incarceration rate. African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 incarceration rate has been thought, by many, to be caused by economic factors such as under employment or unemployment, poor housing, lack of education, and lack of healthcare. Yet, others believe it is due to the imbalance of minorities within the criminal justice system, such as judges, lawyers, and lawmakers.
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)
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 “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.
The drug war is racially defined, and that is why there is a huge number of African-Americans and Latinos in prisons and jails all across the country. The rate of incarceration for African American drug offenders dwarfs the rate of whites. Even though whites make up the majority of illegal drug users, three-fourths of the people who are imprisoned for drug offenses are black or Latino. Black men have been admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is more than thirteen times higher than white men. Arrests and convictions for drug offenses, not violent crimes, have propelled mass incarceration among African-Americans and Latinos. They are convicted of drug offenses at rates out of all proportion to their drug crimes. The system of mass incarceration has operated in a way to effectively sweep people of color off the streets, lock them in jails, and then release them into an inferior second-class status. When it comes to racial bias in the drug war, research indicates that it was inevitable, and a public consensus was constructed by political and media elites that drug crime is black and brown. Once this "black drug crime" became conflated in the public consciousness, the black men would be the primary targets of law enforcements.
while the overall U.S. rate of incarceration is up very substantially, this shift has fallen with radically disproportionate severity on African Americans, particularly low-income and poorly educated blacks. Indeed, the result has been a sharp overrepresentation of blacks in jails and prisons. In 2007, black males constituted roughly 39 percent of incarcerated males in state, federal, and local prisons or jails, though representing only 12 percent of the total adult male population. White males, on the other hand, constituted just 36 percent of the male inmate population in 2007, well under their 65.6 percent of the total male population. The Hispanic population, which constitutes about 20 percent of the total inmate population, is also overrepresented but is much closer to its relative share of the total population of about 16 percent ( ).
African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated; that is 60% of 30% of the African American population. African Americas are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. “Between 6.6% and 7.5% of all black males ages 25 to 39 were imprisoned in 2011, which were the highest imprisonment rates among the measured sex, race, Hispanic origin, and age groups." (Carson, E. Ann, and Sabol, William J. 2011.) Stated on Americanprogram.org “ The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison.” Hispanics and African Americans make up 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. (Henderson 2000). Slightly 15% of the inmate population is made up of 283,000 Hispanic prisoners.
“There is an undoubted race element, too. In 2010, black people were five times more likely to be incarcerated, and those figures are unlikely to have improved since then” (Holder).The war on drugs have affected mostly poor black communities of color even though black people are just as likely as whites to sell and use illegal drugs.
In 1950, 70 percent of whites were imprisoned and in 1990 it flipped to 70 percent of African Americans and Latinos imprisoned. In 2008 a study showed that 68 percent of those in prison were African Americans and among drug offenders who were released, 92 percent were black (Vogel, 2016). Nearly 14 million whites and approximately 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug (Criminal, 2016). In 1980 whites were more likely to sell drugs than blacks by 45 percent. In 2012, 6.6 percent of whites sold drugs compared to just 5 percent of blacks. However, blacks are 3.6 times more likely than whites to be arrested for selling drugs and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for possession of drugs. (Rothwell, 2014). Blacks make up 12 percent of the total population of drug users, but 38 percent are arrested for drug offenses. African Americans essentially serve as much time for drug offenses as whites do for violent offenses. Yet blacks are incarcerated at six times the rate of whites (Criminal, 2016). “Jerome Miller analyzed arrest statistics from several American cities to determine the impact of the War on Drugs on policing. He found striking racial disparities in how drug arrests were made. In many jurisdictions, African American men account for over eighty percent of total drug arrests. In
“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison” (Alexander, 2012). The numbers tell the story better than words can: black people are more likely to go to prison than any other race in the United States, shown by the fact that more than 60% of the prison population is composed of people of color (The Sentencing Project, 2016). These statistics can be traced back to several different cause, including the Era of Jim Crow and the War on Drugs, both of which led to higher policing in minority areas.
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