The Disparities Among Minority Inmates in the American Prison System

billion over the next five years that will be spent on prison and the prison system. (Riordan 2007). Overcrowding in the state prison system is a continuing problem and is increasingly uncomfortable. Capacity levels have risen in both operating and capacity in both state and federal prison systems. This has caused local and state facilities to make inmates double up in prison cells. In other words, cells that would normally hold to inmates at a time are now holding more convicts. This causes…

As we all know this is not the case. With people of color being arrested more often in a society they are the minority in only shows that they are being systematically targeted. To say that people of color are systematically targeted may sound a bit controversial. After all according to New Century Foundation’s research blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit a murder, and eight times more likely to commit a robbery (pg. 2). However, when you compare this statistic…

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…

sweeping changes in how prisons content with parole and good behavior releases. Many states like Texas have gone as far as even increasing the grant rates for parole while shortening the terms of many of those that are given probation. These types of moves are one contributing factor in Texas being one state that has been able to reduce its overall prison populations for the past three years. Here is a map of states and the percentage increase/decrease of their perspective prison populations. Percentage…

African Americans have a very long history in the United States. Many African American families have been in the United States for many generations; others recently immigrants from places like as Africa, the Caribbean, or the West Indies. The population of African Americans taking in those of more than one race was evaluated at 44.5 million, making up 14.3 percent total of the U.S population in 2012. Those who identified only as African American made up 13.1percent of the U.S. population over 39…

This type of ownership and management of prisons, though not new, only began again in recent history in the 1980's. The reasons for this development of private prisons are threefold and these three trends converged in the 1980's: the ideological imperatives of the free market, the huge increase in the number of prisoners, and the increase in imprisonment costs (Smith, 1993). In this Reaganite era it seemed that private enterprise could do any job the government had been doing cheaper and more efficiently…

The issue with aging prison members is that our legal system spends a majority of the money on our older inmates than our younger members. The three-strike rule in the United States is a big factor on why we have such a high rate with older inmates in our prisons. We imprison older members for life after they have committed more than three felonies regardless of the crime. That leads to our legal system being stuck with a lot of aging inmates. Our legal system has to pay more money in order to accommodate…

Minorities in these urban areas have a hard time finding employment that could support their family efficiently. Most end up dropping out of school and join or are forced to join gangs. They are more likely to turn to crime as a means of survival which increases their chances of building a criminal history. This type of criminal activity also ties back into the Three Strikes Law (Nicosia, MacDonald, & Arkes. 2013) which states that the offender will be incarcerated on their third offense, no matter…

assaulted this ‘Mr.Pfister’ with two companions, the man [Roger Kiser Sr.] regretted his actions whilst in prison, becoming a more mature and better person when he left jail. This man had gone into prison as a hardened, ‘tough’ man, coming out a repented, better person. This example just goes to show not all who go into prison come out worse from before or in general. There are those few cases where prison is their ‘thinking’ place. Allowing the time spent to reflect on life and how one can become a better…

are also among the leading causes for subcultures to develop in a prison setting. 4. Overcrowding with so many prisoners we are running out of room to house them all and some prisons have had to convert what was to have been two man rooms into four man rooms. 5. Stress is the resulting effect of all of the previous environmental factors within the prisons and is not exclusive to the inmates but is also a problem for the Department of Corrections personnel as well. The inmates in prisons regardless…