The Impact Of Mass Incarceration On African Americans

The United States’ ever-expanding prison and jail population has brought about many questions regarding the side-effects of mass incarceration, namely involving the effects on the children and families from which those incarcerated are removed. Regardless of the perspectives on the appropriate position of incarceration in the criminal justice system, imprisonment disrupts many positive and nurturing relationships between parents and their children. In fact, more than 1.7 million children have a parent who is incarcerated in a state or federal prison as of 2007 (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). These youths are at risk for developing behavior and school problems in addition to insecure attachment relationships. Parental incarceration, which may also be coupled with economic disadvantage and inconsistent living arrangements (Geller, Garfinkel, Cooper, & Mincy, 2009) can be an extremely difficult experience for children. It should come as no surprise that families with children suffer economic strain and instability when a parent is imprisoned, considering how each parent in today’s world typically needs to set aside time to earn an income to support their family, and most are unable to support their homes on one income. While it may be considered intrusive to some to intervene in the lives of children and families with incarcerated parents, research has suggested that there are positive societal benefits to intervening in the lives of incarcerated parents and their

In the past thirty years, the incarceration of women has risen exponentially. Poverty, lack of access to education, abuse, addiction, mental health and parenting issues all impact women’s criminality and health before, during and after they are incarcerated (Hannaher, K., 2007). By 2010 there were nearly 206,000 women currently serving time in the criminal justice system. As the years go by, the numbers are constantly increasing (Women Behind Bars, 2015). The number of pregnant women incarcerated has also been on the rise. Most incarcerated women do not receive proper prenatal care before entering the criminal justice system. Because these women are from mostly poverty neighborhoods, they are more likely to endure domestic violence, poor

The effects of mass incarceration on ethnic minorities are the increased lack of economic opportunity, the discouragement of welfare for people of color, the worsening of racial biases, increased childhood discrimination and the toxicity of internalized stereotypes, and prominent racial disparities that are found in the criminal justice system. Mass incarceration came as a result of the establishment of the private prison industry. The U.S. has a school-to-prison pipeline where kids’ actions can be observed from a young age to help project the amount of needed prison beds.

Mass black incarceration has a myriad of effects on the culture and society of black communities across the nation. This paper examines these effects, including the reasons for black male incarceration, the widespread nature of it, the effects it has on black women, children and the community. The research was taken from several social scientists well-respected in African-American culture and includes interviews, surveys, raw statistics and data. By compiling this research, it is clear that a common theme is that the black women of African-American

African-Americans are more likely than others to have social histories that include poverty, exposure to neighborhood violence, and exposure to crime-prone role models. For example, African-American children with no prior admissions to the juvenile justice system were six times more likely to be incarcerated in a public facility than white children with the same background that were charged with the same offense. A major study sponsored by the Department of Justice in the early 1980s noted that juvenile justice system processing appears to be counterproductive, placing minority children at a disproportionately greater risk of subsequent incarceration (Deadly Statistics: A Survey of Crime and Punishment, 2000). This writer?s grandmother retired after more than thirty years as a welfare social worker for Los Angeles County. She has stated on more than occasion that the government is the main reason that most black men are in jail awaiting the death penalty today. In the sixties and early seventies, she says that women on welfare were not allowed to have men in the home, even the father of the children. These fatherless generations of men seem more prone to crime,

Today, in America there is a disproportionate amount of Black people incarcerated. There are discrepancies in everything from the education they receive to the jobs that are available to them. This growing trend needs to be addressed and changed permanently, otherwise already superfluous statistics will continue to increase. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (n.d.) declared that “One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime.” African American incarceration has become an accepted norm in our society and in order to fix it we need to establish the lack of education, address workplace

In Dallaire’s (2007) study she states incarcerated mothers of adult children report that their adult children were 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than adult children of incarcerated fathers. This pattern is detrimental to society as prison because a family lifestyle, the prospect of having a generation not see the inside of a jail cell diminishes. This study also shows incarcerated mothers of minor children were significantly more likely than incarcerated fathers of minor children to report that their children were in nonfamilial care situations such as foster care or orphanages (Dallaire 2007). This is important to note for the rehabilitation of incarcerated mothers. Since, incarcerated fathers do not bear responsibility of taking care of their children like the mothers do, there needs to be programs in which the partners of incarcerated mothers can be helped to keep their children from entering the system.

Moreover, another limitation as it pertains to population was the failure of the literature to make strong connection about paternal incarceration impacting African American families and children. Most publications focused on maternal incarceration and its impacts on African American families and children. However, this research study isn’t geared toward maternal incarceration. The researcher had to utilize several different databases and keywords to find relevant and valid information on this topic. This process was time consuming but necessary to provide accurate research on this

Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.

With slavery, African Americans were conditioned to accept their status as "other”. Whites made no effort to hide their disdain for black people. In this new system however, African Americans were given the illusion that they were free, so they resisted speaking out on such inequality due to the fact that they were told that they should be grateful for their freedom. The current system works so that since birth, African Americans, males in particular, are pushed towards aggression and dysfunction. The family life of the disadvantage and poor which primarily feature African Americans has become dramatically more complex and unstable over the last few decades. In 2010, 72% of black children were born to single unwed mother and many of these fathers are incarcerated (Newsone, 2010). Minorities are also given harsher time for petty crimes than their Caucasian counterparts, which also increases the time away from their children. There are more black men that are in prison or jail, on probation or on parole than were enslaved in 1850 (Alexander, 2010). And black men suffer a disproportional rate drug arrests that often do not reflect higher rates of black drug offenses. In fact, whites and blacks engage in drug offenses, including possession and sales at roughly comparable

Incarceration, a topic of controversy, has received much attention in both academic and political arenas. Policy changes in recent years have influenced incarceration rates and, in turn, affected families and children in the U.S. (Hagan & Coleman, 2001; Visher & Travis, 2003; “Pew Charitable Trusts”, 2010; Arditti, Lamburt-Shute, & Joest, 2003). Policies, such as “tough on crime” and “war on drugs”, have contributed to not only a steady rise in incarceration rates and over crowding of correctional facilities, but also endorsed the disproportionate number of detainees from underrepresented ethnic populations (Hagan & Coleman, 2001; “Pew Charitable Trusts”, 2010). Hence, the vast majority of children who are affected by having an incarcerated parent are of underrepresented ethnic groups (“Bureau of Justice”, 2010).

As earlier stated, these women are likely to be poor, less educated, history of violence in their lives, and tend to be in a non-white ethnic group. Separating a child from his or her mother can impact the child’s life dramatically and it is important to realize the affects incarceration has on the child and the family. It can lead to worsening of all the mental health and social issues already present in the family. It is also crucial to understand that most incarcerated women are in there for nonviolent crimes.

Some of the most neglected, misunderstood and unseen women in our society are those in our jails, prisons and community correctional facilities. While women's rate of incarceration has increased dramatically, tripling in the last decade, prisons have not kept pace with the growth of the number of women in prison; nor has the criminal justice system been redesigned to meet women's needs, which are often quite different from the needs of men.

This poster is about the effects on children whose parents were and/or are incarcerated. It consisted of problems such as 2.7 million children have either one or two parents behind bars and that there is a disproportionate population of black parents incarcerated with a major challenge of this being that their children are deprived of parental interaction. Without their parents, these children are more likely to be abused, succumb to crime and/or violence, and/or develop chronic mental illness such as depression. Moreover, the policy recommendations that this group gave was to allow parents more visiting hours with their children in their prisons, create a better way for parents to regain custody, establish programs for parents to recover and reintegrate better after being incarcerated.

“The number of children with incarcerated parents rose 60 percent in the 1990s and by 1999, affected one of every 50 children. The prison population grew at nearly that time pace 62 percent-during that period…Of the nation’s 72 million minor children (up to age 17), an estimated 2 percent had incarcerated parents” (p.128).