INCARCERATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS
Facts
show that the numbers incarcerations have greatly increased since the 1980s
with the United States having the greatest number of people incarcerated
anywhere in the world. It has an estimated twenty-five percent of the people
incarcerated in the world yet it holds up to five percent of the world’s
population. This means that the number of people in prisons is quite high. The
government of the United States has put a lot of focus on correctional control
over the society and the combination of the people in prison together t with
those on probation or parole then we have almost four percent of the entire
population under some form of a correctional system. In addition to these high
figures, the aspect of correction has been greatly affected by social problems
of racial disparities. One of the main racial aspects is the fact that African
Americans form the greatest number of people incarcerated. They make up an
estimate of forty percent of the number of people in correctional control in
the country. This is a very high number and shows great disparities in the
correctional system of America. The high number is attributed to the high rates
of incarceration which is high for African Americans than any other racial
group and especially white Americans. In combination with other racial
minorities such as Hispanics, the prison system is filled with more fifty
percent African Americans and Hispanics, and this is a very high number that is
close to a quarter of the entire population of the country. These disparities
shed light on the existence of social problems in the country associated with
racial discrimination within prison systems (CRIMINAL
JUSTICE FACT SHEET, 2017).
According
to Wilderman(2009), “Although family breakdown was not the immediate cause of
the American prison boom, mass incarceration has had potentially profound
effects on the family life of those caught in the web of the criminal justice
system†(Wildeman, 2009). The statistics
associated with the disparities in the rates of incarceration show that a good
percentage of African Americans in the society would have to expect to go to
prison at one point in their lives. The rates differ on such great extents that
if they were equal to that of white Americans then, the population of prisons
would have to go down by half the number in existence right now. One of the
major consequences for the significant number of incarceration of African
Americans is associated with drug-related crimes. Statistics show that a great number of
African Americans are associated with the use of some form of illicit drug.
However, white Americans have been found to use drugs five times more, but the
rates of arrests for African Americans are ten times more than that of whites (Moore, 2015).
Most
of the arrests that occur in the country are drug related and thus means that
more African Americans get sent to prison. Prison sentencing is also a factor
that greatly affects the time people spend in prison where African Americans
have a longer sentencing for drug-related crimes than whites for even worse
crimes such as violence. With these
statistics associated with drugs, law enforcement in the country has been
developed as a machine that sent African Americans to prisons. This has led to
the establishment of a prison complex that is very much racially divided. African Americans have become very prone to
arrests because of drug-related crimes, and this has led to great numbers of
arrests, detentions, and admission to prisons. The population of these
institution has for the years changed color and is now filled with
African-Americans and other people of color considered racial minorities in the
country (Puglise, 2016).
Economic
isolation led to the development of crimes in inner cities of many cities in
the country. As a result, many African-Americans and other people of color find
themselves on the wrong side of the law. Most of these inner cities are where
minorities live and form communities, and with limited economic resources,
crimes mainly in the form of dealing with drugs became their main source of
income. The economic characteristic of the United States is much divided
between the rich and the poor and white Americans who are also the dominant
segment of the population also have the economic advantage that comes with it.
Minority groups with African Americans being the biggest suffer from a lot of
economic problems, and that’s has been one of the major contributing factors to
the high rates of drug-related crimes. Another important factor is to
understand that African Americans from a very low percentage of people that use
drugs in the country, however, most arrests that are made on a daily basis
consist of more than thirty percent possession of drugs (Wildeman, 2009). This means that many of the
people arrested are not even the ones that use the drugs and as explained
above, white Americans use drugs five times more, but African Americans get
arrested ten times more. The government has also put stern measures on the
fight against drugs, and this means the use of strict measures. As a result of
most of the people, caught with simple drug possession end up spending many
years in prison. The war on drugs policies is very unsustainable because they
have failed to address the underlying factors that fuel the drug industry. The
government is focusing its resources on law enforcement agents instead of
cracking down on the real culprits who are the manufacturers and actual users
of the drugs. “Shifts in politics and policy, however, are only half the story.
The newly punitive system of criminal sentencing would have had largely
symbolic significance but for the ready supply of chronically idle young men
that came to swell the nation’s prisons and jails. Urban deindustrialization
eroded the labor market for unskilled young men while punitive politics gained
momentum in the 1970s and 1980s†(Wildeman, 2009).
One
of the drugs that’s has led to many of the arrests and great disparities is
cocaine. There are two types of cocaine. Powder cocaine is a pure version of
cocaine that is mostly found by wealthy white individuals, and there is the
crack cocaine which is an impure form and lowers in price and therefore,
accessible to lower income people and in this case racial minorities mostly
blacks. Another aspect is associated with disparities in sentencing for crack
cocaine crimes. Because of the aspect of
high arrest for possession, many African Americans have been arrested, sent to
prison and charged with many years in prison for crimes related to the drugs despite
the fact that Hispanics and whites have been associated more with the use of
the drug than African Americans themselves. In addition to the strict rules and
policies associated with the war on drugs, habitual offenders are even met with
more strict measures that have had greater negative implications on the
society. These aspects have developed negative social systems against African
Americans, and they have developed a perception, stereotype, and prejudice that
has associated African Americans with violence, drugs, and imprisonment. It has
grown to become a vicious cycle of negative social aspects that has greatly
affected the African American communities, and more youths find themselves
cornered between the need to find some income through selling drugs and
imprisonment. This system has created a prison system with African Americans as
the majority, and the correctional system expected to help change the ways of
law offenders for the best has been developed into a system of mass
incarceration which is a now a great social control measure (Strauss, 2017).
The
prison system has proved ineffective because of the high numbers of released
prisoners returning to crime. Incarceration of people of African Americans
descent in the United States is not well justified and has led to the
development of great social and economic implications of the African American
society. Many children are left with a parent or both and lead to difficulty in
children’s performance in school, economic hardships for mothers and reduced
racial achievements for most minority groups in the country. The prison system
has had more negative implications on African American homes and societies than
the benefits that many expect the system to provide to the society (Wildeman, 2009). There is also an aspect of
coercive mobility associated with the churning of the population between prison
systems and the society especially low-income society where most African
Americans live. With this mobility, people are arrested and sent to jail, and
after spending their time, they return to the same societies. This is a factor
that has greatly increased crimes in these neighborhoods and has increased the
social problems of crime in general. They have also increased the aspect of
crime victimization because first offenders are more prone to being arrested
together with those associated with them. As a result, they easily get sent
back to jail in addition to others that they might have influenced into
criminal activities. It is, therefore, evident of the great disparities that
are in existence within the prison system. These disparities have seen great
incarceration of African Americans where they make up the biggest percentage of
the people incarcerated. It brings out the big question of the social problems
of racial segregation that are still in existence up to this day (Robert, 2017).
Works
Cited
CRIMINAL JUSTICE FACT SHEET. 2017.
<http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/>.
Moore, Antonio. The Black Male Incarceration Problem Is
Real and It’s Catastrophic. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/antonio-moore/black-mass-incarceration-statistics_b_6682564.html>.
Puglise, Nicole. Black Americans incarcerated five times
more than white people – report. 2016.
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/mass-incarceration-black-americans-higher-rates-disparities-report>.
Robert D. Crutchfield, Gregory A. Weeks. The Effects of
Mass Incarceration on Communities of Color. 2017.
<http://issues.org/32-1/the-effects-of-mass-incarceration-on-communities-of-color/>.
Strauss, Valerie. Mass incarceration of African Americans
affects the racial achievement gap — report. 2017.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/03/15/mass-incarceration-of-african-americans-affects-the-racial-achievement-gap-report/>.
Wildeman, Bruce Western and Christopher. "The Black
Family and Mass Incarceration." The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science (2009).
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