African-American Incarceration
African-American Race and the Criminal Justice System: The Effect on Black Communities
Racial Disparities and Incarceration
Recent studies have shown that race is a factor in the criminal justice system. For example, a study analyzing statewide sentencing outcomes in Pennsylvania for 1989-1992, found that, net of controls: (1) young black males are sentenced more harshly than any other group, (2) race is most influential in the sentencing of younger rather than older males (Steffensmeier, et al., 1998). The relationship between African-American males and the criminal justice system has been described as being no less than a crisis. In recent years policy attention regarding the crisis of the African-American male has focused on a variety of areas in which African-American males have suffered disproportionately from social ills. These have included education, housing, employment, and health care, among others. Perhaps in no other area, though, have these problems been displayed as prominently as in the realm of crime and the criminal justice system.
African-Americans have been affected in this area in two significant regards. First, African-Americans are more likely to be victimized by crime than are other groups. This creates a set of individual and community problems which impede upon other areas of productive activity. Second, the dramatic rates at which African-American males have come under some form of criminal justice supervision has created a complex set of consequences which affect not only individual victims and offenders, but families and communities as well (Mauer 1999; Spohn and Holloran, 2000).
The state of these disproportions can be seen in the following:
• 49% of prison inmates nationally are African-American, compared to their 13% share of the overall population.
• Nearly one in three (32%) black males in the age group 20-29 is under some form of criminal justice supervision on any given day -- either in prison or jail, or on probation or parole.
• As of 1995, one in fourteen (7%) adult black males was incarcerated in prison or jail on any given day, representing a doubling of this rate from 1985. The 1995 figure for white males was 1%.
• A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life. The figure...
American Corrections The statistics about imprisoned Americans in jails of local, state, and federal prisons and juvenile detention centers reveals a growth from 1,319,000 numbers in 2002 to 2,166,260 in 2002. During the year 2003 has seen the fastest rate of growth of imprisonment over the period of recent four years. The rate of growth of prisoners in state prisons is estimated to 1.8% while that in federal prisons is 7.1%
S. news magazines between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 1998. They concluded that the images of the poor in these news magazines "do not capture the reality of poverty, but instead provide a stereotypical and inaccurate picture of poverty that results in a misconception of beliefs about the poor, antipathy toward blacks and lack of support for welfare programs. Similarly, Dixon and Linz (2000) researched the content of a random
Overcrowding in Prisons: Impacts on African-Americans The overcrowded prisons in the United States are heavily populated by African-Americans, many of them incarcerated due to petty, non-violent crimes such as drug dealing. This paper points out that not only are today's prisons overcrowded, the fact of their being overcrowded negatively impacts the African-American community above and beyond the individuals who are locked up. This paper also points to the racist-themed legislation that
PSYCHOSOCIAL ISSUES AFFECTING African-American STUDENTS PSYCHOSOCIAL ISSUES AFFECTING African-American STUDENTS "They never want to hear what I have to say…it doesn't matter who started a fight, or what a teacher said to you that made you mad. You might have something heavy going on at home but no one asks. They're not interested. They just want you out of the school." 17-year-old 11th grade African-American female student, NYC (Sullivan, 2007, p. iii). In New York City, one of
Race and Crime: The Incarceration of Black Men Contemporary news outlets are frequently packed with reports of crimes and illegal activities involving Black men. In fact, the number of Black men who are prosecuted and convicted of crimes has steadily increased over the past three decades, causing a deepening concern about the racial divide that continues to grow in the American legal and penal systems. It's clear that more Black men
The stigmatization of African-Americans has caused terrible harm in many areas, and only exacerbates the perceived "problem." T]hirty years of forced removal to prison of 150,000 young males from particular communities of New York represents collective losses similar in scale to the losses due to epidemics, wars, and terrorist attacks -- with the potential for comparable effects on the survivors and the social structure of their families and communities. (Roberts,
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