Final Version of Research Paper

Abstract

In the United States, there is the highest number of prisoners in the entire world. Of those prisoners, minorities seem to be a trend. Are there factors other than the crime committed that resulted in a minority put behind bars?  Aspects such as race, income and level of education were researched as a possible explanation as to why these individuals are prisoners. Race seems to be a more accurate conclusion as to why this is occurring. African American individuals are the most targeted group of people in the United States in regards to mass incarceration. Because these individuals are undergoing these events, psychological affects occur within families and prisoners themselves. The research in this paper proves that African Americans are targeted because of the way they look and the prejudice that conveys people to convict these individuals without enough evidence to convict them.

Keywords: Incarceration, Minorities

 Freedom Deferred: Are Minorities Only Incarcerated for Their Crimes or Other Motives?

            A loud buzz is heard and your cell door closes immediately after. You sit in your bunk wondering why you’re spending half your life in that cell or why you’re in there at all. Freedom should be a right obtained by everyone in the U.S. This right should not be taken away by anyone because of their race. Although many scenarios can lead someone to the predicament of prison, characteristics someone cannot change should not be one of the reason why. Minorities in the U.S are a large percentage of the prison population and are overrepresented when it comes to poverty, faulty education and social injustice. Targets of incarceration seem to be a reoccurring pattern. Minorities in the United States are preyed upon in society and expected to commit crimes in order to become a statistic. Their crimes are excessively looked upon when their skin is different, when their race seems alarming, and when their background defies norms. Although crimes are executed, there are existing reasons why minorities, especially African Americans, are more likely to end up behind bars. Their race, income, and level of education are concerning reasons as to why Black American’s are more likely in jail.

            The basic meaning of mass incarceration is when a large number of people are sent to prison. Like Garland mentioned “Mass imprisonment implies a rate of imprisonment and a size of prison population that is markedly above the historical and comparative norm for societies of this type” (2001). Mass incarceration is something that occurs greatly in the United States. According to (DeFina, Hannon, 2013), “During the past 30 years, incarceration rates have risen by more than 300%”. The War on Drugs was one of the causes of mass incarceration starting around the late 1980’s. Laws made in order to decrease crime and drug use worked in the eyes of the law, but the results of these laws were deteriorating communities. “The largest impact from the War on Drugs is by far the isolation and classification of minorities as second-class citizens” (Jakubiec, Kilcer, Sager 1). Minorities were viewed as inferior after the War on Drugs took place for their excessive use of drugs, when at the same time, white’s used those same drugs at the same rate.

 Due to America’s racist past, many believe that race correlates to mass incarceration. Of course, the War on Drugs had a more negative effect on black communities. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) mentioned “Largely a function of the “War on Drugs” which began in the 1980s, incarceration is one of the most serious racial inequities in current U.S. society. African-Americans now constitute almost one-half of the 2.3 million prison/jail population; they are incarcerated at nearly a rate nearly six times that of Whites” (NAACP, 2017). The statistics show that because the War on Drugs brought even more racial inequality into society, incarceration amongst African Americans increased greatly. This is a clear representation of not only racism, but profiling. This proves that if an African American individual and a White man commit the same crime, the person of color will receive a much harsher sentence just because of the difference in race.

 The Sentencing Project, a research center that works to decrease incarceration, created an info graphic that depicts the statistics of incarceration between different races. Hispanic men and women are included in this study because as minorities, they are also a large percentage of the U.S prison population. The ratio is significantly different when it comes to black men and white men and it has to do with the authority that arrest and process these men. Several times, police officers are ordered to bring someone into their precinct and in order to fulfill their job, they sought mainly after people of color because of prejudice.

Level of education is another factor as to why minorities are more likely to become victims of mass incarceration. If one dismisses school and decides to involve themselves in activity on the streets, they’re more likely to be admitted into a juvenile center or even jail. “Minorities are heavily overrepresented among those most harshly sanctioned in schools. Nationally, black students are 2.6 times as likely to be suspended as white students” (Wald, Losen. 2003). In the School to Prison Pipeline, children who are oppressed in schools tend to perform unsatisfactory. In figure 2, students are automatically being placed in jail because their public-school education is not sufficing for them to continue their education. When schools are not getting an efficient amount of funds, the poor education and lack of motivation leads students to a life of crime. Many low funded schools are placed in neighborhoods with individuals who have low-income, a large majority being African American and Hispanic; this makes a new generation of potential prisoners.

Wrongful convictions are the reason why many minorities are in prison, especially Black men. Throughout history, it has become frequent that when a crime is committed and a potential suspect is indescribable or in many cases not even seen, a black man is blamed for the crime. Often times, the Black men accused of these so called committed crimes are innocent. America’s past has led people to believe that the tall, Black, dark-skinned man is a criminal. Prejudice against people of darker skin has always been prominent. Unless one is a celebrity or a sportsman, people’s judgement will get the best of them and think that they’ll get their purse stolen by everyone who looks like that. The crime that a number of many black men are wrongly incarcerated for is sexual assault, specifically involving white women. A famous case showcasing this is The Scottsboro Case, where nine young boys were accused of sexually assaulting two white women. Almost all of them were sentenced to death until one of the white women confessed saying that, in fact, nothing had occurred between the boys and them. An older lady’s persistence to have them jailed and killed kept the case going. It was not until the Supreme Court decided to reverse any decisions regarding the boys’ fate. If the U.S Supreme Court would have never intervened, a white woman’s word would have been taken over nine invisible voices just because of race. Predisposition at trial is outlined by the direction issued by Judge Callahan: “There is a very strong presumption under the law that she [a White woman] would not and did not yield voluntarily to intercourse with the defendant, a Negro” (Sommerville, 2004, p. 217). In many instances this is the case, that a white woman would never engage in sexual relations with a Black man. But in many cases, Black men are convicted for a crime they did not commit.

Being away from one’s family or being abruptly uprooted from one’s day to day life can cause psychological effects. Mass incarceration leaves behind a number of different effects for the individuals incarcerated and their families. There are, of course, the obvious effects of incarceration; losing a job, losing a house, and not being able to provide for a family. Prisoners though develop psychological issues due to the time away from their families and the hostile environment that their placed in that can lead to severe trauma. DeVeaux mentioned “Several researchers found that people in prison may be diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorders, as well as other psychiatric disorders, such as panic attacks, depression, and paranoia” Kalief Browder is a great example of what prison can do to an individual post incarceration. Kalief was an African American man who at only sixteen was wrongfully confined in jail for over two years for a crime that he never even committed. In jail, he endured violence from other inmates and was intensely mistreated by jail personnel. Upon release, Kalief was traumatized by what occurred in jail and was burdened by the real world that he committed suicide. Over time, mental illness from one individual, for example an incarcerated father, can be triggered in their child due to the situation they are in. A similar situation happened with Kalief Browder’s mother, as she passed away not too long after her son died. Another obvious effect of mass incarceration is life after prison. It is much harder for a convicted felon to acquire a job because of their new status as an“ex-con”. Even if an individual was incarcerated for a nonviolent crime, their chances of getting a job are still slim to none. Many companies or simple businesses do not want to lose business once people find out that an individual who’s been in jail is making their sandwich or working at the establishment. Another long term effect of incarceration is having the right to vote revoked. In many states, an individual who has a conviction on their record, can no longer vote. No matter what these individuals are no longer able to do, their status as a convicted felon will always follow them.

            Corrupt authority is another reason why minorities are imprisoned. Throughout the years, there have been many police officers who have purposefully put minorities in jail for their own racist reasons. An example of this is former detective for the LAPD Mark Fuhrman. He gained attention when he testified in the O.J Simpson murder case. He was particularly famous for being caught on tape using racial slurs and admitting that the LAPD targets minorities and plants evidence against them. Just recently, police officers in Baltimore were seen planting drugs in a black woman’s car.

“The most recent video appears to show an officer place a baggie of what appears to be     drugs inside of a car while surrounded by other Baltimore police. He then bends over again and appears to find them” (McCausland, 2017)

The police are abusing their power by causing fear in those who are innocent. A great number of individuals incarcerated are in prison for the faultiness of a cop.

            In the documentary “The System: Policing and Mass Incarceration” there is a clear representation that black individuals in Chicago are targets of police abuse and also mass incarceration. It is shown in the film how the city is truly two in one and how one is occupied with crime. One aspect of the film highlights how low-income families are mostly affected by mass incarceration. Not having sufficient money for household essentials like food lead to petty theft. When individuals are put in jail for petty theft, they are not able to pay their bond. This results in them staying in jail for a longer time than expected. If the crime is more severe, they won’t even be able to pay for great representation in court and would most likely end up in prison. Although the film focuses on only Chicago, this happens all over the country. In order to stop this, the justice system needs to stop applying harsh sentences to petty crime. Nonviolent or minimal drug charges should not result in prison but some kind of punishment. Individuals need to stay out of crime no matter how harsh their environment tends to be.

            In conclusion, mass incarceration is a great issue that the Unites States should deal with now to prevent future generations from following felonious footsteps. The issue is acknowledged, but there has to be something done to terminate this awful cycle.

 References

DeFina, R., & Hannon, L. (2013). The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Poverty. Crime & Delinquency, 59(4), 562-586. doi:10.1177/0011128708328864

Garland, D. (2001). Mass imprisonment: social causes and consequences. London: Sage.

Jakubiec, David; Kilcer, Andrew; and Sager, William, " The War on drugs" (2009). RIT: College of Liberal Arts 2009, Retrieved from h p://scholarworks.rit.edu/article/1662

Johnson, M. B., Griffith, S., & Barnaby, C. Y. (2013). African Americans Wrongly Convicted of Sexual Assault Against Whites: Eyewitness Error and Other Case Features. Journal Of Ethnicity In Criminal Justice, 11(4), 277-294. doi:10.1080/15377938.2013.813285

McCausland, P (2017, August 4). Another Baltimore Police Body-Cam Video Shows Officers ‘Plant’ Drugs. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/another-baltimore-police-body-cam-video-shows-officers-plant-drugs-n789396.

NAACP (n.d.). Criminal justice fact sheet. Retrieved from http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

Sommerville, D. M. (2004). Rape and race in the nineteenth-century south. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Wald, J. and Losen, D. J. (2003), Defining and redirecting a school-to-prison pipeline. New Directions for Youth Development, 2003: 9–15. doi:10.1002/yd.51