Essay about Mass Incarceration of African Americans

Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, examines mass incarceration in the United States, why the criminal justice system works the way it does towards minorities, the detriments associated with mass incarceration as it relates to offenders, and much more. In the introduction of her book, Alexander immediately paints the harsh reality of mass incarceration with the story of Jarvious Cotton who is denied the right to vote among other rights because he, “has been labeled as a felon and is currently on parole” (1). Other information Alexander presents in her introduction are her qualifications as an author of the book, and gives a brief summary of each chapter and how each one is laid out. Her qualifications are she is African-American civil rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and is also an Associate Professor at the University of Stanford Law School. From a critical standpoint, Alexander seems very qualified to write on the topic, being part of the marginalized group and also being an expert in the legal field of which the topic covers, enhances her ethos to where one could consider her an expert in mass incarceration topics, as they relate to African-Americans. Overall, the introduction of her book does a great job starting out giving a stark reality of topic at hand, giving brief statistical references about mass incarceration in the United States, and giving an outline for her book.

The drug war and racial profiling is a huge cause to mass incarceration. Vanita Gupta from the New York times wrote, “in 2003 I represented dozens of African-American residents in Tulia, Tex., who had been convicted after a botched drug sting. Jason Jerome Williams, a 22-year-old with no prior criminal record, had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for four sales of an eighth of an ounce of cocaine…, Others accepted plea deals to try to avoid such lengthy prison terms.” I do not think that drugs are okay to have, be sold, or to be under the influence of. But I do think that all of these sentences are way to long for these people. These are the sentences’ of those that commit way worse crimes like maybe killing someone or endangering some one else’s’ life.

With criminality already tied closely to race, the War on Drugs legislation expanded the definition of crime to drug usages. As demonstrated in The New Jim Crow, a 1995 survey found that 95% of participants pictured an African American person when asked to picture a drug user, but in reality, only 15% of the drug users were African Americans. This survey showed us the extent to which media’s overrepresentation of black

America has the highest prevalence of jailing its citizens. Nearly 2.3 million Americans are behind bars or nearly one percent of the adult population at any given time (Campbell, Vogel, & Williams, 2015). As of 2014, African Americans make up 34% of the incarcerated population. As a result, a disproportionate amount of African American youth will experience a parent’s incarceration. Research has shown that children of incarcerated parents experience emotional problems, socioeconomic problems, and cognitive disturbances (Miller, 2007). In this paper, I will discuss the impact of mass incarceration in the African American community and its effect on African American children.

Many jail cells and prisons hold more African Americans than colleges and universities. This is a major problem for younger men and women that have to witness this because if this is all they are exposed to then this will be all they know. It does not only affect younger children or teenagers but close family members, wives, and parents. The mass incarceration of African Americans is becoming the norm for our men and women because the ¨white man¨ or the government is subliminally fighting to oppress African Americans and hold them back from any chance of prosperity that they have.

Alexander states that the single greatest contributor to this mass incarceration in the United States is the “war on drugs”. Studies consistently indicate that people of all races use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. However, the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color. Therefore, an overflow of black and

The purpose of this study is to expose the process of mass incarceration of poor black males, and females increasingly, within the context of a fabricated war on drugs which really is serving to keep the prison population booming by exploiting traditionally disadvantaged minorities in society. Alexander rightfully calls this a ?redesign? of the old racial caste system in America which was supposed to have been destroyed by the civil rights movement. The war on drugs in the 80s merely became the newest vehicle by which to exploit the black community in this country. The War on Drugs is really the rationale for racial control, which targets black men and women and relegates millions of citizens to what Alexander calls a ?second class status (Alexander, 2012).?

Since the beginning of this great nation there has always been a racial caste systems due to slavery, money, and greed. The End of slavery was after the civil war and enfourced through the 13th Amendment. The loophole that was created that was the exception that criminals can be treated as a involuntary servitude, which was noted in the U.S constitution. To speed things along you have the slavery which transferred to convicted leasing to Jim Crow Era and now Mass Incarceration which all has striped millions of the people, whom are in the lower caste systems, away from their families similar to slavery. This paper focus on how mass incarceration has become the new form of Jim Crow and slavery. The United Stated population represent 5% of the world population, but we have 25% of the world prisoners (NAACP). In the USA people of color represent 30% of the populations but contributes to 60% of those who are imprisoned(NAACP). I hope that that this study will open up conversations that the we are in a new form of Jim Crow and how Mass Incarceration should be tentatively looked through and help come up with ways to make Mass Incarceration go away. As social workers we must advocate for the people who cannot advocate for themselves, rather it is because of money or lack of education they do not know how they are being taking advantage of. It is in our hearts to make sure that everyone is in the same postion so that they can be the best that they can be. The purpose of this study

The trend of African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 has seen a dramatic increase of incarceration. Attention has been focusing on areas of housing, education, and healthcare but the most prominent problem for African American males is the increase in the incarceration rate. African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 incarceration rate has been thought, by many, to be caused by economic factors such as under employment or unemployment, poor housing, lack of education, and lack of healthcare. Yet, others believe it is due to the imbalance of minorities within the criminal justice system, such as judges, lawyers, and lawmakers.

Jim crow laws were a complex system of laws and regulations set for the separation of races. Jim Crow laws were set on boundaries with the phrase “separate but equal”, however they not only were discriminatory but they also were used in many ways that abused the freedom of American rights. One example for this is, “The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately (Florida, MLK, jr. National Historic Site SB 197).” Schools for African American students were provided with low quality supplies and and teachers were often not qualified, while white children received high education with quality resources. I can’t Imagine living in a world where you were discriminated and put down in every way,

2 Drug arrests have; tripled since 1980. As a result, more than 31 million people have been ar-; rested for drug offenses since the drug war began. 3 To put the matter in per. spective, consider this: there are more people in prisons and jails today just;( for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.4 Nothing

A racial hierarchy exists relating to blacks and the criminal justice system in the subject of drug abuse arrests and convictions. Government research according to The Sentencing Project (2011) has shown that drug use among blacks is no higher than use among whites but yet seventy-nine percent of drug defendants in 2011were black. The participants in the criminal justice system such as police, judges, lawyers and corrections officers may be part of a dominant group and use their ethnocentrism to create bias and discrimination based on cultural differences. There is the overt bias and prejudice that an urban area with large black and minority populations is crime ridden. This in turn is cause for over policing with arrests of blacks more often in open air drug markets. A study done by Katherine Beckett (2006) in Seattle showed the disparity between white and black drug dealers in different ethnographic

Racial discrimination in the United States has been a radical issue plaguing African Americans from as early as slavery to the more liberal society we see today. Slavery is one of the oldest forms of oppression against African Americans. Slaves were brought in from Africa at increasingly high numbers to do the so-called dirty work or manual labor of their white owners. Many years later, after the abolishment of slavery came the Jim Crow era. In the 1880s, acts known as the Jim Crow laws were enacted by Southern states to keep oppression of African Americans alive. These laws helped to legalize segregation between blacks and whites. Slavery and Jim Crow were created to regulate how African Americans functioned in society. Slaves were refused the right to vote, refused citizenship, refused education, and labeled as incompetent as a way for whites to keep what Author Michelle Alexander of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness calls “social control”. Alexander argues that mass incarceration is the new modern “racial caste system” of social control. She further goes on to claim that this new system of mass incarceration has replaced the old social systems that were used to oppress African Americans such as slavery and Jim Crow. The system of mass incarceration fueled by the War on Drugs was established as a form of racial control. This new system puts people of color into an endless cycle of

It is common knowledge that the American prison system has grown exponentially in the last few decades. The prison population within the last forty years has risen by two million inmates. Multiple factors such as overcrowding and cost cutting have also decreased the quality of life within prisons by an order of magnitude. With this rising statistic, it becomes increasingly urgent to understand the effect of incarceration on our prisoners and whether the reformation process is actually doing more harm than good.

The War on Drugs in the United States has a profound influence on both the incarceration rates and activities of the criminal justice system. Many politicians and advocates of the policy claim that the War on Drugs is a necessary element to deter criminal behavior and reduce the crime rate. However, studies show that drug deterrent policies on possession and use have been inadequate and unsuccessful (Cole & Gertz, 2013). Studies also show that the War on Drugs has not attained its objectives because the policy exhibits racial discrepancy as it has led to the disproportionate incarceration of Blacks and minorities. Specifically, evidence indicates that the upper class, generally White individuals, is more likely to use powered cocaine while