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in every 8 African American males, aged 25-29 are currently in prison or
jail. 29% of African American males will
do time in a state or federal prison during his lifetime and a report found
that 3 out of 4 African American males in Washington D.C. will go to jail or
prison at some point.
There are a
number of different theories for this racial disparity in incarceration and two
competing views are racial disparity in arrest and minority threat/conflict
theory. A predominant theory or one that
I believe most Americans believe is legitimate is that the racial disparity in
arrest rates is the cause in the racial disparity in incarceration rates. More simply, if more African Americans are
committing more crimes then it is only logical that there would be more African
Americans incarcerated.
The
opposing theory of minority threat
and conflict theory posits that
majority groups hold claim to certain majority rights and privileges and that
these minorities are “illegitimate trespassers” on these rights and privileges
(Keen & Jacobs, 2009). Using this
theory one could argue that the criminal justices system is a tool used to
disenfranchise minority groups in order to help the majority group retain its
control of social structures.
Looking
objectively at our circumstances I argue that perhaps it is both and more. Travis Hirshi’s Social Bond Theory proclaims that people inherently desire to
commit crime, by human nature, and it is social bonds of attachment,
commitment, involvement and beliefs that deter people from illicit activities
because they value those social bonds (Agnew & Cullen, 2002). It’s not a stretch to find data to support
that African Americans and other minority groups have some level of diminished
social bonds and this may lead to more criminal activity. For example the current unemployment rate, as
of March 2012 for 16-19 year old African Americans is 40.5%, that is nearly
double the rate of White Americans at 22.5% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). These difficulties are not just limited to
African Americans, in 2009 the Hispanic American high school dropout rate was
17.6% compared to 5.2% for White Americans (U.S. Department of Education, 2010).
In
a future blog posting I will delve more deeply into the problems of economic
disadvantage and how this directly leads to rates of inefficient incarceration
that is fundamentally unsustainable but here I would like to approach a topic
that may be difficult to fathom. That
perhaps there is truth to the theory of minority threat and social conflict
theory. I am not here to make a judgment
on the intent of policy makers, one way or another, but since President Nixon’s
“war on drugs” campaign began on July 17th 1971 when he proclaimed
that drug abuse was “public enemy number one” (Vulliamy, 2011) the
incarceration rate has increased from 166.3 in 1970 to 773.3 in 2009 (Kessel,
2012).
The
connection that I am trying to make here is that the policy changes after the
civil rights movement of the 1960s has had a disproportionate impact on minorities
in this country. According to Keen an d
Jacobs from 1983-1999 “the mean African-American violent crime arrest rate was
at least 7.7 times greater than the same rate for whites” and by the 1990s the
“African-American-to-white prison admission ratio had grown to beyond ten”
(2009). Couple these facts with the fact
that according to the a report by Ryan King from The Sentencing Project some 5
million people in 35 states were not eligible to vote in the 2008 presidential
election (King, 2008).
Again
I am not here to say that this is by design, but there are some striking facts
and either intended or unintended results from some of these policies. I profess that for whatever the intent, we as
a future generation owe it to the human civility and do what is morally right
for our fellow man and determine if our current practices are what are best for
this country. I started my research with
the intent to demonstrate that our policies of mass incarceration are
financially unsustainable and the data is disheartening and I believe mass
incarceration is morally unsustainable as well.
Works Cited
Agnew,
R., & Cullen, F. T. (2002). Criminological
theory past to present. Roxbury Publishing Co: Los Angekes CA.
Keen,
B., & Jacobs, D. (2009). Racial threat, partisan politics, and racial
disparities in prison admissions: A panel analysis. Criminology, 47(1), 209-238.
Kessel,
J. (2012, February 7). So
what's the problem?. Retrieved from http://inefficientincarceration.blogspot.com/2012/02/so-whats-problem.html
King,
R. (2008). The sentencing
project. Retrieved from
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_statedisenfranchisement.pdf
U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2012, April 6). Retrieved from Bureau of Labor
Statistics website: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm
U.S.
Department of Education. (2010, December 16).National center for education
statistics. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16
Vulliamy,
E. (2011, July 23). The
guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/24/war-on-drugs-40-years
