Part III - Racial Disparity

                1 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 17^th 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