Inequality and injustice in the US criminal justice system

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Race, class and space in the context of hyperincarceration

Despite accounting for only 5% of the world’s inhabitants, the United States detains 25% of the world’s prisoners. In the past 50 years, crime has become the “new code word” for Latinos, black people and “increasingly for immigrants”[1]. Since the 1970s, this “vertical rise” and “horizontal spread” in the penal system has led to the hyperincarceration of minority communities, making the carceral system to represent the third largest US employer[2][1]. As such, the term 'hyperincarceration’ has been designated as most appropriate to describe this “astronomical increase” in rates of imprisonment[2]. Indeed, the trend “does not concern the masses” as it has been finely targeted, leading lower-class, undereducated African American men to become the primary inmates in the wide prison complex[2]. This intersectional analysis will discuss how the racialization of the criminal justice system in the United States intersects with social class and space to produce the hyperincarceration of African Americans, who represent almost 1 million of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in US prisons, and particularly of those from lower socio-economic background, undereducated and living in the inner city[3].


The 'War on Drugs' and the policies of Nixon, Reagan and Clinton

The US criminal justice system has been used as a vehicle for social control and the ‘War on Drugs’ initiated by Nixon in the 1970s and carried out by Reagan in the 1980s is one of the main reasons behind the tremendous spike in the incarceration of people of colour[4][3]. The policy largely targeted Latino and black urban centers living in the poorer inner city, where cheap and accessible drugs such as crack was more common than in white suburban areas. As a result, those arrested on crack use or possession were facing up to 10 times the sentence for those arrested on cocaine possession, leading African Americans to represent “75% of all drug-related imprisonment”[1]. Moreover, the introduction of the 'three strikes, you’re out' and mandatory minimums policies under the Clinton presidency led most often poor, undereducated African American men to accept a plea bargain instead of taking their case to trial, in fear of the harsher sentences they could be given if found guilty[4]. Nonetheless, for the same crimes, African American offenders received “sentences that [were] 10% longer than white offenders”[3].


Socio-economic class

The criminal justice system has been pursuing individuals by ethnicity, gender and place, which has led to the imprisonment of “(sub)proletarian African American men from the imploding ghetto”[2]. Firstly, inmates are “first and foremost” people from poor economic backgrounds[2]. While the national rate for post-secondary education attendance in the US is above 50%, it is as low as 13% in correctional facilities[2]. A study estimating the cumulative risks of imprisonment for 3 education levels – no high school completion, high school graduation or equivalent, some college education – revealed that high school dropouts are likely to go to prison 3 to 4 times more than individuals with 12 years of school[5]. Nonetheless, by the end of the 1990s, 21% of young black men with low educational attainment were in federal or state prison, compared to 2.9% of “white male dropouts”[5]. Consequently, by the turn of the century, black men were 7 times more likely to have a prison record by their early 30s than white men, and the risk of being imprisoned at some point during their lifetime, reached 60% for black high school dropouts[5]. These incredibly high figures result from the six-fold increase in carceral population between 1972 and 2000 that allowed the prison system to emerge as a “major institutional competitor” to the educational and military systems[5]. While middle and upper-class African Americans were left “practically untouched”, the cumulative targeting of lower-class African American “trapped in the crumbling ghetto” has led to a racial transformation of the American prison[2]. As such, the “official criminality” of men who were born in the late 1960s was determined by class and race, as a 1997 estimation concluded that at some point in their lifetime, 9% of US men would go to prison, however revealing a huge ethnic disparity: the rate rose to 28.5% for black men and was down at 4.4% for white men[5].


Race and ethnicity

Secondly, the racialization of the criminal justice system and the colour of hyperincarceration has continuously discriminated against African Americans. While they represent 12% of drug users, African Americans count for 38% of arrests for drug-related offenses, and serve “virtually as much time in prison” for such offense (58.7 months) “as whites do for violent offenses” (61.7 months)[3]. More shockingly, as African Americans make up about 12% of the US population, they make up with Latino men 60% of the total inmate population, such that in 2007, 35% of men incarcerated in state and federal prison were African American[3]. Furthermore, in 1991, 1 in 9 African American men would be incarcerated between the age of 20 and 34, while on the same year, African American men had the highest imprisonment rate of any “race, ethnicity, gender and age combination”[3]. Most of them have been convicted of non violent and mostly class D drug charges, while a decline in the share of African American arrested for the 4 most serious offenses – that is, murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault – reveals a criminal population that is actually whiter[3].


Space and the city

Eventually, the aspect of space has played a central role in the hyperincarceration of young, black and undereducated men. Since the deindustrialization era, the decaying ghetto, “instrument of ethnoracial control in the city” has been replaced by the expansion of the carceral system as a political response based on the 'War on Drugs', one of the main reasons behind the decades of hyperincarceration[2][6]. Indeed, the post Civil Rights movement era saw a dismantling of the public sector and the social welfare programs, which led to class polarization and a simultaneous build up of a “carceral Marshall Plan”[1]. As such, in the 1990s, the US federal government reduced funding for housing by 61% (by US $17 billion) while on the other hand increasing the budget for correctional facilities by 171% (by US $19 billion), making the building of prisons the “nation’s main housing program for the poor”[2]. Finally, the “hyper-policing” behind the so-called 'War on Drugs' targeted Latino and black urban centers, in communities living in “gross economic deprivation produced by deindustrialization” and spatial isolation[1]. This led the ghetto to become “prisonized” while the prison was simultaneously “ghettoized” by the predatory street culture that eventually “supplanted the convict code”[2].

Institutional racism and socio-economic discrimination

The story of Kalief Browder strongly highlights the issue of hyperincarceration targeting poor, undereducated young African American men. Arrested in May 2010 on his way home in from a party by New York police officers responding to a 911 theft call, he was later charged with robbery, assault and grand larceny, despite the overwhelming lack of evidence against him and the unreliable testimony of the witness. While continuously claiming his innocence, Browder was imprisoned for three years at Rikers Island to await his trial (as he refused to take a plea bargain). When the case was found to be lacking substantial evidence, he was released from prison, but suffering from the psychological, physical and sexual abuse he experienced during his 3 years behind bars, he eventually committed suicide 2 years later[4]. His case has often been cited by activists calling for reforms in the racially biased criminal justice system.

Furthermore, the recent Netflix documentary 'When They See Us' recalls the case of the 5 African American youths who were convicted for the rape and assault of a Central Park female jogger in 1989. Despite the lack of substantial evidence against them, their wrongful conviction emphasized the heavy racial discrimination and biased public pressure the teenagers suffered from[4].

As such, the past 5 decades have witnessed the incarceration of African American men of low socio-economic status. Moreover, it has been commonly studied that the background of prisoners most often include single-parent households, low-skilled employment, minimum educational levels, histories of physical, drug or sexual abuse and family members in the criminal justice system[6].  Thus, the disproportionate incarceration of lower class and undereducated African American men since the 1970s caused the disintegration of family units, thereby fueling the vicious cycle of undereducation, poor employment and risk of imprisonment[6]. Since the Nixon era, “wealth, not culpability” has shaped incarceration outcomes for African American men who, despite representing 6.5% of the US population, make up 40.2% of US prison population as of 2016[4]. Indeed, the civil rights movement activist Angela Davis argues that the industrial aspect of the prison complex “relies historically on the inheritance of slavery”, leading the redesign of the racial caste to associate black people with “dangerousness and guilt”[4].This institutional racism has stripped millions of people of colour of the rights “supposedly won during the civil rights movement”, eventually leading to the hyperincarceration of poor, undereducated African American men today[4].


References
  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Abu-Jamal, M., Fernández, J. (2014). Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor: The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US. Socialism and Democracy, 28(3), 1-14. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2014.974983
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 Wacquant, L. (2010). Class, race & hyperincarceration in revanchist America. Daedalus, 139(3), 74-90. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00024
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Ronnie B. Tucker, Sr. (2014-2015). The Color of Mass Incarceration. Ethnic Studies Review, 37-38(1), 135-149. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1525/esr.2017.37_38.1.135
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 DuVernay, A., Barish, H., Averick, S. (Producers) & DuVernay, A. (Director) (2016). 13th. [Motion picture]. United States: Netflix.
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Pettit, B., Western, B. (2004). Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration. American Sociological Review, 69, 151-169. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000312240406900201
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 Christian, J., Thomas, S. T. (2009). Examining the Intersections of Race, Gender and Mass Imprisonment. Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 7(1), 69-84. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15377930802711797