Mass Incarceration

Mass Incarceration

The United States has experienced an unprecedented growth in their penal populations unparalleled by any other nation. While having only 5% of the global population, the U.S. is home to 25% of the global prison population. The U.S. shamefully boasts an incarceration rate six to ten times higher than other industrialized nations. Since the early 1970's, the prison population has increased more than 600%.

Mass Incarceration's Disproportionate Effects on the Black Community

These growing rates of imprisonment disproportionately affect black Americans. While only 13-14% of Americans declare themselves as black, they constitute almost half of the prison and jail population. They are incarcerated at a rate nearly six times that of white offenders. Accounting for incarceration, parole, probation, and other facets of the penal system, the American penal system currently houses more black men than were enslaved in 1850.

A "zero tolerance policy" effectively funnels black youth from high school into prisons. Normal adolescent disagreements are treated with suspension, expulsion, and sometimes juvenile imprisonment. These young men are then set on a path of failure wherein legal economic and social activities are made improbable, thereby forcing them into an illegal lifestyle. 75% of young black men, and virtually all in the poorest neighbourhoods, can expect to serve time in prison. In some cities wracked by crime, as many as 80% of young black men have criminal records and are thus subject to the accompanying lifelong discrimination. While the American penal system claims to be colour-blind, it creates and maintains the racial hierarchy that ensures the subordinate status of a group. [1]

Post-Slavery Economy of the South

The enslavement of black peoples in America provided the free labour upon which the economy of the South resided. Following the Civil War, the southern states found themselves in disarray. Slavery, the basis of their economy, had vanished, real estate and infrastructure had been destroyed, and industry was disorganized. The freeing of 4 million slaves did not ease the unrest felt by Southerners. Peoples throughout the southern states needed to find an alternative method to boost their economy and maintain cheap labour on plantations. The planter elite looked to reestablish the cheap and subordinate workforce they had previously ruled over.

New Economic Laws

Several of these southern states adopted vagrancy laws, which made it illegal not to work. As development focused increasingly towards suburb areas, low-skilled manufacturing jobs fled the ghettos for the urban core. Thus, more and more rural black men, emerging from slavery, were unable to find employment. Newfound vagrancy laws funneled many of these men into prisons, where they were contracted out to plantations and private companies as a cheap labour force. Thousands of black people were arbitrarily arrested during this period and forced to work off court costs and fines. The expansive criminal justice system allowed local governments to maintain regulation of these newly freed slaves, while ensuring their inability to perform in the global economy

The 13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment to the United States constitution abolished slavery with one exception: for prisoners. The convict population grew at an alarming rate, and quickly became "younger and blacker" [2]. W. E. B. Du Bois pointed out the glaring reality that these new criminal justice reforms meant "nothing more nor less than slavery in daily toll" [3]. In a recent example, inmates in Louisiana were made to clean the BP oil spill in 2010. They were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a dangerous, toxic environment [4]. Inmates are used in a variety of dangerous jobs, with California using inmates as 30 - 40% of their forest fire fighter positions, often in the most risky, front-line positions [5]. Upon conviction, felons lose many basic rights that civil rights groups once had to fight to obtain. Voting rights, welfare and housing discrimination, and limited access to many social services are an additional burden for felons to handle.

War on Drugs

Rather than fading away or eventually becoming outlawed, this new form of slavery was simply re-framed to appease to the voter. Several Presidents, including Nixon and Reagan, pushed a racially sanitized anti-crime platform that subliminally appealed to the anti-black voter. Appealing to 'tough-on-(black) crime' voters, Reagan announced the War on Drugs in 1982. While drugs were increasingly on the decline, and less than 2% of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation, Reagan declared the importance of destroying these 'drug-infested' communities and peoples. A seemingly random spike in drug use in black communities occurred shortly after this announcement, suspected by many to be aided by the CIA. The prison population quickly exploded, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of these new inmates. Despite the fact that more than 2/3 of crack cocaine users in the U.S are either white or Hispanic, and that there are nearly five times as many white people using drugs as black people, the latter group are sent to prison for drug offenses at a rate ten times that of white people. They are also handed much more severe sentences; often serving as much time in prison for a drug offense as a white inmate would for a violent offense.