Summary: The Racialization Of Crime

The Racialization of Crime and Punishment

America has seen an explosion increase in the incarceration rate of criminals followed by an increase in crime. The American prison system has increased by a jaw dropping “790 percent” (Flatow, 2013). As I stated earlier that there was a significant increase in inmates “since 1980 from about 25,000 inmates to 219,000 in 2012 according to a new Congressional Research Service report.” (Flatow, 2013). These numbers show the increasing problems we have in America but the main issue is that African Americans are incarcerated at a higher rate according to the NAACP “From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people.” ("Criminal Justice

The main strength I noticed throughout the article was that each topic hit on the main points of what a race—based critical theory is. The first evidence of the strength of this article, “there is also no dispute that the poor and people of color, particularly African Americans, are dramatically overrepresented in these statistics at every phase of the criminal justice system.” (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2008, p. 628) shows that racism is a systematic problem more than any other issue. Another point that made this article stronger was providing evidence of the economic status of inmates, “The overwhelming majority of those in prisons and jails were unemployed or employed in the minimum wage service sector at the time of their commitment offense (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2008, p. 628).” This is another example of a systematic problem because of the lack of companies or business hiring African Americans because of perceived notions limits that community and therefore turn to life of crime to make ends meet. The most eye-popping evidence of the ability of this article to show evidence of this theory came when discussing the number of African Americans in jail. It stated, “Approximately 50% of all prisoners are Black, 30% are White, and 17% Hispanic (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2008, p. 628)” showing the uneven race disparity of prisoners being locked up. These few statistics made this article decision to embark upon the race—based critical theory a good one. The weakness that has plagued most of my articles this past semester was the ability to speak from a biased position. This article was able to look at the different problems by adding stats to back up their points. This article I was able to understand the meaning of the context displayed. Preceding articles didn’t really create that clear understanding and the ability for me to predict right off bat what it