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Reducing recidivism as a cause
The impact of mass incarceration on African Americans
Reducing recidivism as a cause
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Jail Time
Thesis
You walk into a job interview and the first question they ask you is, do you have a criminal record? If the answer is yes, good luck. If you are also black, better keep looking. The 13th amendment of the U.S. constitution states that the only exception to its articles is slavery “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”(U.S Const. Amend. XIII). But the effects of prison don’t end when a convict is released. Due to the government's legislation and the stigma that surrounds black ex-convicts, black men have a near impossible task of not facing recidivism.
Body Paragraph
Male, black ex-inmates have lots of trouble staying out of prison following their release. Hyunzee Jung quotes research
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done by Langan and Levin stating that after three years out of prison, “72.9% of black ex-inmates were rearrested compared with 62.7% of their white counterparts”(Jung). This large disparity between the recidivism of whites and blacks shows that there is a problem with what black ex-inmates are doing once they are out of prison. They are not being reintegrated with society in a healthy safe way. The effects of this problem go far beyond just harming the ex-inmate. Due to the, “massive scale of imprisonment among young, urban black males” there is a large economic strain on communities and families of ex-inmates(Smith; Crutchfield). When a black man is imprisoned their family can lose their way of making money. This forces the partner of the inmate to either not be able to afford to take care of their family or to have to somehow make up for the money lost. On a larger scale this effects the community because so many of the communities workers are being imprisoned there is not enough workers to do all the jobs. This can cause a stagnant economy in the community. There is two main reasons for why so many black ex-inmates recidivate. Body paragraph 2 Part of the reason there is this effect on the economy is that ex-inmates have a hard time finding jobs due to the stigma that comes with having gone to prison.
There is also legislation that discriminates against blacks. In an investigation of the effects of incarceration on job searches, Amanda Geller reports that incarceration does in fact have a negative effect on employment. She also states that for black men there is a 3:1 ratio of clean records to criminal records. This differs from the 2:1 ratio for white men. For any ex-inmate it is very hard time to find a job, but it is even harder for a black ex-inmate to find a job. Without a job ex-inmates need to make money somehow. This may cause them to to turn toward gangs or towards crime. This is part of the reason for the large amounts recidivism. Another part of it is legislation that is racist towards black men. An example of this is the federal sentencing for crack and cocaine. The sentence for “crack selling (more heavily sold and used by people of color) [results] in a sentence 100 times more severe than for selling the same amount of powder cocaine (more heavily sold and used by whites)”(Crutchfield). This law was passed so that the government would have more reason to keep black men in jail. By making the punishment 100 times more severe for practically the same offense is straight up racist. It is shown in Crutchfield's study that the longer men stay in prison the more likely they are to recidivate. So by …show more content…
making the consequences more severe it doesn't only force black men into prison once, it can result in an elongated stay with small interruptions of freedom. By facing the stigma and racist legislation, black men have been impeded in their attempts at saying out of prison. Work Cited Crutchfield, Robert D., and Weeks, Gregory A.
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U.S. Constitution. Art./Amend. XIII, Sec.
1.
The United States has a long history of racial problems, starting during the times of slavery, and discrimination is still seen in the present-day. Looking back on history allows us to create parallels between the past and present giving us the opportunity to see what will happen before it actually does. Since this problem has continued to exist, certain patterns have recurred. Similar issues come up in every era, unfortunately, but we are able to get a sense of what may happen if theses problems continue as those of the past. In “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, descriptions of slavery and the Jim Crow South are used to show the effects of years of injustice on minority
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
To outline and understand the problem of overrepresentation of black people in prison service in UK the starting point should be a statistics of eth...
Many would argue that the reason why the incarceration rate for African Americans is sustainably higher compared to white American is because of economic situations, and because of past arrest patterns. While it is true that the economic opportunity someone has will affect their decisions, this argument doesn’t fully explain the real reason of why the rates are higher. To fully understand the reason why one must look back on America’s history and how African Americans were treated. The past arrest patterns do not explain why the gap continues to increase, however it is clear that the past arrest patterns is more an indicator of institutional racism that exists in this country. One study found that African Americans believe the reason for the high incarceration rates is becau...
Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, examines the development of institutionalized racism following the war on drugs, and how it has created what Alexander calls a “New Jim Crow era,” or a racial caste in the US. Alexander describes this undercaste as, “a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society,” (Alexander, 32). Not only is this because of mass incarceration rates among black men, but extends to the effects that these branded felons must face beyond prison walls. By checking the well known box on any application, it has become legal for almost any institution or corporation to discriminate against a marked felon. Alexander notes that, “Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination – employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusio...
Thank you for your positive feedback, I had help with my thesis statement from a couple of our classmates in unit four. This is a topic that hits close to home to me as I stated in previous posts I am san ex-offender. The programs that were ready to assist ex-offenders early on in 2010 are no longer present for use of the ex-offenders that are being released here in Wisconsin.
Nationwide, blacks are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” This difference in proportionality does not necessarily involve direct discrimination; it can be explained by a number of combined factors. Correctional agencies do not control the number of minorities who enter their facilities. Therefore, the disparity must come from decisions made earlier in the criminal justice process. Law enforcement, court pre-sentencing policies and procedures, and sentencing all have a direct effect on the overrepresentation of minorities in the correctional population.
writers are ‘doubly marginal’, being female and a writer in prison whereas at the same time black women suffer threefold- as a woman, prisoner, and African American”(Willingham 57). Although both of these women are prisoners, one of them is viewed as prison writer and another women is viewed just as prisoner. Beside they being treated just by their race, even in an African American society, the perception of looking imprisoned men and women are different, African American women are subjected for gender difference. Willingham mentions the thought of a African American woman, “African American men are almost made martyrs and heroes when they come out of prison but when African American women go back to their communities, the are not only unfit people, they are also marked with the title of unfit mother, and it’s hard to trust us”
2010, “Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4(1): 1-31, in this Albonetti’s study is discussed in which it was found that minority status alone accounted for an additional sentence length of “one to seven months.” African American defendants were “likely to receive pretrial release but were more likely to be convicted, and be given harsher sentences after conviction than white defendants charged with the same crimes.” One of the reasons behind this are the sentencing laws, it is seen that these laws are designed in a way that they tend to be harsher towards a certain group of people, generally towards the people of color than others thus leading to inequality with the sentencing
For the past two decades, the criminal justice system in the United States has been undergoing a tremendous expansion. There are now more than one million black men in jail and that one out of every four black males will go on prison in there lifetime. Knowing these statistics it put a burden on the black community because many families are left with single family home, the unemployment rate for black male go up, they can not vote and now they make jail seem like it is fun to go to.
Levy-Hinte, J. (Producer), London, M. (Producer), & Hardwicke, C. (Director). (2003). Thirteen [Motion Picture]. United States: Working Title Films.
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001.
These statistics demonstrate that racialized mass incarceration exists in the U.S. There are a few reasons why African Americans are discriminated against by the legal system. The primary cause is inequitable protection by the law and unequal enforcement of it. Unequal protection is when the legal system offers less protection to African Americans that are victimized by whites. It is unequal enforcement because discriminatory treatment of African Americans that are labeled as criminal suspects is more accepted.
The data gathered in the Teplin, Abram & McClelland (1994) research was conducted in the Cook county jail in Chicago during a six year period, using interview techniques during the intake process of 728 inmates. They then tracked the participants over the six years by monitoring their rap sheets. What sets this research apart from the others is that they utilized the population of a jail versus a prison. Typically, once in prison, the time spent there is long whereas in jail, the incarceration time is usually much shorter as the inmates are in jail for lesser crimes or are awaiting trial. In any case, there is a larger turnaround and more opportunity to obtain diverse long term data.
Dir. Steven Spielberg. By Brian Aldiss. Perf. Haley, Joel Osment and Jude Law.