Incarceration In America

The whole world saw the movement for the abolition and civil rights that ended the institutions of slavery, lynching, and legalized segregation of African-Americans (Blacks) in the United States. Although, in reality, modern and more indirect mechanisms for carrying out systemic racism and all its economic underpinnings have emerged. We see a shift from legalized racism, backed up and standardized by the law and legal systems, to a more “informally” adopted style of racism. In this version of racism, African-Americans are subject to unequal protection of the laws, excessive surveillance, extreme segregation, and neo-slave labor through incarceration, all in the name of crime control (Brewer, R., & Heitzeg, N. 2008). This paper reveals the …show more content…
2008). The war on drugs is said to be responsible for this level of black incarceration, producing incarceration rates that “defy gravity and continue to grow even as crime rates are dropping.” (Zimring, F. 2001) By the year 2004, for every 100,000 Americans, there were 699 in prison; the highest incarceration rate in the world (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004). However, the gap between black and white incarceration rates, has deepened with the rising inmates numbers (Roberts, D. 2004). The year 2002 saw a sheer number of African Americans behind bars. Of the two million inmates in U.S. jails and prisons, black men (586,700) outnumbered white men (436,800) and Hispanic men (235, 000) among inmates with sentences of more than one year (Roberts, D. 2004). Blacks are about eight times more likely to spend time behind bars than White. Although Whites have a higher rate of illegal drug use, 60% of offenders imprisoned for drug charges in 1998 were black. Drug offenses accounted for 27% of the increase in the number of African-American state prisoners in the 1990s, compared to a 14% increase for Whites (Roberts, D. 2004). The rhetoric of color-blind racism would have us believe that this situation is the unfortunate result of disproportionate Black participation in crime. This …show more content…
These properties included both wives, and children, but most lucrative property of all, slaves (Brewer, R., & Heitzeg, N. 2008). However, the economic and political interests of the slave states were too dependent on the rising trades. It took the armed resistance of slaves and radical abolitionists to push the issue into conflict. The criminal justice systems begins to play a new and crucial role here (Brewer, R., & Heitzeg, N. 2008). Angela Y. Davis (2003), traces the initial rise of the penitentiary system to the abolition of slavery. Davis notes that, “in the immediate aftermath of slavery, the southern states hastened to develop a criminal justice system that could legally restrict the possibilities of freedom for the newly released slaves” (p. 29). Laws were passes that echoed the restrictions associated with slavery and criminalized a range of activities if the perpetrator was Black. The 13th Amendment - “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States”—contained a dangerous loophole: “except as a punishment for crime.” This allowed for the conversion of the old plantations to penitentiaries, and this, with the introduction of the convict lease system, permitted the South to continue to economically benefit from the unpaid labor of Blacks (Brewer, R., & Heitzeg, N. 2008). The criminal justice system provides a convenient

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