Incarceration In State Prisons

African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at more than 5 times the rate of whites on average. For example in Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate for African-Americans. Approximately 4.6% of all African-American males in Oklahoma are incarcerated compared to of only 0.9% white males. In California 1 out of every 22 African-American adult male is in state prison. The racial disparity is greatest in the category of drug arrests and indicates institutional discrimination against African-Americans. It is hypothesized in some of the literature that for less serious crimes police may exhibit greater discretion at the point of arrest and judges may deviate from the constraints of the law which allows other factors to enter into their
In 1973 approximately 300,000 people were incarcerated today more than 2.3 million are imprisoned. The vast majority of that huge increase of imprisonment is due to the War on Drug. About 2/3 of the increase in the federal prison population is due to drug offenses. For state prisons 50% of the increase is due to drug offenses. Most of the war on drugs has been waged in poor African-American communities. Although studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at about the same rate African-Americans have been explicitly targeted and arrested. Some studies even suggest that white youth are significantly more likely to deal in illegal drugs. This is supported by the fact that White youth have about 3 times more drug-related visits to the emergency
Former President Nixon’s chief of staff admitted that the key was to devise a system to blame African-Americans for crime and thus the drug war was used to push and promote racial politics. However, the war on drug was never intended to end the availability of drugs or to decrease drug dealing and subsequently drug crime. Behind the drug on war was a huge money machine. Federal funding was distributed to those agencies that made the most drug arrests. Thus the incentive was not to reduce the crime rate but to get it going at the same rate. Another big benefit was that any cash, homes or cars seized from drug suspects fell into the hand of the state who could keep it for their own use. The results were devastating: people of color were arrested en masse for relatively minor, non-violent drug offenses. Most arrests were for drug possession and only 1 out of 5 was for sales. The 1990’s saw the most increase in mass incarceration and almost 80% of the increase was for the less harmful marijuana possession. Sadly the literature review shows that in many respects African-Americans are doing no better than during the times of Martin Luther King when after his assassination an uprising took place in the bigger cities. Today approximately 25% of African-Americans live below the poverty line about the same as in 1968. The racial dimension of mass incarceration in the United