Disproportionate Minority Representation in American Prisons
Arielle Warner
English 122: English Composition II
Instructor Nancy Segovia
29 September 2014
In contemporary American society, the Black male has become a disproportionate representation of what it looks like to be a criminal. In an era in which the concept of “colorblindness” and “equal-opportunity” are supposed to reign supreme, why is it that our African American males are being disproportionately represented in our prison populations? This gross over representation of African Americans in the American prison system is contributed to by the disparity in punishment between whites and blacks, the War on Drugs and the passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act …show more content…
Referring to an article from the Law & Society Review (2001) “using data from Maryland, we find that African Americans have 20% longer sentences than whites, on average, holding constant age, gender, and recommended sentence length from the guidelines…Furthermore, judges tended to give longer sentences (relative to those recommended by the guidelines) to people in the part of the guidelines grid with longer recommended sentences (who are disproportionately African American) than they gave to people in the part of the grid with lower recommended sentences” (Bushway, S.D., Piehl, A., 2001). African Americans are incarcerated at 5.6 times the rate in which whites are incarcerated in the United States, a country which has the highest percentage of citizens behind bars (Atwell, M., 2012). While African Americans tend to receive harsher punishments and longer sentences than their white counterparts, this disparity in punishment can fall under warranted and unwarranted reasoning. For example, factors such as criminal history, and crime severity would be regarded as warranted reasoning for harsher punishment, whereas factors such as race, gender, and other factors that have nothing to do with legal …show more content…
The War on Drugs “was conceived by politicians with a coded racist agenda and enforced through a biased strategy…which ensures that those ensnared in the police net will be disproportionately poor, male, and members of minority groups” (Atwell, M., 2012). Furthermore, the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act changed the sentences for powder and crack cocaine to make a 1 to 100 distinction between the two, meaning that the possession of 5 gram of crack triggered a five-year prison sentence, whereas 50 grams of powder cocaine was needed to trigger the same five-year sentence (Garrison, A. H., 2011). Because the War on Drugs focused on drug offenses that were occurring within the inner cities, rather than on college campuses or in businesses, more African Americans were criminalized due to the fact that they were more highly represented within the inner cities. Furthermore, the disparity between the sentences of crack verses powder cocaine greatly contributed to the longer sentences of African Americans due to the fact that crack cocaine was a less expensive version of cocaine and was therefore more prominent within poorer communities which tended to be predominantly African American. Although the War on Drugs and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 aimed to reduce the amount of
Arielle Warner
English 122: English Composition II
Instructor Nancy Segovia
29 September 2014
In contemporary American society, the Black male has become a disproportionate representation of what it looks like to be a criminal. In an era in which the concept of “colorblindness” and “equal-opportunity” are supposed to reign supreme, why is it that our African American males are being disproportionately represented in our prison populations? This gross over representation of African Americans in the American prison system is contributed to by the disparity in punishment between whites and blacks, the War on Drugs and the passing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act …show more content…
Referring to an article from the Law & Society Review (2001) “using data from Maryland, we find that African Americans have 20% longer sentences than whites, on average, holding constant age, gender, and recommended sentence length from the guidelines…Furthermore, judges tended to give longer sentences (relative to those recommended by the guidelines) to people in the part of the guidelines grid with longer recommended sentences (who are disproportionately African American) than they gave to people in the part of the grid with lower recommended sentences” (Bushway, S.D., Piehl, A., 2001). African Americans are incarcerated at 5.6 times the rate in which whites are incarcerated in the United States, a country which has the highest percentage of citizens behind bars (Atwell, M., 2012). While African Americans tend to receive harsher punishments and longer sentences than their white counterparts, this disparity in punishment can fall under warranted and unwarranted reasoning. For example, factors such as criminal history, and crime severity would be regarded as warranted reasoning for harsher punishment, whereas factors such as race, gender, and other factors that have nothing to do with legal …show more content…
The War on Drugs “was conceived by politicians with a coded racist agenda and enforced through a biased strategy…which ensures that those ensnared in the police net will be disproportionately poor, male, and members of minority groups” (Atwell, M., 2012). Furthermore, the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act changed the sentences for powder and crack cocaine to make a 1 to 100 distinction between the two, meaning that the possession of 5 gram of crack triggered a five-year prison sentence, whereas 50 grams of powder cocaine was needed to trigger the same five-year sentence (Garrison, A. H., 2011). Because the War on Drugs focused on drug offenses that were occurring within the inner cities, rather than on college campuses or in businesses, more African Americans were criminalized due to the fact that they were more highly represented within the inner cities. Furthermore, the disparity between the sentences of crack verses powder cocaine greatly contributed to the longer sentences of African Americans due to the fact that crack cocaine was a less expensive version of cocaine and was therefore more prominent within poorer communities which tended to be predominantly African American. Although the War on Drugs and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 aimed to reduce the amount of