News > August 16, 2004

Prison in the Cards

Many black men face a rough new rite of passage

By Silja J.A. Talvi

The future of the young black man?

According to two recent research studies, the path that awaits young, undereducated African-American men is more likely to lead them to prison than anywhere else.

In fact, with the expansion of the nation’s sprawling prison industrial complex since the 1980s, things have gotten far, far worse for black men everywhere.

Consider that in 1954—the year that the Supreme Court weighed in favor of desegregation with their Brown v. Board of Education decision—an estimated 98,000 African-Americans sat behind bars. Today, that figure stands at 884,500, or nine times the number of black men and women incarcerated at the advent of the Civil Rights movement.

Given current trends, one of every three African-American men born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. According to the authors of The Sentencing Project’s recent report, “Schools and Prisons: Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education,” the situation is largely attributable to the War on Drugs, particularly the grossly disparate crack and powder cocaine federal sentencing guidelines. Despite a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation to fully eliminate such sentencing differentials, these guidelines have been supported by both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Imprisonment is now so common for young men of color that it serves as a veritable rite of passage. And no community has been as badly impacted as African-American inner city neighborhoods, leading to a phenomenon that many sociologists have begun to call the “mass incarceration” of young, low-income black men.

“American society loses the contribution of those men going to prison, in their roles as parents, workers, and citizens,” says Professor Bruce Western, professor of sociology at Princeton University.

Along with University of Washington sociology professor Becky Pettit, Western recently co-authored an extensive research study, “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration,” which was first published in the American Sociological Review. Their study, conducted over a period of several years, demonstrates conclusively that African-American men are now more likely to end up in prison than to earn a bachelor’s degree or even serve in the military.

“I think the findings also indicate an institutional failure,” says Western. “The idea of universal rights of citizenship, social membership, is a central part of American political culture, yet mass incarceration has systematically limited the full participation of low-education black men in American society. Democracy and civil society are diminished and that is a collective loss.”

Pettit and Western’s dramatic findings further demonstrate that fully 60 percent of African-American male high-school dropouts born between 1965 and 1969 ended up doing time in prison by 1999.

These statistics cannot simply be reduced to notions of overt or subtle racial prejudice in arrest, sentencing and incarceration rates, says Western. Access to opportunities plays a key role.

In fact, when Pettit and Western analyzed Census 2000 data, they found that while racial inequalities in imprisonment rates continued at exactly the same exorbitant rate, class and education inequality had become the more significant marker of the American mass incarceration trend. Based on Pettit and Western’s analysis, the lifetime risks of imprisonment for all men roughly doubled from 1979 to 1999, but nearly all of this increased risk was experienced by those who never make it to college.

“Virtually the whole burden of the prison boom has fallen on those with just a high school education,” Western notes.

The Bush Administration has taken a do-nothing approach to the fact that the imprisonment of underprivileged African-Americans has reached epidemic proportions.

On July 23, President Bush stood before the Urban League’s National Convention in Detroit and lauded the diversion of additional funding to federal prosecutors, before asserting that “progress for African-Americans … depends on safe streets.”

The only mention of prisoners during the President’s speech related to the fate of the more than 600,000 men and women who are released from prison each year. “Let’s make sure we’re the country of the second chance,” President Bush told the crowd, without mentioning how his administration would rectify the federally-instituted denial of student loans, public housing, or welfare to any person convicted of a drug crime. (Most states still have such bans in effect, although some legislatures have taken minimal steps to ease the plight of ex-offenders.)

The White House spin, in this regard, seems to be working. Even in this crowd of seasoned civil rights supporters, President Bush’s comments were met with a strong round of applause.

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• Reader Comments

  This article seems well intended, however; wouldn’t it be more beneficial to identify why young black men get themselves into this situation in the first place. Poverty, lack of education, lack of two parent households, etc. are all possible reasons, but I can find just as many kids that grew up under the same conditions that do not get into trouble. To talk about the inequality in sentencing only diverts the conversation. The fact that you are being sentenced, shows that we are already behind the 8 ball in discussing a solution.

  Posted by John on Aug 16, 2004 at 2:32 PM

  Poverty, single parent household, lack of education, etc. have a role in crime, however there are significant numbers of poor uneducated whites in the drug culture yet the prison population doesn’t reflect this.  Whites refuse to face the reality of why so many Black males are incarcerated, which simply is modern day Jim Crow.  The “War on Drugs” is completely focused on people of color.  Inequality in sentences is not to divert the issue, it IS the issue.  Statistics show a larger portion of the white population use, abuse, sell, and participate in drug activity.  It is also shown that Blacks/Latinos are many times more likely to be stopped, searched, and arrested via profiling.  It’s also a given that sentencing on first and repeat offenders is stiffer for nonwhites.  So, while a disproportionate percentage of the Black race is in prison, if criminal justice were equal, just as large a percentage of the white population would be incarcerated.  Prison rehabilitation is a joke, and obtaining employment even worse being an ex-con, so a vicious cycle begins, which will only worsen crime rates for the future.  The prison industry is a growth industry, and who better to target than the underclass, particularly the least empowered?  SWAT teams don’t bust in doors in some parts of town where I live.  The “raids” are conducted in the poorest, usually Blackest, part of town.  Stats show Black incarceration for drug offenses is 20 times that for whites with equal or greater drug law violations.  I know it’s a tired refrain, but true, it’s racism.  One might even think a quiet, socially acceptable form of genocide.

  Posted by elita rr on Aug 16, 2004 at 9:28 PM

  Ever since white America began importing millions of African slaves to unjustly enrich herself she has intentionally mistreated those slaves and their descendants.  Today in 2004 Afro-Descendants do not enjoy equal job opportunities, equal housing opportunities, equal health opportunities or equal justice under the law.
  The U.S. government which has always been owned and controlled by very wealthy Caucasians has been exploiting Afro-Descendants for such a long period of time that it takes for granted its power to do so.
  However, the wheels of justice are finally catching up with white America.  By continuing to practice ethnocide and forced assimilation against Afro-Descendants, the USA is blatantly violating U.N. Covenants.  Sufficient evidence has been presented by African-American activists to merit the U.N. placing a Reparations Sanction upon the guilty U.S. government. 
  Why can’t white America see the handwriting on the wall?  Because long-term arrogance has deluded her into thinking that she can get away with centuries of mass murder and exploitation.  When a wicked nation’s rulers repeatedly claim that the economy is strong and getting stronger, even though it has a $7 trillion dollar debt, even though 9 million citizens are unemployed,even though 42 million have no health insurance, and even though it is waging unjust catastrophic wars based on lies, then we are justified in concluding that those rulers are leading their own people straight into hell.
  Considering the massive impact of the lingering effects of plantation slavery and current institutionalized racism which are converting many Black and Brown inner cities into killing fields, when self-deluded Caucasians blame most of the suffering of Afro-Descendants on the victims of white oppression they are confirming to civilized nations around the world that the USA is the worst human rights violator on the planet.
  Sincerely,
  Malik Al-Arkam
  www.AllForReparations.org

  Posted by Malik Al-Arkam on Aug 17, 2004 at 5:35 AM

  Equality in the prison system does not fix the problem for young black men. Let us imagine that there was no disparity between whites and blacks in the prison system and by population, the numbers were proportionate. That does not lesson the number of blacks being incarcerated. My point is, we need to fix the problem that puts young black men in the position that they would even go to prison, rather than equalize it by putting more whites in to catch up.

  Posted by John on Aug 17, 2004 at 7:35 AM

  Malik, get over it already!!! Black Americans are the richest group of “Africans” in the world. The slave trade was a horrible stain on our country’s history, but we need to move on in order for us to achieve.

  Posted by John on Aug 17, 2004 at 7:38 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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