Taylor Faison

English 102

Dr. Wynne

17 March 2017

Mass Incarceration and Criminalization

Discrimination against minorities have been going on for centuries. Minorities are

convicted of a crime just because of the area they live in. The U.S.has the highest

incarceration rate.Criminalization of African Americans and the mass incarceration of the

race, which is a form of modern day slavery. African Americans are questioning if they

are even safe within their own country. In order to figure this out, four questions must be

considered:

1. What are peoples perception of a criminal?

2. What is incarceration?

3. Are African Americans the only ones committing crimes?

4. Are African Americans daily lives affected by the image of what a

criminal is?

The following questions will help answer the reasoning behind incarceration the

validity of it and how African Americans are treated because of the image given to them

of being a criminal. This is dated all the way back to slavery were black slaves were

arrested for minor things. They said that negro men was a threat to white women. The

film Birth of a Nation goes in depth about the process of the start of how they depicted

this image of African Americans especially males as monsters(The 13th). The war on

drugs is a good example of this because it was really just used to throw black people in
jail.

What is incarceration?

As mentioned earlier, people usually judge people based off their appearance.

When at a local store and two males walk in one white and one African American more

than likely the African American is getting watched closer as they move throughout the

store. Incarceration is the state of being confined in prison; imprisonment. The

incarceration rate is the indicator represents the number of prisoners in state prisons per

100,000 population at the end of the calendar year. The count of total state prisoners

covers only those who are in a state confinement facility and are sentenced to a year or

longer. So for the U.S. to have the highest as well as it being the highest it has ever been

is a problem. More than 2 million people are incarcerated in U.S.prisons as well as local

and county jails. 1 in 3 black men in the United States will go to prison or jail if current

trends continue. An average of 5 million people are under state or federal supervision in

the form of probation or parole. A more-than-2.4-million-prisoner-sized problem, to be

precise, locked up in the archipelago of federal penitentiaries, state corrections facilities,

and local jailhouses that form the nation's thriving prison-industrial complex, (Grace

Wyler).

What are peoples perception of a criminal?

To determine if incarceration has an effect on African Americans we first need to

know how do people feel criminals look like? The term criminal means a person who has

committed a crime. Criminalization of African Americans and the mass incarceration of

the race. We live in a world the system is controlled by racial and social. Blacks are

treated and looked at as criminals because of their skin tone. There is a process by which
people are swept into the criminal justice system, branded criminals and felons, looked

up for longer periods (Michelle Alexander).

After conducting a survey of 25 people and I came to the conclusion that more

than 60% of people feel as if minorities in general are targeted especially black males. A

lot of people feel as if you go to an area predominately white you are already considered

suspicious. Crime came from the work sinfulness in mid-13c from an old french crimne

(12c.,Modern French crime). The view of a criminal is directed towards African

Americans and this has been going on for ages.

Are African Americans the only ones committing crimes?

There are statistics that prove the mass incarceration of African Americans. A new

study shows a large disparity between imprisonment rates for African-Americans, whites

and Hispanics. The study, published by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that

advocates criminal justice reform, looked at incarceration rates for ethnic groups in every

state, using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In state prisons, African-Americans

are incarcerated at 5.1 times the rate of whites. So no African Americans are not the only

ones committing crimes but they are highly targeted.Five states Iowa, Minnesota, New

Jersey, Vermont, and Wisconsin, have a disparity of more than 10 to 1. Twelve states have

prison populations that were more than half black: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois,

Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South

Carolina, and Virginia (Shiley CNN). Average rate of incarceration by race and ethnicity,

per 100,000 population according to Bureau of Justice Statistics (See Figure 1).
Figure 1

The study cites three major reasons for the disparity: policies and practices such

as harsh sentences for drug-related crimes that disproportionately affect African-

Americans; implicit racial biases that affect judges; and structural disadvantages that

affect African-Americans before they enter the criminal-justice system. For a society

that considers itself to be fair and just and hold these values ... it forces us to question

whether were really abiding by that value system, (Ashley Nellis). It is obvious that

they are quicker to lock up minorities no matter whether they are guilty or not. For

example Trayvon Martin an innocent teen just casually walking but because he was black

and had on a hoodie he was shot and killed. He was considered a criminal which is why

he was followed because of him being African American but was he really a criminal? No

cause in order to be a criminal you would need to commit a crime in which he didnt.

Are African Americans daily lives affected by the image of what a criminal is?
 Black kids face a whole universe of problems that their white counterparts

don't.Freddie Gray was just 25 when he lost his life after a brutal encounter with

Baltimore police. Twenty-five is way too young for anyone to die, but the odds were

stacked against Gray from a much younger age. Black children as young as 11 and

sometimes even younger are targeted by law enforcement, through school referrals that

have them standing in criminal courts at rates that far outpace white children (Terrell

Jermaine Starr ) Raising a black child in 2017 means preparing him or her to bear the

impact of racism in all of its forms, starting with hyper-disciplining in schools to hyper-

policing by the criminal justice system. If they survive all that, they have fewer economic

and employment opportunities once they reach adulthood. AlterNet put together a list of

issues that black children face; white kids, not so much. First issue was that black

children are much more likely than white children to be suspended and expelled from

school. Children start enrolling in preschool between the ages of 2 and 5, and even at

those tender ages, black kids begin being suspended disproportionately. Though black

children make up just 18 percent of preschoolers nationwide, they account for nearly half

of out-of-school suspensions, according to a 2014 U.S. Department of Education report.

Black students overall make up just 16 percent of public school enrollment but 42 percent

of suspensions and expulsions. Another issue that was made was black children are

hyper-policed at far higher rates than white children. In a report released in last week, the

Center for Public Integrity found that 27 percent of all school-age children referred to law

enforcement because of disciplinary issues are black, despite making up just 16 percent

of total enrollment. Virginia leads all states in overall referrals to law enforcement; 16 per

1,000 students (Terrell Jermaine Starr). Broken down by race, black kids make up more
than 25 referrals per 1,000 students in the state compared to 13.1 referrals per 1,000

students. Even states that have small black populations, like Wyoming, South Dakota and

New Hampshire, send more of their black students to law enforcement. Lastly another

issue that stood out to me was that black parents have to teach their children how to deal

with police officers. Gawker published a heartbreaking list of conversations black parents

have with their kids about dealing with police. Here is what 27-year-old Fatima, of

Boston, told her son during a Ferguson rally last year: When he went to the rally in

Boston with me, he was scared to even look at the police. That I feel a tiny bit of guilty

for, but I think he should be scared of the police. I know I am. I'm scared for him! It's a

continuous conversation for us, and I let him know that right now the police won't come

after him, and that's only because he's 7. It's only a matter of time where he can't protect

himself from the police solely because of how he looks. And it's only a matter of time

before I can't protect him either.

Conclusion

Criminalization of African Americans is a big issue that is going on within the

U.S. These are affecting the behaviors of African Americans in our community. The term

mass incarceration refers to the unique way the U.S. has locked up a vast population in

federal and state prisons, as well as local jails. But this academic sounding term doesnt

capture the insanity of the situation.Coates acknowledges most of these views, but

ultimately seems to favor the southern strategy explanation. It is true, as he notes, that

by the 1990s the resort to mass incarceration as social policy had become a bipartisan

affair. Nevertheless, a certain kind of reactionary politics got the ball rolling that is, a

reaction to the emancipation of Black people after 1965, the relatively lower
incarceration rates for blacks living in the Jim Crow South up until the 1960s a region

effectively, in Coatess words, a police state as far as African Americans were

concerned testifies to this. As civil rights spread in the South and black self-assertion

spread in the North, politicians in both regions and of both parties turned to incarceration

to assuage white anxieties and preserve racial control. Incarceration has become such a

major issue because some prisons are running out of space to place inmates. As well as

the amount of African Americans placed in jail is ridiculous.

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness.New York: The New Press, 2010. Print.

Lichtenstein, Alex. "Mass Incarceration Has Become the New Welfare." The Atlantic.
Atlantic Media Company, 16 Sept. 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.

Terrell Jermaine Starr / AlterNet. "7 Ways Racism Affects the Lives of Black Children."
Alternet. N.p., 08 May 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.

Simon, Caroline. "There Is a Stunning Gap between the Number of White and Black
Inmates in America's Prisons." Business Insider. Business Insider, 16 June 2016. Web. 17
Mar. 2017.

Humphreys, Keith. "Opinion | What We Get Wrong about Mass Imprisonment in

"The Criminalization of African American Males." NACLA. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar.
2017.