The Prison System and its effects on the African American Male

The Prison System and its effects on the African American Male The United States has been reported in 2006 as the country with the most prisoners . According to a report released by the US Justice Department , there are approximately two million people behind bars . Of these , more than half are African Americans with about one million men and women believed to be part of the mass incarceration of blacks in the country (Vicini 1

How does this significant number of incarcerated African Americans affect the black communities ? What are the difficulties that

an incarcerated African American have to face in prison and eventually out of prison ? What is the impact of the prison system on the African American males

Racial Bias in African American Incarcerations

For the past two decades , there has been an intensive effort to combat drug abuse in the United States . It was reported that the largest number of arrests done since the 1980s have been drug offenses (Lurigio 1 Thus , a number of studies on disproportionate incarceration of African Americans are drug-related

Human Rights Watch (HRW , in its article "Incarcerated America released on April 2003 , showed that although there are only 12 .32 blacks in the United States , 43 .91 of all state and federal inmates are black . Of all drug offenders in state prisons , 63 are blacks and 26 are below 18 years old . HRW further reports that blacks are twenty to twenty-five times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than whites (Human Rights Watch 1

Manning Marable , Professor of History and Political Science and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies Columbia , supports the statistics presented by HRW as to the "pattern of racial bias " existing in the prison system of the United States . In his essay "Racism , Prisons and the Future of Black America " he presented findings by the US Commission on Human Rights that there is really a disproportionate incarceration against blacks (Marable 1

Marable mentioned that the treatment of white and black juveniles , for instance , is "radically different " The US Justice Department found in its study that of all white youth offenders , 66 are sent to juvenile courts but only 31 of black youth offenders are taken there . A significant number of black youths are tried in adult courts and sent to adult prisons . He also mentioned the disparity between the number of days that white youth offenders stay in prison and that of black youth offenders . It was cited that on the average , white youths are in prison for 193 days while blacks stay there for 245 days (Marable 1

Prison Industrial Complex

Along with the rise in the number of offenders being sent to prisons is the need for more prison facilities . This need led to what experts call the "Prison-Industrial Complex " This concept has been given different shades of meaning but its textbook definition is that it refers to different sectors that do business in correctional facilities . However the impression created...