The Black individual is a target for more than what they realize. The judicial system, for instance, is a definite government entity that has placed Blacks on the top of their list for extermination. Individual efforts to live an honest life have become more difficult for the Black citizen of this country considering the substandard social opportunities we face, and as a result, the stats are compiled against us.

The Harmful Impact of the Criminal Justice System and War on Drugs on the African-America Family
By James R. Lanier

The American prison population has grown at an astounding rate since 1972, from about 200,000 to more than two million. During the previous half century the incarceration rate had remained more or less steady from 1925 to 1973 at about 110 per 100,000 citizens. Now, however, America incarcerates more than 700 inmates per 100,000 of its citizens-the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized nation. This massive prison growth stems from the mania for "get tough" crime policies, especially against drug users and dealers.

Fueled by the imprisonment of nonviolent drug abusers, the extraordinary increase of incarcerated Americans has been disproportionately African-American. Today, 4,810 black males per 100,000 are incarcerated, compared to 649 per 100,000 white males.

The incarceration rate for African-American females is also alarmingly high, at 349 per 100,000, compared to 68 per 100,000 for white women. A large number of these offenders desperately need drug treatment and other social services-about 75 percent of them have a history of drug or alcohol abuse-that could help them avoid criminal activity once released from prison.

This mass imprisonment of such a large number of African Americans and Hispanic Americans also raises many profoundly troubling questions that range from moral considerations of justice to such practical matters as where will the money come from to keep this huge number of prisoners locked up.

Many of these men and women are from poor and working class neighborhoods, and their incarceration has had and will continue to have a devastating impact on them, their families and their communities for years to come.

This is particularly true in the African-American community. Although African-Americans comprise approximately 13 percent of the nation's population, black males make up more than 44 percent of the males in the nation's jails and prisons. More than 596,400 black males between the ages 20 and 39 are incarcerated.

Because that age bracket is critical to establishing one's occupational status and earning capacity, these numbers represent a tremendous loss of "human capital" to the communities they come from-a circumstance underscored by the fact that more black males are in prison or jail than in higher education: for every black male who graduates from college, one hundred others are in prison or jail.

This is a dramatic change from 1980, when there were about 463,700 black men enrolled in colleges and about 143,000 incarcerated. And now, the same disproportionate pattern is occurring with African-American females, whose rate of inmate growth has now surpassed that of males.

America has chosen to invest in jails instead of education. A recent Children's Defense Fund study found that on the average states spend three times more per prisoner than they spend per public school pupil. The Justice Policy Institute reported that from 1985 through 2000 states nearly doubled their spending on corrections, from $10.7 billion to $20 billion, an increase of 166 percent for corrections; but increased spending for higher education by just 24 percent. Now, nearly all fifty states are wracked by budget shortfalls that are in part result from an over-reliance on massive incarceration as the "solution" to the nation's crime problem.

The incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders has had a devastating effect on the African-American community. Because the lack of rehabilitation programs in prisons gives them virtually no tangible skills they can use to "go straight" when released and legitimately fulfill the roles of suitor, father, uncle, brother, and just plain "good neighbor," they can easily become estranged from their own families, whom their imprisonment has almost always left in dire financial circumstances, and from their own neighborhoods and the larger black community.

One in fourteen African-American children, or 1.5 million youth, have a parent in prison. For a growing proportion of those children-now, about 125,000-the inmate parent is their mother, many of whom are first-time, nonviolent drug offenders.

Ex-offenders are ineligible for public housing, for assistance from Temporary Aid To Needy Families (TANF), for governmental aid to pursue education, and numerous other government benefits. In addition, 1.4 million black men are unable to vote because of felony convictions. This and other "lost rights" of ex-offenders has sharply diminished the economic and political power these men, and thus, their communities, could exert if they were not disenfranchised.

America must reform the criminal justice system and penal system to make fairness a central principle of the former and make rehabilitation-an emphasis on drug treatment, the elimination of educational and vocational deficits, and family counseling where appropriate-a staple of the latter. Only then can we expect the re-entry problems ex-offenders face to be reduced and the high rate of recidivism to diminish.

African Americans, as individuals and as a community, must take a forceful leadership role in the reform movement, for it is they who have been the primary targets of the "get tough" crime policies fashioned in the decade after the civil rights victories of the 1960s dismantled the legal structure of segregation and discrimination.

Transforming the nation's attitudes about incarceration-so that the criminal justice system is used in ways that are smart, and not just "tough"-is a difficult task, to be sure. But Black America must not shirk the challenge of prison reform and criminal justice reform, for the viability of its existence is at stake.

© 2004 by Afro Staff