The Department of Justice reported last week that more than 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the United States. In other words, one out of every 142 people is in jail or prison – a higher rate than in any other country in the world. Quite a distinction for a government that claims to be waging war in the name of “freedom.”
Even more startling is that 12 percent of African-American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars. By contrast, 1.6 percent of white males in the same age group are incarcerated. The rate among young black men is now at its highest point on record. There are more black men in prison than in college.
As if these figures weren’t jarring enough, the Justice Department calculates that 28 percent of black men – more than one out of four – will be incarcerated at some point in their lifetime.
Some people attempt to apologize for this flagrant disparity by blaming blacks themselves. Their justifications smack of the same logic once used to defend the institutions of slavery and racial segregation.
The fundamental factor behind the higher incarceration rate is the undeniably harsher treatment meted out to blacks at every step of the so-called justice system. Study after study has shown that black drivers are much more likely to be stopped by police than white drivers under equal circumstances. Only in recent years has this longstanding reality been labeled “racial profiling.” Once stopped, blacks are more likely to be ticketed or arrested. And in the courtroom, they are more likely to be convicted and receive heavier penalties.
Of course, this involves much more than mere traffic violations. An untold number of people are serving time for crimes they didn’t commit. In recent years, thanks to the availability of DNA testing, dozens of prisoners have been exonerated of crimes for which they were convicted and, in some cases, sentenced to death. How many other cases – for which DNA evidence either isn’t applicable or has not been reviewed – have been unjustly prosecuted?
Prosecutors and police officers often cut corners – or worse – in order to “solve” crimes and secure convictions. Occasionally these practices come to light. One notorious example was the Rampart scandal in Los Angeles where a renegade cop broke the “blue wall of silence” and told of evidence planted, drugs filched from police storage and suspects brutalized and framed.
Just recently, five black youths in New York had their convictions dismissed in the 1989 rape and beating of the “Central Park jogger” after someone else admitted to the crime – and after each of them had finished serving their prison sentences.
Helping seal the fate of many black defendants is the passivity or incompetence of their court-appointed counsel. In Houston, one defense lawyer virtually made a career out of shepherding death penalty cases to conviction, while refusing to challenge questionable evidence or call witnesses who could provide exculpatory testimony.
Meanwhile, recent measures promise a continued rise in the prison population, with grotesquely disproportionate effects on blacks and Latinos. The U.S. Supreme Court just upheld California’s draconian “three strikes” law in the case of a man sentenced to 25 years – for stealing three golf clubs.
This incarceration trend is part of a broader attack on the historic, hard-earned gains of the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. The current outrageous violations of the rights of Arabs and Muslims – held indefinitely, without charges and with no access to an attorney – are yet another prong in the fork.
Lest we harbor any doubts, U.S. Sen. Trent Lott’s comments from last year confirmed that reactionary forces are still very much alive. Awareness is a crucial first step to stopping them both in their denial of rights at home and in their military aggressions abroad.
Paul Coltrin is a future graduate student in Spanish and is studying through Continuing Education. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
