This article, the first in a four-part series,
previously appeared in Znet.
Modern prisoners occupy the lowest rungs on the social class ladder,
and they always have. The modern prison system (along with local jails)
is a collection of ghettos or poorhouses reserved primarily for the
unskilled, the uneducated, and the powerless. In increasing numbers
this system is being reserved for racial minorities, especially blacks,
which is why we are calling it the New American Apartheid. This is
the same segment of American society that has experienced some of the
most drastic reductions in income and they have been targeted for their
involvement in drugs and the subsequent violence that extends from
the lack of legitimate means of goal attainment.
An argument could certainly be made that blacks, especially males,
are superfluous and expendable in American society (that is, they are
not direct contributors to corporate profits). With constant corporate
downsizing and deindustrialization during the past couple of decades
came the elimination of millions of jobs that previously helped minorities
to get out of poverty. Specific social control apparatuses have been
deemed necessary to control human frustrations in the aftermath of
diminished opportunities. The criminal justice system has been selected
as the primary apparatus to apply social control mechanisms on the
unskilled, the uneducated, the powerless and ethnic minorities.
While residential segregation continues unabated, policies that reek
of apartheid have risen alongside of it. It is apparent that the
criminal justice system has been engaged in a systematic attack on
blacks and that going to jail or prison has become a common event in
the lives of millions of racial minorities. The modern penal system
accommodates the “new American apartheid.”
The most recent imprisonment data reaffirm this. At the end of 2002,
blacks constituted 45.1 percent of the total prison population (with
an incarceration rate more than seven times greater than whites); Latinos
constituted 18 percent and whites only 34 percent. In other words,
racial minorities made up two-thirds of the entire prison population. This
is in direct contrast to the 1930s, when whites were overwhelmingly
the numerical majority of all prisoners, constituting around 70 percent
of the prison population.
Racial differences are also evident in jail incarceration rates. Blacks
have consistently been found in jail at a rate of at least five times
greater than whites during the past couple of decades. In 2002, the
jail incarceration
rate for blacks was 740 per 100,000 persons,
compared to only 147 for whites and 256 for Latinos.
It is obvious from the examination of arrest and prison data that
the groups being targeted by the criminal justice system are disproportionately
drawn from the most marginalized populations. Blacks, particularly
males, are especially vulnerable. For example, in 1995, according the
Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., about one-third of all
black males between the ages of 20 and 29 were, on any given day, either
in jail, prison, on probation or on parole, a percentage that was up
from 25 percent 1990. In some cities these percentages were even higher,
such as Washington, D.C., where the figure was about 60 percent. For
comparison purposes, data from the early 1990s revealed that black
males were far more likely to be in prison or jail than in college! In
California, in the early 1990s, blacks were imprisoned at a rate of
1,951 per 100,000, compared to only 215 for whites. (More recent figures
are not available for this age group, but see the discussion about
lifetime chances of going to prison, in Part II of this series.)
Recent studies further elaborate on the negative impact of crime control
policies on the black population. For example a study by sociologist
Bruce Western and his colleagues examined the relationship between
imprisonment (both jail and prison) and education and employment. Between
1980 and 1999, the percentage of white males from 18 to 65 going to
prison or jail increased by less than one percent (from 0.4 to 1.0);
for black men the percentage went up by 4.4 percent (from 3.1 to 7.5%). For
young adult males (ages 22-30), the percentage in jail or prison went
up by .9 percent for whites (from .7 to 1.6%), but increased by 6.2
percent for blacks (from 5.5 to 11.7%). When considering young adult
males who dropped out of high school, the percentage going to prison
or jail went from 3.1 to 10.3 among whites (up 7.2%), but went from
14 to 41.2 percent among blacks (an increase of 27.2%). In other words,
a little over four out of every ten black high school dropouts ended
up in jail or prison. (The reasons are many, but one is that many
young blacks and Latinos are introduced to the juvenile justice system
via detention at an early age. More about this in Part III of this
series.)
Moreover, among men born between 1965 and 1969, 22.3 percent of all
black men but only 3.2 of all white men had prison records by 1999. Among
high school dropouts, these percentages increased to 12.6 and 32.1
respectively. Among those with either a high school diploma or a GED,
only 4.3 percent of white men and 23.5 percent of black men ended up
in prison. For those who had at least some college, these percentages
dropped substantially: only 1.1 percent of white males and 8.6 percent
of black males had prison records by 1999. While education has an
obvious impact, the black-white differences remain high.
This same study also found that when tabulating the official unemployment
figures, the government fails to include prisoners (curiously, the
census bureau adds prisoners to many small towns around the country
and the poverty status of such prisoners are added to the overall poverty
rate for these same towns, resulting in qualifying for additional federal
funding). Western’s study also compared the employment situation for
those in and those not in prison. Not surprisingly, when they included
the imprisoned population the numbers changed dramatically for black
males. For instance, in 1999, one-third of the black male population
was unemployed (compared to 16% of the white males). Among high school
dropouts between 22 and 30, these percentages changed dramatically:
an astounding 70 percent of black males were unemployed (counting those
in prison or jail), compared to 27 percent of white males.
Having a criminal record, especially a prison record, has always been
a barrier to seeking re-entry into society. In recent years it has
become even worse, with many new laws passed in the past decade resulting
in, among other negative impacts, the denial of public housing, welfare
benefits, and the ability to obtain an education. Such laws impact
millions, for according to recent estimates; about 13 million Americans
are either serving time for a felony conviction or have been convicted
of a felony sometime in the past. Moreover, a total of about 47 millions
(one-fourth of the adult population) have some kind of criminal record
on file with a federal or state criminal justice agency.
Criminologist Jeremy Travis likens this to a form of “internal exile,” the
domestic equivalent to those convicts exiled to the American colonies
(and Australia too) during the 17th and 18th centuries. However, in
these two cases they faced few barriers to participating in colonial
life once they had served their sentence. This has become, in Travis’ words,
a form of “social exclusion.” Such exclusions have further put a distance
between “them” and “us” and, moreover, Travis notes that:
The ex-offenders that feel the heaviest brunt of this exclusion are
racial minorities. Another criminologist, Todd Clear, has pointed
out that in many urban, poverty-stricken neighborhoods as many as one-fourth
of the adult male residents are either in prison or in jail at some
time during the year.
Part of the methods of controlling the surplus population is through
legislation, which defines what a “crime” is and, moreover, through
sentencing structures, defines what crimes are “serious.” Many sentencing
structures have a built-in class and racial bias. This is especially
the case with drug laws, which have always targeted mainly the drugs
used by minorities and the poor throughout history.
The New American Apartheid
Apartheid is a policy that produces systematic racial segregation
or discrimination and is usually associated with pre-Mandela South
Africa. The word apartheid was introduced to the world by South Africa
in 1948. This term stems from the Dutch Aapart (which has the same
English connotation), and "heid" (which translates as hood). The
term was adopted to soften the image of the harsh racial segregation
polices practiced by the South African government. World attention
had focused on South Africa's segregation practices, and it was thought
that through the substitution of the word apartheid for segregation,
world attention would be diverted from their discriminatory practices. Soon
after the adoption of that term, however, the world realized that nothing
had actually changed in respect to the treatment of blacks in South
Africa.
There seems to be a pattern of contradictions by the United States
concerning what is professed to be policy direction and what is actually
supported by the U.S. government. America has always been a country
that professes to place high value on children. However, in 1989,
the United States refused to support United Nations General Assembly
Resolution 44/25, which was a product of the Convention on the Rights
of the Child. This resolution
was for the adoption of basic rights of children, such as the right
to life. As further evidence that the United States tends to differentiate
between its public posture and its global voting record, the United
States claims to be in favor of policing international criminals. Yet
America refused to ratify the United Nations’ recent attempt to create
an International Criminal Court in Rome. In fact, prior to the call
for votes, the United States requested a non-recorded vote on the matter
of adopting the Statute establishing an International Criminal Court. More
specifically, speaking to the issue of apartheid, in 1973, the International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
debated the issue of apartheid as a crime against humanity, and therefore
argued that apartheid should be treated as a crime against humanity,
an international crime. To date, the United States has not yet ratified
this resolution.
American apartheid is alive and well, as racial segregation remains
a common characteristic of virtually every of American city. Central
cities now contain 80 percent of the urban non-white population, and
one-third of the black urban population resides in the nation's ten
largest central cities. There have been symbolic attempts to reduce
racial segregation in American cities. We use the term “symbolic” because
these attempts have often been either politicized and skewed to serve
the interests of the elite or these attempts have been grossly under-funded
to insure their failure.
To illustrate, the Housing Acts of 1949, 1954, and 1965, provided
federal funding to local authorities to acquire slum property and begin
redevelopment of that property. In order to qualify for federal funds,
local governments had to insure that affordable living accommodation
would be provided for displaced families living in the redevelopment
zones. The process used was commonly known as urban renewal, and sometimes
referred to as “negro removal.” The solution was high-density public
housing. Today, these public housing projects are often referred to
as the “projects.” Raising slum areas and the construction of public
housing often resulted in an overall reduction in living accommodations. In
a study of black youth gangs in Detroit, it was noted that for that
city there was a net loss of 31,500 homes between 1980 and 1987. Today,
many blacks find themselves once again involved in a "negro removal" program – but
rather than removed from one inner city slum area to a more high-density
slum area, they find themselves removed from the inner cities entirely,
and compartmentalized in America's prison industry.
Most of the racial differences noted above, and also the dramatic
rise in overall incarceration rates, can be explained by the “war on
drugs,” which was escalated during the mid-1980s, just about the time
that the prison population started its rapid rise. Part II explores
this topic.
Click here to
read Part 2 of this series.
Click here to read Part 3
of this series.
Click here to read Part 4
of this series.
Randall G. Shelden and William B. Brown are
Professors of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas
and Western Oregon University respectively. They have written several
books on crime and criminal justice. This essay is part of a forthcoming
book on the prison industrial complex. Shelden may be contacted via
his web site: http://www.sheldensays.com. A
more detailed version of this series, including references and footnotes,
can be found on this web site.