A Cradle to Prison Pipeline for Children of Color – Color of Law

(Note: The following commentary was originally written for the Progressive Media Project)

For millions of poor children, failed by their families, the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system, a life of prison awaits them. Prison is the only universally guaranteed program for children in America, the study notes, as America increasingly criminalizes its youth, and spends nearly three times as much per prisoner as it does per student. This, in a country with 2.3 million prisoners, the world’s largest inmate population, and more prisoners than China, a nation that has four times as many people as the United States.

And those who are incarcerated are disproportionately of color, products of a society that has neglected and marginalized them. Children of color are more likely to be placed in programs for mental retardation, placed in foster care, more likely to be suspended, left back a grade, and drop out of school. And youth of color, 39 percent of the juvenile population, are 60 percent of incarcerated juveniles, according to the report.

A black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime. A Latino boy has a one in six chance. Today, as a result of unfair drug laws and draconian sentencing, failing schools and a lack of opportunity, 580,000 black men – many of them fathers – are doing time in state and federal prisons, while only 40,000 graduate from college each year, an astonishing statistic.