American History Criminalization: Racism and Mass Incarceration
This American history research paper reveals such pungent topics for college students as racism and mass incarceration. In America, the land of the free, more people are behind bars than there are living in the city of Philadelphia and Dallas combined. Our criminal justice system focuses on a “tough on crime” approach instead of adopting a “smart on crime” agenda, which in turn results in the over incarceration of particular groups of people for minor or no offenses, whom are disproportionately Black and Latino men. Since the founding of our nation, the methods used to police Black communities have been used in a way that criminalizes versus maintaining public safety. This isn’t new, but are the systems that were meant to be starting since the beginning of slavery. To actually repair the damage that was done, America must transform the way it has always thought about punishment and rehabilitation and abolish the racial inequalities that have come to define the country’s criminal justice system.
To truly understand criminalization, one must realize the inherent biases in our nation’s criminal justice system, and the lasting effects of slavery. In 1619, four hundred years ago from the year 2019, was the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Approximately, twelve million Africans were stripped from their native land, bonded in chains, and brought to America not “Yearning to be free”, but as slaves. Fast-forward to1657, fifty years after Africans were enslaved and transported to the United States, Virginia became the first colony to pass a fugitive slave law. The Fugitive Slave Act was a statute which effectively criminalized runaway slaves in pursuit of freedom from bondage. The Fugitive Slave Act legally allowed slavecatchers and law enforcement alike to criminalize black people for trying to escape bondage.
In 1865, after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, although enslaved African’s were free, vagrancy laws were in place to effectively maintain the new population and control the narrative of Africans in a free society, which consequentially wasn’t painted in a pretty color. Now the African Slaves identity of being “docile & sub servant” to its master was quickly replaced with the physique of danger. Black men were depicted in America’s pop culture and political conversations as rapists of White women, who’s “goal” is undermining White racial purity through “Black Contamination”. This perception of Black men as rapist, did not stop in government, but being replicated into films such as Birth of a Nation. This cinematic image of Black men plays a role in the racial biases and false interpretation of Black men being criminal.
Many of the racial biases and false interpretations are systematically woven into the criminal justice systems policies. Rhetoric during the “War on Drugs”, police misconduct with “Stop & Frisk”, and the thinly veiled racial politics of “Law and Order” are all a part of the way the approach to policing has taken place. During the 1970’s and 1980’s was when the tough on crime approach began. The criminal justice system moved towards maximizing the number of people sent to prison. Prosecutors began to charge more people with more crimes, charged felonies instead of misdemeanors, and recommended longer sentences. Legislators enabled mass incarceration with mandatory minimums, the elimination of parole and other forms of early release, and reduced investments in alternatives to prison. Programs that focus on reducing economic and racial inequalities were sidelined, and now America locks up more people than the rest of the industrial world combined.
In context, in the State of Delaware, African Americans make up 23% of the general population, but are 60% of all the states prisoners. About 2.8 million children in the United States (1 in 28) have a parent behind bars, up from 1 in 125 just a quarter-century ago. More than 1 in 9 African American children has an incarcerated parent, a rate that has quadrupled in the last 25 years. While Delaware has made important progress in the recent past, our state remains a national and even global leader in mass incarceration. Delaware incarcerates at a higher rate than the United States as a whole and at a rate higher than any of its neighboring states.
Each day that a person spends in prison unnecessarily is a social and fiscal failing of our nation’s policy. Instead of unnecessarily locking people up, our criminal justice system should be keeping our communities safe, treating people fairly, and using fiscal resources wisely. America’s criminal justice system disproportionately targets and traps people of color through over-policing, charging decisions, the criminalization of poverty, implicit bias among officers of the law and officers of the court, barriers to reentry and countless other systemic policies and practices. In order to find solutions to bridge this gap of a high prison population, addressing the racial bias in our criminal justice system must be done first. Ending the era of mass incarceration means dismantling the approaches that came to define criminal justice since the arrival Africans in 1619. Addressing racial bias means shining a light on the disparities that have gone unchecked for far too long and taking the steps necessary to change the systemic shortcomings that fuel those disparities.
