Statistics of incarcerated African-American males

Researchers have been analyzing statistics on the incarceration in the United States of African-American males as to age, location, causes, and the impact on children. Approximately 12–13% of the American population is African-American, but they make up 35% of jail inmates, and 37% of prison inmates of the 2.2 million male inmates as of 2014 (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014).^[2][3] Census data for 2000 of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States revealed a wide racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeded the proportion among state residents in twenty states.

According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, and have nearly six times the incarceration rate of whites.^[4] A 2013 study confirmed that black men were much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than white men, but also found that this disparity disappeared after accounting for self-reported violence and IQ.^[5] An August 2013, Sentencing Project report on Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System, submitted to the United Nations, found that "one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime".^[6][7]

Statistics

The statistics for African-American males shows that one out of three black males will be arrested and sent to prison during their lifetime, and that between the ages of 20 to 34 one out of nine will be in prison.^[8][9] The rate of imprisonment in some portions of the United States is particularly high, with Oklahoma holding the highest overall black incarceration rate and the Sentencing Project noting that "In eleven states, at least 1 in 20 adult black males is in prison."^[8] In 2014 the U.S. Department of Justice found that the majority of male prisoners aged 30 to 39 were black (6%), a marked increase in comparison to Hispanics (2%) and Caucasians (1%) in the same age range.^[10] Maryland has a prison population that’s 72 percent black.^[11]

Incarceration by race and ethnicity

Prison vs. college

Several studies have concluded that overall, more black males are in prison than are enrolled in colleges and universities. In 2000 there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college versus 1980, when there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college. In 2003, according to Justice Department figures, 193,000 black college-age men were in prison, while 532,000 black college-age men were attending college. On an average day in 1996, more black male high school dropouts aged 20–35 were in custody than in paid employment; by 1999, over one-fifth of black non-college men in their early 30’s had prison records.^[13]

Other studies contradict this, see NPR Are There Really More Black Men In Prison Than College?.

According to Antonio Moore in his Huffington Post article, "there are more African American men incarcerated in the U.S. than the total prison populations in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined." There are only 19 million African American males in the United States, collectively these countries represent over 1.6 billion people.^[14]

Leading causes of incarceration for African American males

In 2015, 58% of African American males currently serving sentences of one year or more were sentenced for a violent crime. Only 15% were incarcerated for a non-violent drug offense. www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/64. One of the main reasons for a disproportionate amount of African American males in prison has to do with the war on drugs which was a result of a tough on crime approach created by policymakers in the 1980s. The growth in the U.S. prison population is attributable to “tough on crime” policies and legislation, mainly the passage of strict drug laws at the federal and state levels.^[15] As a result, thousands of African Americans have been imprisoned and served longer sentences. Additionally, studies show that Black men are 5 times more likely to commit crime compared to their white counterparts, and 10 times more likely than Asian Americans.^[16] Low income urban neighborhoods that are predominately black or latino are heavily policed and they are searched by the police.^[17] "The drivers of racial disparities include biased decision making in the criminal justice system, poverty, education outcomes, unemployment history, and criminal history."^[18] There is also racial biases that affects judges in the criminal justice system when judging African Americans.^[19]

See also

• African-American family structure#Black male incarceration and mortality
• African-American organized crime
• African-Americans and recidivism
• Felony disenfranchisement#United States
• Incarceration in the United States
• Innocence Project
• Sentencing Project
• Race and crime in the United States
• Race and the War on Drugs#African American Communities
• Racial profiling in the United States

References

Bibliography

• Bruce Western (2002): The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality. American Sociological Review, Vol. 67, pp. 526–546 (http://scholar.harvard.edu/brucewestern/files/western_asr.pdf)
• Miller, Jerome G. (1993). African American Males in the Criminal Justice System. 
• Boothe, Demico (2007). Why are So Many Black Men in Prison?. Full Surface Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9792953-0-0. 
• Othello Harris; R. Robin Miller (2006). Impacts of Incarceration on the African American Family. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-2597-9. 
• Pettit, Becky (2012). Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress. Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 978-1-61044-778-2. 
• King, Wilma. African American Childhoods: Historical Perspectives from Slavery to Civil Rights . Wilma King. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
• Gordon, Jacob U. (2004). The Black Male in White America. Nova Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59033-757-8. 
• Alexander, Michelle (2013). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-819-7. 
• Roberts, Dorothy E. (2004). "Social and Moral Cost of Mass Incarceration in African American Communities" (PDF). Pennsylvania Law School. 
• Miller, Jerome G. Search and Destroy: African-American Males in the Criminal Justice (PDF). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-74381-5.