Dana pointed to the stats on women in prison released today in the Times. But far more shocking in that report were the stats on racial disparities in our prison system. The study, conducted by the Pew Center on the States, found that one in 15 black adults is in jail. Among young black men between the ages of 20 and 34, the number in prison reaches a rate of one in nine.
This dovetails interestingly with another report released this week by the Eisenhower Foundation, which found that black Americans are still significantly disadvantaged in terms of income, education and other measures of well-being. The poverty gap between blacks and whites is 24 percent, and blacks are three times as likely to live in extreme poverty. The study also found that school integration has declined in the past 20 years. In the 1980s, 37 percent of black students attended mostly white schools; today 27 percent do.
The USA Today piece on the Eisenhower report digs up Heritage Foundation senior policy fellow Robert Rector to negate the impact of the report, who argues that the it ignores that a major cause of poverty is single-parent homes. But part of the reason there are a number of single-parent homes is that American society has locked up a full 11 percent of young black men.
It's hard not to see a relationship between the two reports. American society doesn't provide the same economic and social opportunities to its black members as it does whites, thereby increasing the rate at which black Americans to wind up in jail because of drugs and other non-violent crimes. Not to mention the sentencing disparities that put more black people behind bars for longer periods of time while their white counterparts often get more leniency.
The more young black men we put (and leave) in jail, the less they're able to contribute to their family or community, perpetuating a vicious cycle. Even when they're released from prison, we don't often give them meaningful ways of reconnecting with society and push them further to the margins. States spend an average of $23,876 a year to keep someone in jail, and not much of which is used to curb recidivism rates. Wouldn't that money be better spent on programs that address these continuing societal disparities and give young black men and women better opportunities?
--Kate Sheppard
