Poverty in African American Communities and the Criminal Justice System.
Hello, everyone! As promised, this post will end my discussion on the racial disparities that affect African Americans in the criminal justice system. I must apologize for uploading this post so late. My final exams have been creeping up on me and I have been spending most of my time preparing for them.
In my last post, I discussed how members of the criminal justice system, from police officers to judges, to prosecutors are influenced by stereotypes and racial bias that compel them to impose harsher sentences on those of African descent. As I mentioned, this disparate treatment means that more African American children are left parentless, having to grow up without familial role models to help them differentiate between right and wrong. As a result, these children often grow up and end up in the same situation as their parents, for the simple reason that no one was there to teach them otherwise. Before I go into further detail, I would like to make it clear that I do not believe such situations are exclusive to African Americans. However, the disparate treatment that African Americans face in the justice system means that more African American children are adversely affected by their parents being incarcerated.
Today, I wish to discuss how communities of color being disproportionately affected by extreme poverty is a key factor in the perpetuation of crime by people of color. When former President Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, and when the 13th Amendment was passed into law, many hoped that slavery would fade into history, and with it the problems that slavery caused. Unfortunately, that was far from the case. Racial discrimination still very much existed in the United States–it was just exhibited more subtly. Slavery ultimately became racism, and many sought to maintain the racial barrier that was created by slavery. The resultant outcome of such efforts was that a large number of African Americans were driven into poverty, and relegated to poor, unsafe neighborhoods. This trend continues today–many African American families are confined to poorer neighborhoods where formal employment opportunities and quality education are scarce. While I have not personally traveled through such neighborhoods frequently, movies and television shows paint a saddening picture of them.
Poverty and a lack of quality education are shown to be factors that hold a major influence in neighborhoods with high crime levels. According to an evidence brief by the Vera Institute of Justice, researchers have found higher levels of crime in poor urban neighborhoods, independent of race. In fact, the brief maintains that when white men live in a neighborhood that is characterized by poverty, unemployment, and single-parent households, they are more likely to commit crimes than black people in similar conditions.
Unfortunately, higher rates of poverty in African American communities mean that they are exposed to factors that are likely to lead to crime at greater rates than their white counterparts. This, combined with laws that are racially disparate and members of the justice system that hold racial biases, means that African Americans are arrested and convicted for certain crimes at much higher rates than other ethnicities. As discussed above, these disparate rates of arrest and conviction have devastating effects on African American communities.
Harvard Professor Elizabeth Hinton, in the Vera evidence brief, writes that parental incarceration is common for African American children now. In turn, these children grow up lacking parental support, which often leads to behavioral issues and low educational achievement. These factors are drivers of poverty, which simply perpetuates the vicious cycle of disparate African American incarceration. The issue that causes the most damage is that a criminal record often figuratively cripples a person’s chance for successful re-entry into society. Employment is hard to find, and many banks will refuse loans for a house or a car to a person with a criminal record. This greatly increases the chance that a former criminal will relapse into crime, simply because they have no other choice. As with other situations, the disparate treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system means that African American communities are often damaged the most over this.
Through this three-part series, I have tried to provide an introduction to the racial disparities that continue to plague our criminal justice system. After doing some research, it has become exceedingly clear to me that these disparities have devastating effects on one of the most prevalent ethnicities in the United States. Entire communities can be shattered because their members are arrested for crimes that they might not have committed. While I am proud to say that racism is being gradually eradicated in the United States, the current status quo cannot stand. The criminal justice system is one of the pillars of American society–if we cannot trust the system that keeps the American population safe, we risk Americans becoming mistrustful of the government as a whole, a recipe for anarchy. This issue must be fixed.
Once again, thank you to everyone who has read this post. As always, I have linked my source to the bottom of the post, and I would highly suggest reading it if you wish for some more information on this topic. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will do my best to address them. Thank you!
https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/for-the-record-unjust-burden-racial-disparities.pdf
