American incarceration is not a problem with consequences that have been levied evenly across gender and racial lines. Even though they are only 6% of the U.S. population a mere 19 million people counting children, African American males make up nearly half of all American prisoners (with a total of around 800,000 people imprisoned). This represents a 500% increase in the number of Black men behind bars since 1980.
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The immense gap in levying of punishment plays a major role in our social decision of who is prone to criminal behavior, even before an act is ever committed. It effects who gets stopped and frisked allowing an officer to find their common possession level drug crime, and who does not. Who is seen as integral to the home as a parent and given probation, and who is not. Who is seen as safe, and who is not. Effectively, who is seen as a valuable part of our society, and who is deemed expendable. Imprisonment inequity is one of the foundational pillars of the American mass incarceration model. In a growing sense fairness for all seems more illusory than actual.
Part of the issue is our incarceration system is now burdened with quotas built into many private prison agreements with state governments. As shown in the piece, “Prison Quotas Push Lawmakers To Fill Beds”
Far from the exception, Arizona’s contractually obligated promise to fill prison beds is a common provision in a majority of America’s private prison contracts, according to a public records analysis released today by the advocacy group In the Public Interest. The group reviewed more than 60 contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments across the country, and found language mentioning quotas for prisoners in nearly two-thirds of those analyzed … Private prison corporations emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when crime rates were soaring and states were scrambling to keep up with surging prison populations. Lawmakers needed quick alternatives, and looked to private prisons as an overflow valve to house inmates who were overcrowding the existing state systems.
But as state prison populations have started to decline in recent years, advocates point to occupancy guarantees as long-term obligations that raise core questions about who benefits from the service: the state, or the prison contractor?
The problem is as a society we don’t commit enough crimes to service the prison population numbers that states agreed upon in these contracts. How did we get to the place we are at now? Where effectively, it has been deemed the lives of young Black men are the sacrificial lamb to cover the shortfall in these contractual prison debts that are now due.
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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/antonio-moore/the-fallout-from-american_b_7919712.html