Evaluating Causes of Mass Incarceration

Exploring related issues including race, violent crime, poverty, and their relations.

Introduction: the Highest Prison Rate in the World

The United States incarcerates more of its own than any other nation on Earth. In fact the United States incarcerates people at a rate five or six times higher than China. The stained legacy of incarceration in the United States is an abject failure that has ravaged communities and led to more poverty, more crime, more addiction, and less resources to manage them. This paper will explore important variables related to mass incarceration, using and expanding upon an important essay by James Forman Jr. It is now more important than ever to understand the phenomenon of incarceration in the United States, as this country prepares to deal with the ramifications of locking up a generation, and sits on the precipice of doing it again. 

The Issue of Mass Incarceration: Multiple Variables

Mass incarceration has been explored through multiple variables, including race, a war on drugs, a war on poverty, and a multitude of overlapping explanations. What is important is that none of these variables exist in complete isolation, and certain variables seem to play a dominant role. Race, the effects of violent crime, and class disparities are three vital variables for understanding mass incarceration. 

Race

Mass incarceration in the United States has been hypothesized by many to be a new form of oppression, predominantly targeting indigenous people, people of color, and the poor. This is where the analysis will start, uncovering the importance of understanding the importance of race and incarceration. 

The end of the civil war marked the passage of the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” and gave way to the era of Jim Crow, a segregated south, and a form of oppression that could rival slavery in its abuse and exploitation. Following the decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas (1954), the percentage of black people in prison has risen to higher rates than ever before. According to data from the Sentencing Project in 2021:

• Black Americans are 5-times more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans;

• In California and several other states, black people outnumber white people 9-1 in custody;

• In Wisconsin, for example, 1 of every 36 black people is in prison. 

Charting the History of “the New Jim Crow”

When considering race and its role in crime, John Forman Jr., an author who has considered this topic extensively, invites readers to look back at a few moments in history. Jim Crow was a response to deconstruction of the racialized south, and a means for the dominant race to maintain power over the freed slaves. Thus, scholars and activists look at the response to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s as the birth of the New Jim Crow movement. Richard Nixon appealed to the racist ideas of many voters when he ran for president in 1964: he was certainly not the last to appeal to these notions, associating not-arbitrarily, black with criminality. 

The growing rate of people of color incarcerated has led many to label this trend the “new Jim Crow.” Scholars including Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, noted that mass incarceration shared many tenants of Jim Crow: namely relegating people of color to second-rate citizens through the classification of “criminal,” through criminal records. In addition to the rise in criminal records, the Jim Crow analogy is useful in understanding how young black men became inherently suspect, as they fit people’s idea of a “criminal.” This led to profiling, harsh punishments at school and the formation of the school-to-prison pipeline. In short, the era of mass incarceration brought a ripple effect even to those not imprisoned, but who were assumed by the color of their skin to be suspicious and in need of police surveillance. 

 Race And New Jim Crow: Understanding the War on Drugs

The primary form of crime that can be likened to the New Jim Crow era is drug crime. It is undeniable that non-white people have suffered the most from punitive drug control. The removal of parole, the creation of mandatory minimum sentences, and the sentencing disparities between crack and powdered cocaine were tools utilized to over-police certain people and allow certain groups to avoid draconian punishment. In order to understand the aspect of racialization of the mass-incarceration system that has done harm to many communities, the New Jim Crow is a useful and important analogy. This particular aspect of the criminal justice system has disproportionately affected people of color, opting for punishment and over-policing in this regard. So, to climb out of the punitive drug era, there must be a re-evaluation of these disparities, and a robust effort to move toward rehabilitation and harm-reduction as a means of managing the drug crisis.

Violent Crime: Broadening the Variables

The importance of Forman’s review of the New Jim Crow is that he considers the race dimension in drug crime, but notes that there are more variables to consider than race and racism in the context of other crimes. In regards to drug use, white and black people use at similar rates, creating the understanding of the race factor in sentencing disparities. However, people of color are arrested for murder at rates 7-8 times higher than white people (arrests for murder are the most accurate, least biased arrest data); robbery arrest rates for people of color are ten-times higher; people of color are also overwhelmingly the victims of such crimes. Inter-racial violent crime has led to important considerations in the move toward the tough on crime policy, because it was driven in a non-racialized manner. 

In 2006, half of the 1.3 million people in state prison were in for violent crime. Current discussions around mass incarceration frequently ignore the impact of violent crime, an important contribution to punitive sentencing. The NAACP, in response to quadrupling crime rates between 1959-1971, demanded more police and tougher sentencing laws. The victims of violent crime included children who felt unsafe at school, families caught between shootouts, and young men being pushed into gangs for protection. With young black men suffering egregious levels of violence, their communities insisted on tough crime laws as a push to lower violence. 

The Issue Is Suffering Communities

Forman is correct in setting aside race for a moment to consider the impact of crime, and the call for tough on crime responses to violent crime. He notes that the view that crime is merely a new form of Jim Crow ignores the reality that there are many real victims of crime, and it was people of color, with their own agency, calling for punitive responses to violence. Was it the right solution? Not necessarily, but no other solution was offered.

Thus far race has been a key tenant of the mass incarceration movement. Too infrequently, however, is poverty considered, particularly in an isolated format. Forman argues that in order to fully understand mass incarceration, poverty and the need to overlook race are important as well. 

Ignoring Class Struggle “Obscures” the Issue of Crime

One-third of the people incarcerated in the United States are white: of this group, like the people of color, they are overwhelmingly poor. This is important, for as Forman notes, for the issue of race is far less significant than it was in the era of Jim Crow when compared to class. For instance, in the era of Jim Crow, he notes, people of color were denoted to second class status regardless of their economic position, education, or any other factor. Now, the people of color who are subject to mass incarceration are those who are predominantly poor, with the middle and upper classes being spared. 

African Americans who drop out of high school are the most likely to be incarcerated, by a staggering margin:

• 59% of African Americans who drop out of high school will go to prison;

• 5% of African Americans with some college experience will go to prison;

• White people who dropout of high school are 10-times more likely to go to prison than those with some college experience. 

One of the most important points Forman makes, that is essential to understanding mass incarceration, is that class and the privilege associated with it, mitigate racial disadvantage.

The Relationships and Separations of Race, Crime, and Class

The racial dimension of crime has been well documented, particularly in the era of the war on drugs. In this regard, there is no question that people of color were disproportionately targeted by drug enforcement and punishment. In regards to violent crime, communities of color have been ravaged by violent crime for decades, calling for tough on crime responses and an increased police presence. Perhaps most importantly, poverty is exacerbating the conditions for violence, drug use, and crime in general to flourish. 

Where there is poverty, there are higher rates of crime. This is well documented, and the absence of schools, activities, community structures, role models, and community more generally have all been associated with increased crime. Race is not absent from this, because many communities that have high populations of people of color or immigrants have historically been neglected; therefore Forman’s premise to separate race and class may be modified to include instances where past racism has impacted modern economic conditions. In this, there may be evidence of why there is more violent crime in these communities. One possibility is more crackdowns for drug trafficking in black communities led to more power vacuums, which exacerbated violence. But what is clear is this: class, along with intersections of race, the drug war, and violence are four of the key variables driving mass incarceration. 

The Path Away From Mass Incarceration Includes Multiple Variables

The Damage From the War On Drugs

As the United States sits on the precipice of another war on drugs, the previous damages are still being felt. Entire communities, particularly those of color, were ravaged by drug warriors who swept through their communities. Sentencing disparities caused those with crack cocaine to suffer the bulk of the mandatory minimums, leaving families motherless and fatherless for decades. 

Repairing this damage will be no easy task. Drug addiction rates have risen rather than fallen; communities are destitute and entrenched in poverty, with entire generations lost to the prison system. Harm-reduction strategies for managing drug addiction are slow to reach these communities, and violent crime is still a major issue for many of these communities. It is possible that more tough-on-crime waves will land in these cities before any relief. 

What can serve as reparations for the harm caused in the war on drugs is a robust investment in the schools and activities for youth, in addition to a response to violent crime. In many neighborhoods, amenities and schools are not safe to travel to without protection, with schools in districts noting they have to bus children only a few blocks in order to avoid the children being seduced by gangs on their way to school. In short, children must be lifted from their experience in multi-generational poverty, while being protected from the very real impact of violent crime. 

Reducing Violent Crime

Reducing violent crime is not something to be isolated, either. Reducing violent crime involves a multi-generation investment in youth and safe housing, to offer them alternatives to needing to react violently for protection, or to join gangs where rivalries lead to violence. It is important to note the connections between historically racist policies, lack of employment, jobs, and housing that all come together to make certain communities more vulnerable to violent crime than others. In many communities where violent crime is rising, it doesn’t matter the quality of the schools or parks, if they are unsafe to attend. Police can play a role in this, but more work needs to be done to reduce violent crime holistically in order to mitigate more waves of tough-on-crime policy. 

Class

There is no other variable that appears to be affecting crime more than class. Those with opportunities are succeeding, those without opportunities are incarcerated. Regrettably, it is that simple. There are always exceptions, but the data on this does not lie. Just as people of color have suffered from multiple eras of colonialism, slavery, and 2 eras of Jim Crow, the poor have found themselves increasingly relegated to second-class status. 

• People who are poor are the most likely to be drug-addicted;

• People who are poor are the most likely to be victims of violent crime;

• People who are poor are the most likely to drop out of school;

• People who are poor are the most likely to be incarcerated; 

• Those who have family members incarcerated are the most likely to be poor. 

Conclusion

This paper seeks to understand the issue of mass incarceration, exploring multiple variables and their contributions. Forman’s work provides important considerations for the issue of race, both in its importance to the war on drugs, and in how it obscures other issues regarding mass incarceration. He discusses how class and violent crime have had deep effects on mass incarceration, which this paper supports, while pointing out how race plays a historical role in both class and violent crime as well. Mending communities that have been impacted by the war on drugs is vital. Reducing violent crime is of utmost importance to its many victims, although violent crime itself is exacerbated by the aforementioned issues, namely poverty. These issues are connected and can inflame one-another; the only path forward will address them together.