American Corrections and sentencing trends

Increasing awareness of the US's unsuccessful mass imprisonment experimentation has effected federal and state level modifications aimed at decreasing the nation's detention scale. Experts and policymakers have been suggesting "smart on crime" public safety strategies which support alternatives to imprisonment and decrease re-offense chances[footnoteRef:1]. Despite simultaneous fruitful bipartite dialogues on the subject of decreasing jail populations and bringing improvements to crime justice policies, the nation still struggles with disturbing racial frictions. The latest concern concentrates on frequent reports of law enforcement violence inflicted on non-Whites, some cases ending in fatalities of African-American males at the hands of law enforcers, with scant to no evident provocation. In this paper, the many fields in which racist values and traditions continue in the current era will be examined, with particular emphasis to the American corrective and penalizing system. [1: Hon Bill de Blasio, and City Hall. "Re: Mass Incarceration: Seizing the Moment for Reform." (2015)]

The vast network of American lockups and secure units houses, at present, nearly 2 million individuals, of whom over 70% are non-Whites[footnoteRef:2]. It is a seldom admitted fact that the quickest growing prison group is that of African-American females, while Native Americans constitute the biggest population per capita. Roughly 5 million individuals (which include individuals on bail and probation) are under the direct observation of the nation's crime justice system. [2: Ibid]

Thirty years back, the incarcerated population stood at roughly 1/8th of its size at present. Although females continue to make up a fairly small share of detained individuals, the current number of imprisoned females in the state of California alone stands at roughly two times the countrywide female prisoner population reported in the year 1970. Elliott Currie claims prisons are growing into such a menacing presence within US society as has never been felt before, anywhere across the world's industrialized democracies. Apart from key wars, mass imprisonment is the most comprehensively executed governmental social initiative of the current age.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Elliott Currie. Crime and punishment in America. (Macmillan, 2013).]

For delivering up groups ordained for gainful sentencing, jailhouses' political economy banks on racialized presuppositions of criminality (including pictures of African-American welfare moms giving birth to criminals) and discriminatory practices in the trends of detaining, convicting and sentencing. Non-White bodies make up the chief human resource within this massive experiment for eradicating the key social issues of the present age. After stripping away the air of magic from the incarceration solution, bloodsucking capitalist profit, racism, and class bias remain. Jails' industrial system ethically and materially weakens inmates, consuming the societal wealth necessary for dealing with the very issues which have resulted in an escalation in the prison population.

With prisons occupying increasingly more presence on the societal landscape, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and other such governmental initiatives which have earlier attempted at reacting to societal wants are being wiped out. The decline of the public education system, which includes prioritization of safety and correction over academic learning within public schools situated in underprivileged areas, is associated directly with the prison "solution."[footnoteRef:4] [4: Cassia Spohn, "Race, crime, and punishment in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." Crime and Justice 44, no. 1 (2015): 49-97.]

Relentless racial inequalities have, since long, remained the focus of criminological studies, with scholars agreeing to the existence of inequalities. The many explanations offered for the aforementioned inequalities extend from differences in offending on the basis of race to prejudiced decision-making within the crime justice system. This includes multiple elements at the individual level, like penury, joblessness, offending history and education outcomes[footnoteRef:5]. Studies into this domain reveal relatively little unjustified disparity for major crimes such as homicide as compared to smaller offences (particularly drug offences). [5: Supra note 1]

The efforts of Alfred Blumstein in this field, which encompassed an exploration of racial disparities in apprehensions and a comparison of these with prison demographics, established that around eighty percent of the prison inequality in state inmates in the year 1979 was accounted for by differential crime by race, with the remaining twenty percent left unaccounted for[footnoteRef:6]. The author observed that in the absence of discrimination following apprehension, inmates' racial composition ought to approximate arrestees' population. The biggest quantity of unaccounted-for variation was witnessed in case of drug crimes: almost fifty percent of inmate racial differences in individuals charged with drug crimes couldn't be accounted for by apprehension. A follow-up research by the author demonstrated that the share of racial differences in jails accounted for by apprehensions in the year 1991 had reduced to seventy-six percent[footnoteRef:7]. Succeeding researches replicated the above work, with newer information, revealing even greater unaccounted-for variations, especially in drug seizures. [6: Alfred Blumstein. "Racial disproportionality in prison." In Race and social problems, pp. 187-193. (Springer New York, 2015).] [7: Ibid]

One of the problems broached by Blumstein's line of attack is: the employment of apprehension records to reflect criminal participation is perhaps more precise in case of serious crimes as compared to less serious ones. In case of the latter, authorities can exert more discretion during apprehension. Studies into causes for sentencing demonstrate that in case of relatively minor offences, judges may deviate from legal constraints, enabling the entry of other factors into their decisions[footnoteRef:8]. Such factors may include types of racial prejudice associated with sensed racial threat. In spite of the potential of not accounting for all variations, researches which depend on incident self-reporting instead of police intelligence for circumventing these possible issues also indicate unaccounted-for racial differences. [8: Jeffery Ulmer, Noah Painter-Davis, and Leigh Tinik. "Disproportional imprisonment of Black and Hispanic males: Sentencing discretion, processing outcomes, and policy structures." Justice Quarterly 33, no. 4 (2016): 642-681.]

Examinations of latest facts all arrive at comparable conclusions: the nation is unable to account for a generous share of racial differences in prison by criminal offenses. A few studies concentrate on one state only whereas other researches examine all states separately and observe their disparity range. Researches examining regional disparities in states are informative as well[footnoteRef:9]. Researches into county-level disparities in the domain of juvenile justice results discovered that individual-level properties do not singlehandedly impact outcomes. Rather, the minor's residential community composition also plays a role. Researches attempting at better understanding procedures between apprehension and incarceration, especially at the sentencing phase, have been engaged in for acquiring a better grasp of the unaccounted-for discrepancies in state detention centers. [9: Richard J. Stringer, and Melanie M. Holland. "It's not all black and white: A propensity score matched, multilevel examination of racial drug sentencing disparities." Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice 14, no. 4 (2016): 327-347.]

Study findings record prevalent racial differences in state incarceration, and clarify the fact that in spite of increased public awareness of mass imprisonment and a small deal of moderate success in achieving decarceration, ethnic and racial inequalities continue to be a significant aspect of America's prison system. The following three recurring justifications for racial differences arise out of several researches into the subject: procedures and policies driving disparity; the impact of inherent prejudice and typecasting on the decision-making process; and, structural weaknesses of non-White communities linked to elevated crime and apprehension rates.

Formal as well as informal systems and policies bind the US crime justice system, impacting how far individuals can penetrate the system. Race has a potential part to play at several junctures within the system. Inequalities grow with individual progress across the system, right from the apprehension (starting point) to the incarceration (final point) stages[footnoteRef:10]. Unforgiving punishment policies implemented of late, of which a few were enforced even following the advent of the criminal decline, constitute the chief reason for the historic growth in incarceration in the last four decades. [10: Besiki L. Kutateladze, Nancy R. Andiloro, Brian D. Johnson, and Cassia C. Spohn. "Cumulative disadvantage: Examining racial and ethnic disparity in prosecution and sentencing." Criminology 52, no. 3 (2014): 514-551.]

Severe drug regulations are a clear key contributor to the relentless ethnic and racial differences witnessed within state prisons. Variations for drug offences are particularly great, chiefly because non-Whites are almost 4 times as prone to being apprehended for such offenses as whites, and around 2 1/2 times as prone to apprehension for having drugs in their possession[footnoteRef:11]. The above figures are in spite of proofs of almost identical rates of drug consumption by blacks and whites. Between 1995 and 2005, blacks made up roughly 13% of drug consumers, but accounted for thirty-six percent of drug apprehensions and forty-six percent of individuals charged as guilty of committing drug offenses. [11: Rothwell, Jonathan. Drug offenders in American prisons: The critical difference between stock and flow. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2015).]

Variations are apparent at the first interaction with law enforcement officials, particularly via policies targeting particular individuals and localities. One common example of the above is the stop-and-frisk practice. The extensive discretion accorded to law enforcers has the potential to exacerbate disparities. While police stop-and-frisk operations alone aren't likely to lead to convictions ending in imprisonment, individual criminal history is linked to the decision of imprisoning for any crimes that follow, a succession of events which works to the detriment of African-Americans. Studies in this sphere indicate that law enforcers' choice of which individuals to stop within New York's prominent policing initiative was governed more by the locality's racial makeup than by its actual crime rate.[footnoteRef:12] The stop-question-frisk process founded on police suspicion of furtive conduct (which is the explanation given for several stop-and-frisk activities) has resulted in unneeded criminal cases on thousands of individuals. In the year 2013, this policy of New York was declared to be unconstitutional with a Floyd v. New York City ruling. [12: Eric T. Schneiderman, NYS Attorney General, and Civil Rights Bureau. "A report on arrests arising from the New York City Police Department's stop-and-frisk practices." New York State Office of the Attorney General, New York (2013).]

Views individuals hold regarding ethnicities or races other than one's own contribute significantly to crime justice outcomes. A plethora of studies reveal that beliefs regarding public safety threats and dangerousness overlap with people's personal views of non-Whites. Proofs exist of racial prejudice exerting a significant adverse effect on penalty preferences in white individuals but greatly less so in case of African-Americans.[footnoteRef:13] Other studies illustrate that important justice system decision-making authorities' presumptions affect outcomes biasedly. For instance, in analyses of pre-sentence reports, researchers discovered that non-whites are often meted out severer sanctions as law enforcers deem them to be bigger threats to society and consequently worthy of more stringent penalties and social control. Survey information shows that irrespective of participant race, they used the words "criminal;", "aggressive", "dangerous" and "violent" for describing Blacks.[footnoteRef:14] [13: James D. Unnever, and Francis T. Cullen. "THE SOCIAL SOURCES OF AMERICANS'PUNITIVENESS: A TEST OF THREE COMPETING MODELS." Criminology 48, no. 1 (2010): 99-129.] [14: Ibid]

Media depictions of crime tend to unreasonably distort it by concentrating on reporting serious offenses and offenses perpetrated by non-Whites, particularly violent African-American-on-white crimes. As most members of society claim their views on crime are based on the news, such distortion directly feeds into their criminal policy preferences[footnoteRef:15]. Media reporting reforms that ensure more careful and accurate representation of the actual incidence of particular offenses, victims and criminals would alter outlooks on crime. However, these, in themselves, wouldn't essentially affect the translation of the aforementioned outlooks into policy preferences. [15: Supra, note 10]

Researchers from Stanford University, in their 2013 research, discovered an actual rise in support for more stringent penalties with increased societal awareness of prison racial inequalities.[footnoteRef:16] By utilizing an experimental study design, they subjected respondents to information on racial makeup. Where incarceration centers were labelled as having a larger share of African-Americans, participants seemed to support more stringent criminal policies which added to such inequalities. Meanwhile some observed that when people, particularly practitioners, were consciously familiarized with their innate prejudice in inherent bias training sessions, workforce diversification and training on key distinctions between overt and hidden bias, this could alleviate or even eliminate the decisions they otherwise took on the basis of unexplored suppositions. [16: Rebecca C. Hetey, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt. "Racial disparities in incarceration increase acceptance of punitive policies." Psychological science (2014): 0956797614540307.]

Another justification for the relentless racial variations within state prisons resides in non-whites' structural disadvantages much before their run-in with the crime justice system. Here, inequalities seen in incarceration trends are partly related to unequal social factors within Black communities, linked to destitution, accommodation, employment, and familial differences[footnoteRef:17]. Besides race, there are other factors that explain crime variations across place. Blacks make up a disproportionately high proportion of individuals dwelling in poor communities and localities in which numerous socioeconomic susceptibilities lead to greater crime rates, especially violent offences[footnoteRef:18]. Indeed, sixty-two percent of Blacks live in extremely ghettoized, inner town localities which are exposed to considerable violent crimes, whereas most white members of society dwell in "highly privileged" urban localities exposed to minimal violent crimes. [17: Supra, note 10] [18: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.]

The effects of structural disadvantages commence from childhood. If one looks at juvenile offences, one will be able to note that it isn't essentially that non-White youngsters tend to be drawn more to delinquency than whites, but that, right from the outset, the unbalanced playing field which forms part of the wider American society generates inequalities linked to which individuals ultimately perpetrate offence and which ones are prepared to abstain from offending[footnoteRef:19]. To put it in more specific terms, owing to structural class and race differences, non-white youngsters will more likely face unsteady family systems, community or family violence, higher school dropout possibility and higher unemployment rates. All the aforementioned factors have greater likelihood of existing within non-white communities and contribute to individuals' tendency of perpetrating crime. [19: Ibid]