I thought that it was interesting tonight that Dr. Groce referred to African American males and the number and percentages of the group that are in jail. So, I became intreguied and read this article. THe word disproportionately is used to describ the # of blacks and hispanics in jail, leaving me with a couple of questions. 1) Does that mean that these groups just tend to be more violent, etc? 2) Or, (as the article seems to imply) there is just inequality in the justice system? I guess there is just the big stereotype that black men cause more trouble, gangs, etc. My one black student in my class displays qualities of one who will grow up to become one of these statistics. It is sad, but true. He thrives on being an instigator and then denying his behavior. If the data is there to prove this dilemma, what is being done about the situation? I really don;t know any way to help my student. I just see him headed to jail in the future because of his BAD attitude and behavior. ANy suggestions? He will be a statistic before we know it if there is not intervention soon.

Emily:

There is a LOT you can do. You might want to start by reading the Delpit article that is listed on the syllabus for this class for June 19. If you click on the link, you can download it. It will give you much food for thought about culture and class based behavior, both yours, and his. You can help this little one! How old is he?

About disproportionate arrests: For example, the disparity in the way people are targeted, and the disparity in sentencing for the drugs usually purchased by the wealthy, and the drugs usually purchased by the poor. Read this article, too. You will be amazed and enlightened, I think.

[quote]May 2000 Vol. 12, No. 2 (G)
UNITED STATES (Human Rights Watch).

Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs

Origins of Racially Disproportionate Arrests

To some extent, racial disproportions in drug arrests reflect demographic factors. Drug law enforcement is concentrated in large urban areas. Illicit drug use is also higher in large metropolitan areas.90 Since more blacks, proportionately, live in these areas than whites, black drug offenders are at greater risk of arrest than white offenders.91 But within metropolitan areas, politics and law enforcement priorities have determined how drug arrests would be distributed.

Within urban areas, the "major fronts" in the drug wars have been low income minority neighborhoods. With the spread of crack in the early 1980s, these neighborhoods suffered from the disorder, nuisance, and assaults on the quality of life that accompanied increased drug dealing on the streets as well as the crime and violence that accompanied the development of crack distribution systems. Dismayed residents in those neighborhoods pressed the police and public officials to "do something." But the residents' response was more than matched by the censure, outrage, and concern from outsiders that was fanned by incessant and frequently sensationalist media stories about crack, and by politicians seeking electoral advantage by being "tough on crime."92

Although crack was the least used of all illicit drugs in the U.S., and although more whites used illicit drugs than blacks (see Table 17, above), the "war on drugs" has been targeted most notoriously at the possession and sale of crack cocaine by blacks. Crack cocaine in black neighborhoods became a lightning rod for a complicated and deep-rooted set of racial, class, political, social, and moral dynamics.93 To the extent that the white majority in the U.S. identified both crime and drugs with the "dangerous classes" -- i.e., poor urban blacks -- it was easier to endorse, or at least acquiesce in, punitive penal policies that might have been rejected if members of their own families and communities were being sent to prison at comparable rates.94

Tactical considerations also encouraged the concentration of anti-drug resources in disadvantaged minority neighborhoods and the consequent disproportionate number of black drug offender arrests. Police departments point to the number of arrests as a measure of effectiveness. The circumstances of life and the public nature of drug transactions in low income urban neighborhoods make arrests far easier there than in other neighborhoods.95 In poor black neighborhoods, drug transactions are more likely to be conducted on the streets, in public, and between strangers, whereas in white neighborhoods -- working class through upper class -- drugs are more likely to be sold indoors, in bars, clubs, and private homes. "[I]n poor urban minority neighborhoods, it is easier for undercover narcotics officers to penetrate networks of friends and acquaintances than in more stable and closely knit working-class and middle-class neighborhoods. The stranger buying drugs on the urban street corner or in an alley, or overcoming local suspicions by hanging around for a few days and then buying drugs, was commonplace. Police undercover operations can succeed [in working and middle-class neighborhoods] but they take longer, cost more, and are less likely to succeed."96

Racial profiling -- the police practice of stopping, questioning, and searching potential criminal suspects in vehicles or on the street based solely on their racial appearance -- has also contributed to racially disproportionate drug arrests, although there are no reliable estimates of the number. In many locales, black drivers are disproportionately stopped for minor traffic offenses and then searched.97 Similarly, blacks and other minorities have been disproportionately targeted in "stop and frisk" operations in which police temporarily detain, question, and pat down pedestrians suspected of criminal activity. In New York City, for example, between January 1998 and March 1999, police officers made far more stop and frisks in minority neighborhoods; even within neighborhoods with primarily white populations, the majority of the people stopped were black or Hispanic.98

Other factors have also been important in increasing the relative rate at which black drug offenders are arrested compared to whites. For example, low income purchasers of cocaine buy the drug in the cheap form of single or several hits of crack. They must engage in far more illegal transactions to satisfy their desire for drugs than middle or upper class consumers of powder cocaine who have the resources to buy larger and longer lasting supplies. The greater frequency of purchases and sales may well affect susceptibility to arrest. 99

Key points:
• anti-drug police action has been concentrated in low-income non-white neighborhoods.
• Low income black neighborhoods, more transactions occur on the street, while in white working and middle class neighborhoods, transactions occur in bars, homes, etc. Much harder for the police to infiltrate.
• “stop and frisk actionsâ€

Who said that prisons look at the number of children who grew up in a single parent home to give them an idea of how many beds to have in the prison? or something like that. Or did I make that up?