Cesi Marseglia, Giovanni Flamini, Marissa LaSalle, CD Lefebvre

Incarnation Nation In North America Economics of RacismSpring 2016 Professors: Lisa Saunders

Education•Community Disparity and resource Cut backs

•Comorbid Diagnosed Learning Disabilities•(Reading 85%)

•Stressful Unstable Home Environment Single Parent Home

•Historical Discrimination Trends

Economic Contributions:

War on Drugs and Racial Profiling

  

SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Survey: - % of people that have used drugs during their lifetime: 49% whites and 42.9% blacks - Absolute number of black and white people that have used illicit drugs during their lifetime: 82.587.000 whites and 12.477.000 blacks.

 The American inmate population in 30 years increased from 30.000 to more than 2 million

How mass media and law enforcement use statistical discrimination and racial profiling to reinforcethe idea that African American people are more likely to be “criminal predator”:

- “Stop and Frisk Rule” and Operation Pipeline (1984): 25.000 officers from 48 states had taken advantages of this project, in which they learned how to use “consent searches” and“pretextual traffic stops” to fight the crime and investigate more people.“You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince” (cit. California Highway Patrol Officer)

- Rawls question under “the Veil of ignorance”:“Would it be rational for everyone to choose this social practice over other possible alternatives when they are ignorant ofwhere they stand in that practice?”

Humiliation is “the condition in which a person is unable to prevent appearing to others in a demeaning way”

War on Drugs and Racial Profiling

Conclusions

The Legalization of drugs and the control of the State over this particular market (now controlled by criminal organizations), will permit to increase the public revenues and to limit drug abuses. Investing the money saved in education programs, health and social subsidies, the US will be able to create a new and more equal society, reducing most of the economic gap and increasing the trust between races.

“Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it and try another. But above all, try something”  (cit. Roosevelt)

Racial Diversity of Judges in U.S. Courts

Number of African American U.S. Circuit Court Judges: 21 (11.7%)

Number of African American U.S. District Court Judges: 86 (12.8%)

“New Jim Crow”

Disenfranchisement of Black Citizens due to felony charges

Correlation to Jim Crow voting restrictions, continue to affect African American’s right to vote

War on Drugs

1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (“PRWORA”) imposed a denial of federal benefits to people convicted in state or federal courts of felony drug offenses.41 The ban is imposed for no other offenses than drug crimes, and its provisions subject individuals who are otherwise eligible for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (“TANF”) benefits to a lifetime disqualification that applies in all states unless the states act to opt out of the ban through legislation.

Criminal Sentencing, Incarceration, Racism, and Employment in MA - “For males, the most common races for criminally sentenced new court commitments were- White (41%), followed by Black (30%) and Hispanic (28%).

- For females, the majority of new court commitments were White (75%), followed by Black (10%) and Other (8%)

- As of July 1, 2014, White non-Hispanic people made up 74.3%, Black non-Hispanic people made up 8.3%, and- Hispanic people made up 10.8% of the population of the state of Massachusetts.

- Black people, particularly, make up only 8.3% of the Massachusetts state population, - but make up 40% (men and women combined) of the criminally sentenced population in Massachusetts.

(McDonald et. al., 2015)

Criminal Sentencing, Crowding, and Unemployment

• Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI), Open and sealed

• Tax credits, anti-discrimination laws, and Flexibility

• Lack of Employability

• Criminal Sentencing and Educational Attainment

• Unemployment statistics in MA (2009-2013):

Men: Hispanic: 14.3% Asian: 7.4% Black: 16.5% White: 9.0%

Women: Hispanic: 14.1% Asian: 8.8% Black: 15.0% White: 6.6%

• Bates’ and Fusfeld’s Crowding Hypothesis

Racism, Unemployment, Recidivism, and Feedback

“The overall three-year reincarceration recidivism rate among the 1,786 males released from the DOC in 2002 was 39 percent.” (Kohl et.al. 2008, 1)

“Property offenders had the highest recidivism rates (57 percent).”

“Additionally, blacks recidivated at a significantly higher rate than other races.” (Kohl et.al. 2008, 1)

“Inmates released for the first time had lower recidivism rates than those who had a prior parole or probation violation(and had been ‘rereleased’)”

Feedback

“Inmates released for the first time had lower recidivism rates than those who had a prior parole or

Questions: Questions:

1) What types of social services or programs could be implemented, through educational rehabilitation, for example, to change incarceration and recidivism rates in the U.S.?

2) What sorts of race-specific policy changes could be enacted to prevent people of color, specifically, from being targeted, incriminated, and re-incriminated by law-enforcement and within the judicial system in the first place?

3) What end goals could these policy changes be working toward?

Works Cited

.Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New PressFellner, J. (2009, June19), Race, Drugs and Law Enforcement in the United States, Stanford Law and Policy ReviewKohl, Rhiana, Hollie Matthews Hoover, Susan McDonald, and Amy Solomon. "Massachusetts Recidivism Study: A Closer Look at Releases

and Returns to Prison." The Urban Institute. April 2008. Accessed April 12, 2016. http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/411657-Massachusetts-Recidivism-Study.PDF

McDonald, Susan, Nicholas Cannata, Amanda Longton, Gina Papagiorgakis, Courtney Eaves, Hollie Matthews, Eva Yutkins-Kennedy, and Daniel Feagans. "Prison Population Trends 2014 - Mass.Gov." Massachusetts Department of Correction Prison Population Trends 2014. April 3, 2015. Accessed April 8, 2016. http://www.mass.gov/eopss/docs/doc/research-reports/pop.

Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Russell, K. (2002). The Racial hoax as crime: the law as affirmation. In S. Gabbidon, & H. Greene, African American classics in

criminology and criminal justice (pp. 349-376). Thousand Oaks,CA: SageMcDermott, Kathryn.(2015) "The Elementary and Secondary Education Act at Fifty: Aspirations, Effects, and Limitations.

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 1, no. 3 (December 2016): 1-29.Massachusetts’ School-To-Prison Pipeline, Explained." Learninglab. Accessed April 21, 2016.

http://learninglab.wbur.org/topics/massachusetts-school-to-prison-pipeline-explained/.