Mass Incarceration

MASS
INCARCERATION
OF AFRICAN
AMERICANS

Table of Contents
1. Mass incarceration
2. Convict Lease: Stemming of Free Labors
3. Mary Turner: The free labor crusader
4. Industrialized prison system
5. Social impact of mass Incarceration
6. Pseudo drug war against African Americans
7. Wrongful allegations: Texas Town putting people
wrongfully behind the bars
8. CIA alliances with Drug Cartel in Panama
9. Targeting Blacks: Involvement of Political Leaders
10. Private Prison as a big business opportunity
11. Private Prison business Expansion:
12. Steps to Curb the Mass Incarceration and subtle
Racism.
13. Sources

Mass Incarceration
Racism, slavery and discrimination are the three systems which have
been considered legally recognized, socially accepted and culturally
essential in the past, but in the new world order, they are accursed taboo.
What once used to be a symbol of prosperity and richness is now the
ugliest blots on the rich canvas of the history of the greatest nation on the
earth, the United States of America. This social evil has for long plagued
the otherwise rich culture of Americans and it was something so deeply
immersed in the roots of American culture that the very idea was potent
enough to spark a rebellion, not a street fight or a mutiny, but a
wholesome military civil war breakout. We all know the story, how the
good old honest Abe finally rose above the system through the military
prowess over the confederates, the story like we know it all. So far, it is
believed to be a thing of the past. Of course, we made progress with
leaps and bounds. There has been so much going on and around the
world that we have forgotten those scars of the past. The African
American community seems to have been incorporated in the mainstream
culture. They too have equal rights, and living as a multicultural diverse
nation, we are flourishing as a single nation united under the ever
watchful eyes of our benevolent God.
That seems to be the story, and if our culture was remotely anything like
a fairytale. But the sad part is, nothing in this world is good or bad. There
is nothing like perfect black or white. We live in the grey world, and in the
shadows, there is a lot more going on and under than we can see, that we
can really comprehend. However bitter it may sound, it is the harsh truth
that in the world where there are a million shades of grey there is still a
subtle trace of racism that discriminates the black and the white.
It has been said that the history tends to repeat itself, and the form of the
modern slavery is as legally regulated and accepted like it used to be in
the past. It is not a secret that mass privatization and the capitalist model
of economy is prevalent in our country, and there has been a lot going
around the premises which we fail to analyze. In a capitalist system
where the poor are exploited and the corporate are leeching the life out of
the people. Obviously in the strata of economic dominance, there are the
forces of dark corporate houses, the big guns who are pulling the strings
behind the curtains and they have an ace under their sleeves: mass
incarceration.
Mass incarceration became a raging media hype in the beginning of the
October 2013. It became an evident term, something that made the
headlines, rocked the air charts and there were countless stories and
opinion articles over this prevalent practice. It is fascinating that nobody
ever really batted an eye when the private prisons began to imprison a

multitude of people in the 1980s, but everyone began to lose their minds
when the low tides became a tsunami of mass destruction. It was hardly
ever a process that happened out of the blue overnight. Rather this
malpractice was a result of a complex scheming which involves corporate
lobbying, crony capitalists and prominent corporates which made this
modern of enslavement a rather flourishing industrial enterprise.
Revealing the statistics and analyzing the complexity behind the new form
prison industry, here is a profound study aiming to cover and illuminate
the insights of perhaps the most horrifying and the inhuman ugly face of
the fascist corporates of the world’s greatest Economy.

Convict Lease: Stemming of Free Labors
It is inhuman to take advantage of the oppressed people in the society
and exploiting them economically, but what is worse than this is inhuman
and helpless torture of those who cannot fight back, and taking advantage
of their social vulnerability and using them to meet your end’s way.
There existed a system of the penal labor code which was after all the
slaves were made free from the confederate unions. The fall-out and the
loss faced by the Confederate states at the end of the American Civil
War in 1865 had its after effects reverberating throughout the governance
system till 1880, whose final nail in the coffin of tyranny was hammered,
thereby officially delivering the final blow in the last state of Alabama, in
the year 1928. Though the entire labor system was expected to be
abolished, but it is difficult to uproot the entire plot that had its
foundations running strong from the ages.
Since the abolition of slavery made the African Americans tower over their
masters as they had their social and financial status alleviated, their
warlords had laid sinister plans to make up for their losses in the war.
Though they cannot practice slavery as it was punishable by law now,
they found themselves a fresh new batch of victims, and still managed to
exploit them racially with it.
The new laws of the penal labor code forced the convicts to work for the
private stake holders and big time corporations. It is notable to quote the
verse from the historian Alex Lichtenstein of the Bloomington Department
of History faculty and research director, India University that “only in the
Southern states of the United States of America did the State government
entirely give up its control to the contractor; and only in the South did the
physical "penitentiary" become virtually synonymous with the various
private enterprises in which convicts labored.”
Now by forced, it does not necessary mean that they were made
mandatory to work about it, rather there was a foxy and considerably
cunning tactic strategy to it. It was either that or their continued serving
of time inside the prison bars. It was considered insolence not considering
this offer from the fore said big league corporations as the subjects
refusing to do the bidding of their news masters were not only frowned
up, but also mistreated and treated brutally, even on the inhuman
standards. A law that was supposedly applicable on every prisoner
without discrimination, the internal lobbying, corruption, lack of
accountability and credibility resulted in the racial discrimination of the
inmates. Because nobody would really bother about the convicts, as
having yourself sentenced to punishment before the eyes of the law
makes you an outcast and a bothersome existence whom nobody would

ever wanted to harbor, it was hardly a matter of concern for anyone to
really care about them. It is a general understanding which arises through
our conscience that it is perfectly fine to exploit and harass the prisoners,
as they are sinful and deserves the sufferings lashed upon them. It is
established they should not have human rights, for their acts have always
been inhuman, and this was the perfect setup of the private stakeholders
to exploit them in any manner it suited well to them.
The vigorous and selective enforcement of law and discriminatory
sentencing of the healthy and biologically superior adult African American
convicts on the basis of race resulted into what would be one of the
harshest and the most exploitative labor systems known in American
history. It was easier to target the African Americans, who were still
referred as “Negroes” in those times because they were the easiest
source of labor available who, though earned their rightful freedom, but
were yet to break free from the past shackles of their mental captivity, as
the African American prisoners available were in abundance, tied up to a
new-found convict leased system in which there was availability of
bountiful of armies of free men who served time inside the prison cells,
just because they were having a higher melanin content in their skin.
Not only were the black inmates compelled to labor without
compensation, they were also repeatedly traded amongst the wealthy
bluebloods to do the bidding of white bosses through the methodical
application of bizarre physical torture. Failing to obey to their masters,
not only were they maimed and brutally distressed, they were also
subjected to a Lynch law, which was yet another example of the inhuman
torture of the African American common folk.
Lynch law, contrary to its name was an informal methodology of the
extrajudicial punishment in the public, accomplished by hanging of the
African American deserters who tried to flee their deplorable plight. Not
only that, there were various other methods of sadist torture methods
practiced by the redneck psychos on the defenseless convict slaves, such
as charivari, skimming ton, riding the rail, and tarring and feathering, all
having various cold-hearted ways of cruelties.
The Reconstruction period of 1865 to 1877 were the darkest period of the
dark-skinned people when the convict laws were radically implemented.
Although family breakdown was not the immediate cause of the American
prison boom, mass incarceration has had potentially profound effects on
the family life of those caught in the web of the criminal justice system.
The renowned criminologist Thorsten Sellin, documented the inhuman
revelation in his book Slavery and the Penal System, where he wrote of
the horrifying atrocities on the inmates. He stated that the sole aim of

convict leasing “was financial profit to the lessees who exploited the labor
of the prisoners to the fullest, and to the government which sold the
convicts to the lessees.” The practice of the newfound way of slave
trading became widespread and was used to supply labor to farming, rail
road, mining, and logging operations throughout the South America.
The revenues generated by these programs were a whopping 372%,
almost four times the operational cost of the imprisonment programmer
and the prison administration. What seemed to be the most inhuman
malpractice in the history seemed to be inarguably the most profitable
business models to the prison conglomerates. The states of Georgia,
Tennessee, Texas, Alabama and Florida were the states witnessing the
worst conditions, deeply plagued by this horror. The overall Prison
populations increased manifolds in the Southern states. As mentioned in
the scholarly works of Randall G. Shelden, "Slavery in the Third
Millennium, Part II" In Georgia prison populations increased tenfold during
the four-decade period (1868–1908) when it used convict leasing; in
North Carolina the prison population increased from 121 in 1870 to 1,302
in 1890; in Florida the population went from 125 in 1881 to 1,071 in
1904; in Mississippi the population quadrupled between 1871 and 1879;
in Alabama it went from 374 in 1869 to 1,878 in 1903; and to 2,453 in
1919.
It took the widespread revelation of the vicious atrocities inflicted on the
convicts through the comprehensive legislative reform packages and
political retribution for the convict release system. Although the entire
release system was ended in the year 1928, it established itself as the
cornerstone ideology for the plantation owners and industrial owners to
devise new ways for the exploitation of the prisoners.

Mary Turner: The Free Labor crusader
This story can crawl you out of your skin. Mary Turner, a thirty-three-
year-old African-American woman was a victim whose death sparked a
mutiny that spread like a wildfire against the scrutiny of the business
money mongers. Instilling the rebellion by her unwavering courage in the
face of death, she became the source of inspiration for the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the most notable
African American Civil rights movement.
Born as Mary Hattie Graham to Perry Graham and his wife Elizabeth
Johnson in the Southern city of Brooks County, Georgia on December,
1884, She was betrothed Hazel "Hayes" Turner on 11 February, 1917 in
Colquitt County, Georgia. A mother of two children, Ocie Lee and Leaster,
she was pregnant with another in addition to the child yet to be born,
before she was mercilessly lynched down by her plantation suitors.
Convicted for the crime of “playing the dice”, she was taken is as a
prisoner and made to work under the plantation owner Hampton Smith,
obviously Caucasian. The plantation owner was said to beat down his
workers and treat them with miscontempt.
One of the workers on Smith's plantation named Sidney Johnson was
arbitrarily refused the earned wages and was beaten down for not
working his share, in spite of being mindful of the fact that he was sick.
Consumed by vengeance and in order to extract his justice Sidney
Johnson shot and killed Hampton Smith and fled from sight. The suitors
and the authorities organized a widespread manhunt to take down
Johnson, and in the process, 13 deaths were documented, though the
historical accounts state triple the figures.
The husband of Mary Turner, Hazel “Hayes” turner was one such person
killed in the manhunt. Instead of laying low and giving in to the adversity,
the iron lady braved and stood up for her husband. She ferociously
defended her husband and went to great lengths to prove his innocence.
She went overboard and also made unwise remarks with the audacity to
threatening to swear out warrants for those accountable.
At an incredibly young age of Twenty, Mary Turner fell victim to the
lynching rampage and was hanged to death by her suitors. It was not just
one life they took, it was the life of her unborn baby as well, and with
whom she was 8 months pregnant at the time.
At the Folsom's Bridge the mob of angry white folks burned her down
after tying her ankles and hanging her upside down the tree. One

member of the mob slit open her stomach and tramped on her unborn
child and crushed its remains.
Riddled with gunfire from the mob, the barbaric incident was. Buried ten
feet away from their place of incineration. Even in her death, she did not
receive a proper burial, for her cremation ground only harbored a
makeshift grave with a whiskey bottle and cigar.
Like always, these actions were taken lightly off, and the killer named
Sidney Johnson was castrated by a mob of 700 people. Not just that, his
genitals were fed to dogs, and his remains were dragged nearly 20 miles
to Campground Church in Morven, Georgia, 16 miles away. There, what
remained of his body was burned down by the local townspeople.
The only reason for committing this heinous crime and atrocities was all
due to the fact that they were black. It is one of the most barbaric acts
committed in the town of Georgia. The authorities had no choice but to
act on this situation and had more than 500 people fleeing from Lowndes
and Brooks Counties to fear the judgement befalling on them.
If you were horrified with the very stories, these stories are but a mere
examples of the brutality and inhumanity the African Americans have
endured over the course of 400 years.
Mary Turner never received the justice she deserved and her children and
her family were scarred for life. It is not just a case of one of those stories
of racial discrimination, but the most gruesome case of racial terrorism in
the history of the United States of America. You will seldom find one of
the most horrific crimes committed against a human being in the history
books we teach our children. The questions have always been asked
about the involvement of big conglomerates and the oppression of the
poor and the marginalized by the nobility, but an incident of this
magnitude forever eclipsed really forces us to raise a lot many questions.
She was not one of the mere victims, but her death and the horrific crime
by the mob of racial terrorists resulted in the formation of institutions like
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAAC) to
safeguard the human rights for everyone equally in the political,
educational, social, and economic spheres and to eliminate racial hatred
and racial discrimination

Industrialized Prison System 1972
The progressive labor party accuses the prison industry of being “an
imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and
concentration camps.” The private constricting of prisoners for work
nurtures incentives people to be imprisoned for no apparent reason. Due
to an excessively high profit margin, corporate stockholders make money
off prisoner’s work lobby for longer sentences in order to expand their
workforce.
Economic conditions were pitiful and there were widespread chaos among
the African American community. Instead of a movement for social
investment for the upliftment of the needy, politics took the other turn
and focused primarily on the privatization of the prison system in the
early 1980s The industrial prison system was at the all-time high in the
year 1972, where the medical services, food preparation, vocational
training, and inmate transportation were all facilitated by the private firms
known as the correction centers.
Political currents flowed to law and order and away from rehabilitative
criminal justice policy. Retribution and incapacitation were embraced as
the main objectives of criminal punishment. As a result, the prison
population ballooned through the 1980s and 1990s, producing astonishing
incarceration rates among young African American men. Although family
breakdown was not the immediate cause of the American prison boom,
mass incarceration has had potentially profound effects on the family life
of those caught in the web of the criminal justice system. Research is still
to reach its maturity, it is largely evident that the mass incarceration to
the family life of American Americans is adversely affecting their families.
There are various large houses that have been involved in this extensive
stigma. Involving the names of cream corporates like IBM, Boeing,
Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq,
Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel,
Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin,
Target Stores, and many more
The inmate industry is an incredibly large business model. Not only is the
project minting butt loads of money, the profit rates are sky high. Just
between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31
billion. The inmates are exploited heavily, as they get about $2 per hour,
well under the minimum in the government owned cells. The privately-run
prisons are even worse as they only give away a meagre sum of 17cents
per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per
month. Even the highest-paying private prison in the country, The

Corrections Corporations of Tennessee pays its prisoners a lousy 50 cents
per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.”
At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal
prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and
work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home
$200-$300 per month. It is believed that more than half of the 623,000
inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they are
accused, out of which, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of the
one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses, out of
which Sixteen percent of the country’s 2 million prisoners suffer from
mental illness. Instead of referring them to the mental asylum or at the
rehabilitation stations, there is another industry arising, which focuses on
the new business model of importing inmates with long sentences,
meaning the worst criminals to other places, where they can be used
according to their utility. People are no longer considered humans, as
they are now viewed to be mere commodities.
Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner,
independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell
Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, “the secret to low
operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum
number of prisoners.” The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in
Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night
watch over 750 prisoners. The dealings over the prisoners are done over
a behavioral auditing. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences
reduced for “good behavior,” but for any infraction, they get 30 days
added – which means more profits for CCA. Obviously though, it was
found through the study over the new Mexico prisons done by the Global
research Institute, California that CCA inmates lost “good behavior time”
at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.
Most of the prisoners are convicted of non-violent crimes, which involve
long prison sentences for possession of microscopic quantities of illegal
drugs. Federal law stipulates five years’ imprisonment without possibility
of parole for possession of 5 grams of crack or 3.5 ounces of heroin, and
10 years for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack. A
sentence of 5 years for cocaine powder requires possession of 500 grams
– 100 times more than the quantity of rock cocaine for the same
sentence. Most of those who use cocaine powder are white, middle-class
or rich people, while mostly Blacks and Latinos use rock cocaine. In
Texas, a person may be sentenced for up to two years’ imprisonment for
possessing 4 ounces of marijuana. Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson
Rockefeller anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison sentence of 15
years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.

A larger profit system is incorporated by making the in-mates undergo
longer sentences by bypassing laws that require minimum sentencing,
without regard for circumstances. A large expansion of work by prisoners
creating profits that motivate the incarceration of more people for longer
periods of time as the prisoners are further. Punished harshly so as to
lengthen their sentences.
After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 – ending court supervision and
decisions – caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal
prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states
whose prisons were overcrowded, offering “rent-a-cell” services in the
CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-
cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50
for each prisoner. This program was backed by investors from Merrill-
Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the
operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state’s governor, Ann
Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so
many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private
prison profits.
David Garland coined the term “mass imprisonment” to refer to the high
rate of incarceration in the contemporary United States. In Garland’s
definition, mass imprisonment has two characteristics. First, “mass
imprisonment implies a rate of imprisonment . . . that is markedly above
the historical and comparative norm for societies of this type. The
systematic imprisonment of whole groups of ethnic and aborigines in
particular are more slippery in this case. Not only did incarceration
become common among young black men at the end of the 1990s, its
prevalence exceeded that of other life events that we usually associate
with passage through the life course.

Social Impact of Mass Incarceration
More than college graduation or military service, incarceration typified the
biographies of black men born since the late 1960s. The influences
between incarceration, marriage, and the family are also concerned in the
larger story of rising urban inequality. In the last three decades, American
family life was distorted by declining marriage rates and growth in the
number of single-parent households. Marriage rates fell among women
from all class backgrounds.
Between 1970 and 2000, the share of white women aged twenty-five to
thirty-four who were married deteriorated from over eighty percent to
just over sixty percent. Marriage rates for black women split fifty-fifty
from sixty to around thirty percent. The decline in marriage boosted
growth in the number of single-parent households, although this effect
was restricted to those with little education. The share of college-
educated women who were single mothers remained constant at around
five percent between 1970 and 2000, while the segment of single
mothers among low-education white women increased from eight to
eighteen percent. Trends were most dramatic among black women. In
1970, about one-third of low education black women were single parents,
but the number increased to over fifty percent in the next thirty years. By
2000, stable two-parent households became relatively rare, especially
among blacks with little schooling. Poverty researchers closely followed
the changing shape of American families. Growing numbers of female-
headed families increased the risks of enduring poverty for women and
children.
The incapacitation effect seizures only part of the impact of the prison
boom on marriage. In Wilson’s terms, incarceration also damages men’s
marriageability. Wilson traced declining marriage rates among the ghetto
poor to the cumulative incapability of young disadvantaged black men to
support families. Incarceration erodes men’s financial prestige even more.
Incarceration decreases men’s wages, slows the rate of wage growth,
increases unemployment, and shortens job tenure. If a poor employment
record compensations of matrimonial projections of single men and
contributes to the risk of divorce among those who are married, the
economic effects of incarceration will decrease the probability of marriage
among men who have been to prison and jail. While there seems to be a
connection which is scarcely appropriate, it is also obliging in realizing the
reason for the life course analysis has attracted the interest of students of
crime and deviance. Criminologists point to the standardizing effects of
life course transitions. Steady jobs and good marriages build social bonds
that keep would-be offenders in a daily routine. They entangle men who
are drawn by crime in a network of supportive social relationships. Strong

family bonds and steady work restrict men’s opportunities for antisocial
behavior and offer them a stake in normal life. For persistent
lawbreakers, the adult roles of spouse and worker offer a pathway out of
crime (Sampson and Laub 1993; Warr 1998; Hagan 1993). Those who fail
to secure the markers of adulthood are more likely to persist in criminal.
Families headed by black women. The incapacitation effect captures only
part of the impact of the prison boom on marriage. In Wilson’s terms,
incarceration also damages men’s marriageability. Wilson traced declining
marriage rates among the ghetto poor to the increasing inability of young
disadvantaged black men to support families. Incarceration erodes men’s
economic desirability even more
Crime cannot explain, however, why disadvantaged young men were so
much more likely to go to prison by the end of the 1990s than two
decades earlier. Indeed, survey data show that poor male youth were
much less intricate in crime at the pinnacle of the prison boom, in 2000,
than at its inception, in 1980. To explain the growing risk of imprisonment
over time, the role of policy is decisive. Because the system of criminal
sentencing had come to count on so profoundly on confinement, an arrest
in the late 1990s was far more likely to lead to prison time than at the
beginning of the prison boom in 1980 (Blumstein and Beck 1999). The
drug trade holds a special place in this story. The drug trade itself became
a source of economic opportunity in the jobless ghetto. Ethnographers
paint striking pictures of how the inner-city drug trade becomes a focal
point for the problems of economic disadvantage, violence, and state
control. Sudhir Venkatesh and Steven Levitt (2000) describe how drug
trafficking thrived in the vacuum of legitimate employment in Chicago’s
South Side vicinities. Chicago youth spoke to Venkatesh and Levitt of
their “gang affiliation and their drive to earn income in ways that
resonated with representations of work in the mainstream corporate firm.
Many approached [gang] involvement as an institutionalized path of
socioeconomic mobility for down-and-out youth” In Elijah Anderson’s
account, violence follows the drug trade as crime becomes a voracious
force in the poor neighborhoods of Philadelphia: Surrounded by violence
and by indifference to the innocent victims of drug dealers and users
alike, the decent people are finding it harder and harder to maintain a
sense of community. Thus violence comes to regulate life in the drug-
infested zones and the putative locality leaders are increasingly the
people who control the violence. The picture drawn by the ethnographic
research is of poor vicinities, chronically short of legitimate work and
embedded in a violent and illegal market for drugs. High rates of
joblessness and crime, and a flourishing street trade in illegal drugs,
combined with harsher criminal penalties and intensified urban policing to
produce high incarceration rates among young unskilled men in inner

cities. In the twenty-five years from 1980, the incarceration rate tripled
among white men in their twenties, but fewer than 2 percent were behind
bars by 2004. Imprisonment rates for young black men increased less
quickly, but one in seven were in custody by 2004. Incarceration rates are
much higher among male high school dropouts in their twenties.
Threefold growth in the imprisonment of young white male dropouts left 7
percent in prison or jail by 2004. The incarceration rate for young low-
education black men rose by 22 points in the two decades after 1980.
Incredibly, 34 percent of all young black male high school dropouts were
in prison or jail on an average day in 2004, an incarceration rate forty
times higher than the national average (Western 2006, chap. 1). Tough
sentences for drug and repeat offenders, strict policing and prosecution of
drug traffic and public order criminal, and unforgiving parole supervision
broadened the use of imprisonment from its traditional focus on serious
crime. Certainly on October 26, 2011 sentences increased for serious
crime, and this contributed to incarceration rates too. For example, time
served for murderers increased from five to eleven years, from 1980 to
1996 (Blumstein and Beck 1999, 36). But growth in the share of less
serious offenders in state prison increased much more rapidly (Blumstein
and Beck 1999, 24, 37). Growth in the numbers of drug offenders, parole
violators, and public order offenders reflects the use of penal policy as a
surrogate social policy, in which a worrying and unruly population is
increasingly managed with imprisonment.

Pseudo-Drug war against African Americans
The Brooking’s institute analysis report of FBI uniform crime reporting by
Jonathan Rothwell tentatively suggests that Whites were about 45 percent
more likely than blacks to sell drugs in 1980, according to an analysis of
the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth by economist Robert
Fairlie. This was consistent with a 1989 survey of youth in Boston. My
own analysis of data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and
Health shows that 6.6 percent of white adolescents and young adults
(aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, compared to just 5.0 percent of blacks (a 32
percent difference). Arrest data show a striking trend: arrests of blacks

have fallen for violent and property crimes, but soared for drug related
crimes. As of 2011, drug crimes comprised 14 percent of all arrests and a
miscellaneous category that includes “drug paraphernalia” possession
comprised an additional 31 percent of all arrests. Just 6 percent and 14
percent of arrests were for violent and property crimes, respectively.
The statistical data graph seems more like a cheat sheet, which
tentatively suggest that the arrests of African-Americans for violent and
property crimes have gone down since 1980 but drug related arrests have
skyrocketed. Black Americans are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for
selling drugs and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for possessing
them, Brookings Institute found. The stated figures either suggests that
African Americans are more likely to do drugs because it is hardwired into
their genes, or that they are deliberately and purposely targeted and
arrested more frequently. Either forms of propaganda are downright
offensive to the community and is hazardous for the overall socio-
economic development of the society.
It has also been added that in the report, the drugs were more
prominently sold in the open, contrary to the white neighborhood where
such practices were rather done under the hood.
The drug war has a profoundly negative effect on racial equality, and on
rates of upward mobility. It has been repeatedly stated that the people
don't get arrested for nonviolent drug crime as much as they used to,
henceforth the legalizing and decriminalizing of certain select drugs such
as marijuana might considerably reduce the crime rates. Since the topic
of drug war is already controversial, there is a significant role of the drug
war, which will be discussed in the subsequent topics.
Since if the crime rates for the conviction of blacks and other Hispanic
races has reduced, it is rather evident that it is easy to frame a person for
selling drugs than accusing them of a criminal offence. The civil offence
have increased, but such racial targeting give raise to the slogans, that
RACISM IS CRIME and CRIME IS FOR THE BLACK PEOPLE.

Wrongful allegations: Texas Town putting people
wrongfully behind the bars
Deep in the heart of Texas, the state seems never to get over its racial
terrorism stigma. A massive fraud was presorted against a Texas officer
named Thomas Coleman, who was supposedly “the Officer of the year”
and was awarded by Texas Attorney General and the U.S. Senator John
Cornyn in the year 2000. Convicting about 38 residents’ wrongfully false
allegations on the grounds of drug offences was brought to light by the
lawyers and journalists. The convicted defendants were among 47 men
and women — 12 of the latter — from whom Coleman claimed to have
purchased narcotics on 117 occasions during the 18 months leading up to
their arrests in a predawn sweep on July 23, 1999. Swisher County
District Attorney Terry D. McEachern proceeded with the prosecutions
even though no illegal drugs were found in the possession of any of the
defendants and even though there were no witnesses to or recordings of
any of the alleged transactions. Later it would come to light that Coleman
carried a card proclaiming himself a member of the Ku Klux Klan — a
troubling fact given that, in a town with only 300 to 400 black residents,
thirty four of the 38 convicted defendants were African Americans.
The thirty defendants involved 27 blacks, two Hispanics, and one non-
Hispanic Caucasian. Guilty pleas in exchange for probation were entered
by another ten blacks James Ray Barrow, Leroy Barrow, Michael Fowler,
Vickie Fry, Cleveland Joe Harrison, Eliga Kelly, Sr., Joseph Corey Marshall,
Kenneth Ray Powell, Finaye Shelton, and Lawanda Smith. Two blacks,
Etta Kelly and Benny Lee Robinson, traded guilty pleas for deferred
adjudication. The Hispanics who pled guilty were Daniel G. Olivarez, who
received twelve years, and Laura Ann Mata, who received five years. The
only white defendant among the plea-bargaining group, Calvin Kent Klein,
drew 10 years. Sixteen-year-old Jonathan Loftin, who was black, was
sentenced to boot camp for juvenile offenders.
Later after the revelation of the officer working for the gaof degenerates
proclaiming themselves as the KKK. The prevalent clan first sought to
overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during
the Reconstruction Era, especially by violence against African
American leaders. It ended about 1871. The second was a very large,
controversial, nationwide organization in the 1920s that especially
opposed Catholics. The current manifestation consists of numerous small
unconnected groups that use the KKK name. The clan is basically a hate
group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law
Center. It is estimated to have between 5,000 and 8,000 members as of

2012. They have all emphasized racism, secrecy and distinctive costumes.
All have called for purification of American society, and all are considered
part of right-wing extremism. The group not only functions like a satanic
cult group with creepy actions such as the burning of the Holy cross and
the redneck propaganda, but also fuel the hatred towards women
empowerment and religious freedom. The existence of such offensive
groups even in the modern society and their infiltration inside the top
level of governance in a state like Texas is indeed a matter of extreme
concern, as such actions not only post an immediate threat to the
tranquility of the united states of America, but also show the malicious
nature of humans as a whole. Targeting the dark skinned people in itself
through such formation is an imminent threat which needs to be taken
serious considerations about.

CIA alliances with Drug Cartel in Panama
The story was brought into the limelight through the gallant efforts of the
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. A perfect living example of
the statement that pen is mightier than the sword, he stunned the world
with his flagship newspaper series named the “Dark Alliance” which was
examining the influences and connections between the CIA, a crack
cocaine explosion in the principally African-American neighbourhoods of
South Los Angeles, and the Nicaraguan Contra fighters -- outrageous
allegations that irritated Los Angeles’ Black community, severely damaged
the intelligence agency's reputation and launched a number of federal
investigations against the most shady investigation agencies.
Inarguably, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of
America is one of the most mistrusted and the most shady government
wing, something that instils fear as well as distrust by the very mention of
the name, but this time they crossed the line and went a bit too far with
the involvement in the Drug Cartels on a wide-scale level.
Now, Webb’s bombshell expose is being explored anew in a documentary,
“Freeway: Crack in the System,” directed by Marc Levin, which tells the
story of “Freeway” Rick Ross, who created a crack empire in LA during the
1980s and is a key figure in Webb’s “Dark Alliance” narrative. The
documentary is being released after the major motion picture “Kill the
Messenger,” which features Jeremy Renner in the role of Webb and is
watched over and critically acclaimed. It was not just him who was
involved in the citation of this mass conspiracy as more than a decade
before Webb, then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) launched a congressional
investigation. In 1989, Kerry released a detailed report claiming that not
only was there “considerable evidence” linking the Contra effort to
trafficking of drugs and weapons, but that the U.S. government knew
about it.
According to the report, many of the pilots ferrying weapons and supplies
south for the CIA were known to have backgrounds in drug trafficking.
Kerry's investigation cited SETCO Aviation, the company the U.S. had
contracted to handle many of the flights, as an example of CIA complicity
in the drug trade. According to a 1983 Customs Service report, SETCO
was “headed by Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a class I DEA violator.” He
further states that “In March, 1983, Plumlee contacted my Denver Senate
Office and … raised several issues including that covert U.S. intelligence
agencies were directly involved in the smuggling and distribution of drugs
to raise funds for covert military operations against the government of
Nicaragua,” a copy of a 1991 letter from Hart to Kerryreads.

On April 15, 1985, around the time Baca says she saw Calero accepting
bags of cash, Oliver North, the White House National Security Council
official in charge of the Contra operation, was notified in a memo that
Calero’s deputies were involved in the drug business. Robert Owen,
North’s top staffer in Central America, warned that Jose Robelo had
“potential involvement with drug-running and the sale of goods provided
by the [U.S. government]” and that Sebastian Gonzalez was “now
involved in drug-running out of Panama.”
North’s own diary, originally exposed by the National Security Archive, is
an amusing source of confirmation as well. “Honduran DC-6 which is
being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug
runs into the U.S.,” reads an entry for Aug. 9, 1985, reflecting a
conversation North had with Owen about Mario Calero, Adolfo’s brother.
An entry from July 12, 1985 relates that “14 million to finance [an arms
depot] came from drugs” and another references a trip to Bolivia to pick
up “paste”, with Paste being a slang term for a crude cocaine derivative
product comprised of coca leaves grown in the Andes as well as
processing chemicals used during the cocaine manufacturing process.)
Webb's investigation sent the CIA into a panic. A recently declassified
article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug
Conspiracy Story,” from the agency’s internal journal, “Studies in
Intelligence,” shows that the spy agency was reeling in the weeks that
followed.
“The charges could hardly be worse,” the article opens. “A widely read
newspaper series leads many Americans to believe CIA is guilty of at least
complicity, if not conspiracy, in the outbreak of crack cocaine in America’s
inner cities. In more extreme versions of the story circulating on talk
radio and the Internet, the Agency was the instrument of a consistent
strategy by the US Government to destroy the black community and to
keep black Americans from advancing. Denunciations of CIA --
reminiscent of the 1970s -- abound. Investigations are demanded and
initiated. The Congress gets involved.”
The emergence of Webb’s story “posed a genuine public relations crisis for
the Agency,” writes the CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer, whose
name is redacted.
In December 1997, CIA sources helped advance that narrative, telling
reporters that an internal inspector general report sparked by Webb's
investigation had exonerated the agency.

Yet the report itself, quietly released several weeks later, was actually
deeply damaging to the CIA.
“In 1984, CIA received allegations that five individuals associated with the
Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE)/Sandino Revolutionary Front
(FRS) were engaged in a drug trafficking conspiracy with a known
narcotics trafficker, Jorge Morales,” the report found. “CIA broke off
contact with ARDE in October 1984, but continued to have contact
through 1986-87 with four of the individuals involved with Morales.”
It also found that in October 1982, an immigration officer reported that,
according to an informant in the Nicaraguan exile community in the Bay
Area, “There are indications of links between [a specific U.S.-based
religious organization] and two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups.
These links involve an exchange in [the United States] of narcotics for
arms, which then are shipped to Nicaragua. A meeting on this matter is
scheduled to be held in Costa Rica ‘within one month.’ Two names the
informant has associated with this matter are Bergman Arguello, a UDN
member and exile living in San Francisco, and Chicano Cardenal, resident
of Nicaragua."
The inspector general is clear that in some cases “CIA knowledge of
allegations or information indicating that organizations or individuals had
been involved in drug trafficking did not deter their use by CIA.” In other
cases, “CIA did not act to verify drug trafficking allegations or information
even when it had the opportunity to do so.”
“Let me be frank about what we are finding,” the CIA’s inspector general,
Frederick Hitz, said in congressional testimony in March 1998. “There are
instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut
off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were
alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity or take action to
resolve the allegations.”
This complicity of the CIA in drug trafficking is at the heart of Webb’s
explosive expose -- a point Webb makes himself in archival interview
footage that appears in Levin’s documentary.
“It’s not a situation where the government or the CIA sat down and said,
'Okay, let’s invent crack, let’s sell it in black neighborhoods, let’s decimate
black America,’” Webb says. “It was a situation where, 'We need money
for a covert operation, the quickest way to raise it is sell cocaine, you
guys go sell it somewhere, we don’t want to know anything about it.'"
The above information has everything, quote to quote with everything
about the Dark Alliance Newsletter article, which led to the untimely

demise of Gary Webb. With the involvement of the top tier of government
officials involved, accident and supposed SUICIDES are always likely
bound to happen.

Targeting Blacks: Involvement of Political Leaders
Political warfare always tends to crosses the limitations and boundary of a
civilized human, and people are bound to lose their sanity and are
compelled to show their true faces with their masks off, eventually but
surely.
"Look, we understood we couldn't make it illegal to be young or poor or
black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common
pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were
making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue...that we couldn't
resist it."
- John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon on the
rationale of the War on Drugs.
"[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole
problem is really the blacks" Haldeman, his Chief of Staff wrote, "The key
is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."
And then he came up with the War on Drugs and the Southern Strategy
And he is not alone on the take, seems like the republicans have a knack
of expressing their cultural disliking to the African Americans. The beloved
daddy cool of our former president George Bush sr. have the same
distastefulness towards the races other than the Caucasian
Moving from Midland to Houston in the summer of 1959 required logistical
planning by the Bushes because they were transporting a business,
building a house, and expecting a baby. The Bushes' new home at 5525
Briar Drive in the Broad Oaks housing development of Houston was built
to their specifications on 1.2 acres and, although legally unenforceable,
carried a restrictive racial covenant that stated: "No part of the property
in the said Addition shall ever be sold, leased, or rented to, or occupied by
any person other than of the Caucasian race, except in the servants'
quarters."
These restrictive covenants, attached to both the properties that the
Bushes bought and sold between 1955 and 1966, were common in Texas,
although ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court in 1948. As late as 1986,
the Justice Department had to force the county clerk in Houston to
include a disclaimer on every certified real-estate record that such racial
covenants were "invalid and unenforceable under Federal Law."

Moreover, the former President Bill Clinton also signed the crime bill in
1994 that included the federal "three strikes" provision, mandating life
sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more
prior convictions, including drug crimes.
"The problem is the way it was written and implemented is we cast too
wide a net and we had too many people in prison “And we wound
up...putting so many people in prison that there wasn't enough money
left to educate them, train them for new jobs and increase the chances
when they came out so they could live productive lives”
Spicing things up, the former First Lady Hillary Clinton added up by saying
"Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime, but it does a lot to
tear apart families," Hillary Clinton said last week. "Our prisons and our
jails are now our mental health institutions. We will finally be able to say,
loudly and clearly, that for repeat, violent, criminal offenders: three
strikes and you're out. We are tired of putting you back in through the
revolving door."
It was simply a move by the profit mongers to increase the inmate
capacity and promote the privatisation of the prison industry, so that they
may profit further by the widespread racial terrorism in the most subtle
form. Even the former President Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr. have
made similar acquisitions regarding the same, all of them working
towards the cause of having the systematic targeting of the African
Americans, targeting them by making them convicts and then leeching
them out to the very end. President Ronald Reagan on record opposing all
of the laws inculcated in the civil rights moment, including the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of
1968.

Private Prison as a big business opportunity
This brings us to the most controversial topic in the entire Debacle. Who all are the real profit
mongers, where is all the money going? Who all are the ones who are minting money
insanely over the shrouds and bleeding the African American community by a carefully
planned and implemented systematic exploitation? Here is a tentative list of the big
corporate houses, who have enslaved and are profiting largely through the political and
corporate lobbying and the crony capitalist system of the Prison Industry Complex
 IBM
 Boeing
 Motorola
 Microsoft
 AT&T Wireless
 Texas Instrument
 Dell
 Compaq
 Honeywell
 Hewlett-Packard
 Nortel
 Lucent Technologies
 3Com
 Intel
 Northern Telecom
 TWA,
 Nordstrom’s
 Revlon
 Macy’s
 Pierre Cardin
 Target Stores

These industries are indirectly involved in the prison industry through
investing in the stocks and having the shareholding of the various inmate
agencies and correction centers.
The various other companies involved belong to the following sectors of
the economy
 Food Supply companies e.g. Aramark Corporation, with $145 million
contract for three years while receiving infraction fines from 98,000
to 2,00,000
 Telecommunications e.g. GlobalTek GTL, making $500 million
annually
 HealthCare companies, such as Corizon with a $1.14 billion
estimation annually
 Telemarketing and call centers, employing people for 75 cents an
hour.
 Clothing centers which include Victoria’s secret profiting through
cheap labor
 Technology centers, including Exmark, which is a Microsoft
subcontractor.
 Basil industry, the obvious winners spending 3.1 million for lobbying
the judges to set higher bail amounts with bail amounts going from
$39,800 in 1992 (the year ABC was founded) to $89,900 in 2006.
The revenue generated is a whopping $2 billion Dollars.
 Food processing and packaging industry, where Aramark makes it
mark again with huge profit margins.
 Agriculture, with more and more inmates incorporated as the ideal
farm labors.
Private Prison business Expansion:
The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States
and its investors are the white collared people on the Wall Street. “This multimillion-dollar
industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet
catalogues. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, and
construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies,
food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colours.”
According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all
military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags,
and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market
for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove
assembly; 46% of body armour; 36% of home appliances; 30% of
headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical
supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

Steps to Curb the Mass Incarceration and subtle Racism.
As the indication presented in this report designates, the causes of the
racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system are complex and
deeply rooted. While the laws of the United States may be facially color-
blind, a growing body of evidence shows that the individuals who apply
such laws do not make cognitively color-blind decisions. As studies
repeatedly demonstrate, the belief that the United States of the present is
unaffected by the centuries of its explicitly racist past—while perhaps
well-intentioned—is at best wishful thinking and potentially blinds decision
makers to the implicit racial bias that lingers in the American
consciousness.
There are existing measures, however, that the United States can
espouse to reduce both the presence and the effects of racial bias in its
criminal justice system. Eliminating racial disparity in its criminal justice
system will not be easy, but it can and must take steps to do so in order
to uphold its obligations under its own constitution and international law.
As such, The Sentencing Project respectfully urges the Committee to
recommend that the United States adopt the following ten measures.
1. Establish a National Criminal Justice Commission.
The United States should establish a National Criminal Justice Commission
to examine incarceration and racial disparities. The commission should
develop recommendations for systemic reform of the criminal justice
system at the federal, state, and local levels.
2. Scale back the War on Drugs.
The United States should substantially scale back its War on Drugs.
Specifically, the Department of Justice should reconsider and reduce the
volume of low-level drug offenders prosecuted in federal court. The
resources saved by decreasing the number of prosecutions should be
invested in evidence-based drug prevention and treatment measures.
3. Eliminate mandatory minimum sentences.
The United States should eliminate mandatory minimum sentences.
Judges should be allowed to consider individual case characteristics when
sentencing a defendant in every case.
4. Abolish capital punishment.
The United States should abolish capital punishment. Regardless of its
other moral implications, history has repeatedly demonstrated that the
capital punishment system of the United States cannot operate in a

racially neutral manner. At the very least, the United States should pay
particular attention to increasing the quality of defence representation in
capital cases and increase oversight of such cases to ensure that they are
administered as fairly and race-neutrally as possible.
5. Fully fund indigent defence agencies.
The United States should fully fund and staff indigent defence agencies.
The federal government should increase the number and value of grants
specifically allocated for indigent defence and establish oversight and
accountability systems to ensure such funds are used as intended. The
government should also ensure that state and local governments know
which discretionary grants can be used to fund indigent defence agencies
and encourage them to use an appropriate portion of discretionary grant
funding for that purpose. The United States should provide funding and
resources sufficient for the defence bar to operate at the same level of
effectiveness at trial as prosecutors.
6. Adopt a policy requiring the use of racial impact statements.
The United States should adopt a policy requiring the use of racial impact
statements for proposed sentencing policies. Such a policy would require
legislators to prepare an analysis assessing the possible racial
consequences of any proposed legislation before enacting it in order to
avoid any unintended disparate racial effects. Three states— Iowa,
Connecticut, and Oregon—have adopted racial impact statements since
2008.
7. Allow social framework evidence and structural reform
litigation in trials.
The United States should modify its racial discrimination jurisprudence in
two ways: permit social framework evidence and structural reform
litigation. The admission of social framework evidence in discrimination
trials would permit juries and judges to consider expert testimony
regarding the general existence and effects of implicit bias against racial
minorities in reaching verdicts in discrimination cases against specific
entities. Structural reform litigation would allow racial minorities to
challenge specific government policies as discriminatory on the basis of
their demonstrated racially disparate impact without being required to
prove intentional racial discrimination. Under a structural reform litigation
model, the plaintiff in McCleskey v. Kemp would have been allowed to
proceed with his case by relying on the evidence that black men were
significantly more likely than white men to receive the death penalty in
Georgia without needing to show that any individual actor in his specific
case had acted in an intentionally discriminatory manner. Though some
limited precedent already exists for both social framework evidence and

structural reform litigation in American jurisprudence, the U.S. Congress
should solidify their existence and importance by codifying them in Titles
VI, VII, and XI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One state has provided a
model for how social framework evidence could be incorporated into
existing law. In 2009, North Carolina enacted the Racial Justice Act, which
prohibited prosecutors or courts from seeking or imposing the death
penalty on the basis of race. The act allowed death row inmates to
challenge their sentences using social framework evidence, including
statistics that demonstrated the racially disparate application of the death
penalty in their districts. If defendants proved that race was a significant
factor in the imposition of the death penalty in their cases, their
sentences were automatically commuted to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. Unfortunately, North Carolina repealed the Racial
Justice Act in 2013 after Gov. Pat McCrory stated that the law effectively
shut down capital punishment in the state.
8. Enact the Racial Profiling Act of 2013.
The United States should enact the End Racial Profiling Act of 2013.
Indeed, the act serves as a model of what effective racial bias legislation
could look like in every area of the criminal justice system. The act,
reintroduced into the United States Senate by Id. at 493-94. 113 Id. at
494-98. 114 See, e.g., Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228
(1989), superseded by statute, Civil Rights Act of 1991, Pub. L. No. 102-
166, 105 Stat. 1074, as recognized in Univ. of S.W. Tex. Med. Ctr. v.
Nassar, 133 S.Ct. 2517, 2520 (permitting social framework evidence in a
sex discrimination case); Farrakhan v. Gregoire, No. CV-96- 076-RHW,
2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45987 at *3 (E.D. Wash. July 7, 2006) (finding for
plaintiffs in a challenge to Washington’s felony disenfranchisement law
based on racially disparate impact), aff’d 590 F.3d 989 (9th Cir. 2008),
rev’d en banc 623 F.3d 990 (9th Cir. 2010). 115 42 U.S.C. § 2000. 116
CNN, “Racial Justice Act” repealed in North Carolina. Senator Ben Cardin
in May 2013, would prohibit racial profiling, mandate training on racial
profiling for federal law enforcement officials, and require that federal
officials collect data on the racial impact of all routine or spontaneous
investigatory activities. The act would also make federal funds to state
and local law enforcement agencies contingent on their adoption of
effective policies that prohibit racial profiling. Finally, the act would
authorize the Department of Justice to provide grants for the
development of effective, non-discriminatory policing practices and
require the attorney general to provide periodic reports to assess the
ongoing effects of any practices that have been shown to be racially
discriminatory.
9. Develop and implement training to reduce racial bias.

The United States should develop and implement training designed to
mitigate the influence of implicit racial bias for every actor at every level
of the criminal justice system: police officers, public defenders,
prosecutors, judges, and jury members. While it is difficult to eliminate
completely racial bias at the individual level, studies have repeatedly
shown that it is possible to control for the effects of implicit racial bias on
individual decision-making. In other words, while it may be impossible in
the current culture of the United States to ensure that individuals are
cognitively color-blind, it is possible to train individuals to be behaviorally
colorblind. The United States should work with leading scholars on implicit
bias to develop the most effective training programs to reduce the
influence of implicit racial bias.
10. Adopt racial disparity-conscious policies.
Finally, as a general measure, the United States should adopt policies that
reflect a basic understanding that while laws that are racially neutral on
their face represent admirable progress in the struggle against racism in
the U.S., such facial neutrality has proven insufficient to eliminate racial
bias and consequently racial disparity in the criminal justice system.
Policies should be guided instead by an awareness that facially color-blind
laws may be applied in a racially disparate manner due to both implicit
racial bias and explicit racial discrimination. The United States should
affirmatively adopt a commitment to behavioral realism—the idea that the
law should be based on the most accurate model of human thought,
decision-making, and action provided by the sciences—called for by
Professors Jerry Kang and Kristen Lane. Such a concept is not
unprecedented in American jurisprudence: one of the most celebrated
Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history, Brown v. Board of Education,
relied on behavioral realism in overturning the “separate but equal”
doctrine; the Supreme Court’s reasoning in that case was based on
advancing research in the study of psychology and the effects of
segregation on schoolchildren. The foregoing suggestions by no means
constitute an exhaustive list of steps the United States could and should
take to begin to address the racial disparities in its criminal justice
system. Nevertheless, The Sentencing Project earnestly believes that
these steps are firmly within the purview of the United States government
and would substantially reduce existing racial disparity while dramatically
improving the quality and integrity of the criminal justice system. While
many of these steps are admittedly difficult, each one is vital if the United
States is to fulfil its obligations to its citizens and the international
community.

Sources
 Huffington Posts News Articles
 Washington Post News Articles
 Tom Hartmann Foundation reports
 Ron Paul Forums
 The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural
Order
 "How Mandatory Minimums Forced Me to Send More Than 1,000
Nonviolent Drug Offenders to Federal Prison". The Nation. Retrieved
23 May 2013.
 Treatment Industrial Complex: How For-Profit Prison Corporations
are Undermining Efforts to Treat and Rehabilitate Prisoners for
Corporate Gain. American Friends Service Committee, November
2014.
 Immigrants mistreated in 'inhumane' private prisons, finds
report. Al Jazeera America. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
 "If We Build It They Will Come: Human Rights Violation and the
Prison Industrial Complex"
 "The disgrace of America's prison-industrial complex". National Post.

Mass Incarceration

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Mass Incarceration

Similar to Mass Incarceration (8)

Mass Incarceration