SOC 338 Tess McNamara Presentation

for my project, I chose to focus on the disproportionate

effects of mass incarceration on people of color.

I researched the long, oppressive history that has set the

stage for our current issues.

The United States has 5% of the world's population yet

25% of the world's prison population.

And although black men account for only 6.5% of the

United States population as of 2018, they account for 40.2%

of the total male prison population.

So why is that?

While our criminal justice system has been built on racist

values and attempt to maintain power in the hands of

white people in the 13th documentary, they explain how freeing

slaves heard the economy in the South because they no

longer had free labor.

The way in which they decided to rebuild the economy

was by arresting black people, enforcing them back into slavery.

These arrests were crimes these arrests were for crimes such

as vagrancy and loitering.

This also helps paint the picture that black people were

criminals. Once the first blockbuster movie the birth of a

Nation, was available to see it helped maintain and confirm

this view.

Black men were made to seem animal like cannibalistic and

threatening toe woman.

The film also helped build another wave of success for

the Ku Klux Klan.

Black people were made to seem like criminals and then

suffered violence and lynchings for it, an attempt to escape

this constant threat.

Black people went north as refugees at a time when

this violence and terrorism was no long, no longer seemed

appropriate. Focus shifted to Jim Crow laws.

The Gym Cola Jim Crow laws were another way to

maintain power in the hands of white people.

Indiscriminate and criminalized black people, the civil rights movement, push

for the end of Jim Crow laws.

And once President Lyndon B.

Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, Jim Crow laws were

legally ended.

Unfortunately, at the same time the civil rights movement was

getting momentum, crime rates were on the rise and the

movement was blamed for this and were depicted once again

as criminals to the public.

In the early 19 seventies, Richard Nixon focused his attention

on what he declared as the war on drugs.

This created an era of harsh lawn order that gave

way to mass incarceration, seemingly race neutral terms were used

in laws to drown out concerns of racist, of the

racist, racist nature.

People were being put away for my own fractions.

Although licks Nixon lied about this war, it played on

fears on the fears of the public and put harsh

one order in a positive light.

This was so powerful that Southerners that were liberal voted

Republican, Um, due to the fact that they use non

racist terms, um, and played on their fears.

Yeah. When Ronald Reagan became president in the early 19

eighties, this war was turned into a real one.

He did this by criminalizing crack cocaine, which disproportionately affected

people of color because crack cocaine tend to be tended

to be cheaper.

And in inner cities we're cocoa powder.

Cocaine tended to be in the suburbs.

There were harsher consequences for crack cocaine, and there was

for powdered cocaine.

Reagan also signed the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986

which created mandatory minimum sentencing.

When Bill Clinton came into power, he used this power

or used this fear to gain voters.

He wanted to appear harsh on lawn, harsh with law

and order to ensure his popularity.

He put in the three strikes.

He put the three strikes law in truth in sentencing

into effect, which created harsher penalties for small crimes.

There is not only political gain to be had from

harsh law and order, but there is financial gain.

In the early seventies, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or

Alec, was formed, which allowed corporations to profit with labor

off harsh punishments.

Alec was a private club consisting of politicians and corporations

with those corporations had to say, in laws that could

benefit them.

Crime Corporations of America, which was involved in Alec, played

a role in minimum sentencing and three strikes.

Through these laws, they're able to generate profit for not

only themselves but shareholders.

This created additional increase in criminalization because corporations could profit

off of it.

And through this Arizona SB 10 70 was created, which

allowed police to stop anyone they thought looked like an

immigrant. This gave way to the car immigration system, merging

the immigration enforcement and law enforcement.

Immigrants are put in detention centers with terrible conditions.

All these factors play a role in how our criminal

justice system has been shaped and it has been built

on racist values, shifting focus to recent years, and today

the US operates in two criminal justice systems.

All this, though, this isn't anything new.

It heavily influences the way in which the criminal justice

system operates.

There's one system for the wealthy and one system for

poor and people of color.

Unfortunately, these inequalities air not always obvious, because the criminal

justice system is seemingly colorblind and class blind.

They send the message that they're fair, which undermines the

concerns for racial injustice.

By doing this, problems of running race and class in

the criminal justice system are not pushed to the forefront

to encourage reform, although the message broadcasted, um, is that

although the message broadcasted, the system is fair at every

level, it fails to be fair.

In 2016, black Americans accounted for 27% of all individuals

arrested in the United States, yet only represent 13% of

the US population.

That same year, black youth made up 15% of all

Children in the U.

S. But accounted for 35% of juvenile arrests.

The public overestimates frequency, which crimes in which crimes committed

by people of color they ignoring the fact that communities

of color are disproportionately victims of policies such as broken

windows and stop question and frisk, which make for which

makes for higher police contact, which leads to higher arrest

in New York City alone.

In the 12 year span between 2001 and 2013, it

was reported that 51% of the city's population over the

age of 16 was a person of color.

Over 82% of the people arrested in those years for

misdemeanors were people of color, and 81% of those cases

were for violations of administrative code, which are behaviors like

biking on the sidewalk or disorderly conduct.

Police are also allowed to do investigatory stops, meaning they

can stop and investigate drivers that they deemed to be

suspicious. Um, there proactive rather than reactive.

And once a person is pulled over, Um, a person

of color is three times more likely to be searched,

and black people are twice as likely to be arrested

At the pretrial level, African Americans were imprisoned 3.5 times

more than whites and detainment before trials have shown to

play a role in the chances of conviction.

People that are detained are more likely to get a

less favorable plea deal and are more likely to be

sentenced to prison with longer sentences.

And at the sentencing level, 63% of people serving life

are people of color, and African Americans and Hispanics make

up for 29% of the population in the United States.

I'm sorry.

Prison Prison?

Oh, no, just population.

Sorry, um, but account for 57% of the population in

the United States prisons, African American adult, African American adults

air 5.9 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites

and Hispanics, or 2.1 times more likely and at the

pro level.

In recent years, there's been a decline in sentences that

allow for discretionary release on parole because lawmakers require that

courts have fixed terms rather than indeterminate sentences.

And after prison people are faced with a whole new

set of challenges.

When reentering society about a third of U.

S. Jobs requiring occupational license, um, and filling this requirement

is often unrealistic to those with criminal records and according

to unfair by design, um, the chances of a black

percent with a criminal record getting called back for a

job opportunity is 5% of the time.

And for a white person with a criminal record record,

that percent jumps to 17%.

Um, as developed pudgy air.

An American sociologist found that waits with a criminal with

criminal records received more favorable, make it more fair, favorable

treatment, then black people without a criminal record.

Um, there are also there are also issues with finding

housing voting, receiving federal student aid in accessing the social

safety net.

So to wrap this up, their challenges at every level

in the process of the criminal justice system for people

of color and people in at in lower socioeconomic standings.

And uh huh it's crucial to understand that the historical

context in which these issues exists in the criminal justice

system and that this Colonel Justice system was designed to

as dross and legal scholar alien Higginbottom describes, presume, protect

and defend the ideal of superiority of whites and the

inferiority of blacks.

Today, I think the statement is still appropriate when describing

um, the criminal justice system.

So for my visual representation, I used a graph that

represents the rate of incarceration in the United States from

1925 to 2018.

Um, in the background, I drew blocks and I wrote

terms or phrases or titles and names on them.

This is meant Thio represent some of the building blocks

of the criminal justice system.

Um, the system was built on these ideals and at

their cord, their discriminatory.

And on the graph, I wrote with liberty and Justice

for all with a question mark, um, because I wanted

to represent that liberty and Justice for all is not

a fair statement.

When you look at incarceration, reads immigration policies and just,

um, the lack of equal opportunity, Um, and that is

all I have and thes air my sources and yeah.

SOC 338 Tess McNamara Presentation

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated