Why the U.S. Has the Highest Incarceration Rate in the Western World
ABSTRACT
Since over 70% of the U.S. prison population is black or Hispanic, even though these groups are only 25% of the population, racial disparities in arrests, convictions and sentencing are really the main reason that this country has a higher incarceration rate than any other advanced Western democracy. Indeed, it has more people incarcerated than all other Western nations combined, and for much longer sentences. Overwhelmingly, these offenders have been convicted on drug charges, and even though minorities use narcotics at the same rate as whites, they are far more likely to be convicted and sentenced. Even when crime rates have been declining in recent years in big cities like Los Angeles, blacks and Hispanics are still far more likely than whites to be stopped, searched and arrested.
Even though blacks and Hispanics are a minority of the population, they are the majority of the U.S. prison population, and are far more likely to be arrested, convicted and incarcerated than whites, particularly on drug charges. In the Western world, the U.S. stands out as anomalous for having such a large prison population as well as being the only remaining country to have capital punishment. It also has a far greater disparity in wealth and incomes than any other advanced democracy, and minorities living in segregated ghettos have much higher poverty rates than whites. This is especially true in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, which now have some of the most extreme inequalities in the world. Even though the rate of violent crime has been declining dramatically in recent years, minorities are still more likely to be stopped, searched and arrested in these big cities than whites. This type of racial profiling and disparities in incarceration has always existed in the U.S., but has become extreme over the last thirty years.
Economic inequality is extreme in the U.S. compared to other Western nations, and black rates of poverty and unemployment are far higher than those of whites. Today, 1% of the population has over 40% of the wealth, while the majority of black children are born into poverty (West, 2001, p. viii). About three-quarters of blacks live in segregated ghettoes with very poor quality housing, schools and social services. Blacks use drugs at the same rate as whites but are over 70% of those convicted and imprisoned on narcotics charges, and for longer sentences (West, p. xii). So-called ‘three strikes’ laws and mandatory minimum sentences for drug charges, such as crack cocaine possession, mean that “certain drugs have served as a proxy for racial and ethnic bias” (Wilson and Kolander, 2011, p. 8). Blacks are over 40% of the prison population because of social and economic inequality and the way the law is enforced (Ihewulezi , 2008, p. 43). Black women are three times more likely to be single mothers than whites, while less than half receive child support payments because so many young black men are unemployed or in prison (Ihewulezi, p. 44). In many urban areas of the U.S., the majority of young black males are in prison or on probation, and they are also ten times more likely to be “stopped and searched by police” (Cooper, 2006, p. 25). From 1977-2010, over 40% of inmates on death row in the U.S. were black, even though they are only about 12% of the population (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2011).
There are also a number of ‘unofficial crimes’ in the U.S. such as Shopping While Black, Driving While Black and Shopping While Black, in which young minorities frequently experience being stopped, searched and frisked by the police. Very recently, for example, the federal courts ruled that the stop and search policies by the New York City police were really a case of racial profiling, since young black and Hispanic males were about 90% of those stopped by police (Kops, 2007, p. 37). Young minorities driving expensive or ‘flashy’ vehicles are very likely to be stopped and searched as well. One infamous case was that of Timothy Thomas in Cincinnati, Ohio, who was stopped and frisked eleven times in eight weeks in 2001, and whose death at police hands caused “massive civil unrest and rioting”(Cooper, p. 26).
Violent crime rates have been falling in recent years in cities like Los Angeles, even though racial profiling and disparities in arrest and incarceration for minorities have continued. Los Angeles had a fairly typical history of crime waves, police scandals and urban riots, most notoriously the 1991 riots after the four police officers were acquitted of beating Rodney King. It police force has faced federal lawsuits and injunctions for brutality and civil rights violations, and under Chief William Bratton, there have been “significant institutional transformations inpolicing architecture” (Fagan and Macdonald, 2013, p. 226). At the same time, immigration and gentrification in some areas also led to reductions in crime. Replacing Daryl Gates and the changeover to community policing did have the effect of lowering violent crime, especially under Bratton’s COMPSTAT program. In fact, he was very successful in using “both scandal and litigation as a rationale for departmental reforms in Los Angeles” that improved relations with minority communities (Fagan and Macdonald, p. 230). This did not end the practice of profiling young black and Hispanic males, though, and this was also the era when stop and search increased 100% in Los Angles, especially in minority neighborhoods designated as crime hotspots (Fagan and Macdonald, p. 241).
Reforms like those of Bratton in Los Angeles were part of the reason overall rates of violent crime have declined in U.S. cities in the 1990s and 2000s, and this did begin to reduce the upward trend in the incarceration rate for the first time since the 1960s. It did not end the disproportion in searches, arrests and convictions for blacks and Hispanics, of the very intensive policing of their neighborhoods compared to white areas. Whether policies of prevention and rehabilitation or reducing social and economic disparities would have had a better effect is unknown, since these were definitely not the type of policies emphasized in the U.S. over the last 30 years. Just the opposite, it created a massive prison-industrial complex that is very expensive to maintain and also very dangerously overcrowded. America’s War of Drugs, three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences have also given it a prison population far higher than the rest of the Western world combined, although the trend seems to be reversing in the past few years.
REFERENCES
Capital Punishment (2011). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=18
Cooper, S. (2006). “A Closer Look at Racial Profiling” in S.J. Muffler (ed). Racial Profiling: Issues, Data and Analyses. Nova Science Publishers, pp. 25-30.
Fagan, J. and J. Macdonald (2013), “Policing, Crime, and Legitimacy in New York and Los Angles: The Social and Political Contexts of Two Historic Crime Declines” in D. Hale and A. Beveridge (eds), New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future. Oxford University Press, pp. 219-62.
Ihewulezi, C.N. (2008). The History of Poverty in a Rich and Blessed America. Bloomington, IN: Author House.
Kops, D. (2007). Racial Profiling. Marshall Cavendish.
West, C. (2001). Race Matters. Boston: Beacon Press.
Wilson, R. and C.A. Kolander (2011). Drug Abuse Prevention: A School and Community Partnership. Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
