Skip to main content

Are African Americans In Jail Because of Single Parent Households?

Interestingly enough, I had a conversation with someone that stated that African American men are more likely to end up in jail because they grew up in a single-parent household. This shocked me to even believe that someone would think that this is the main reason why the majority of our prison inmates are African American. Here are some proven facts. Discrimination is a huge issue in this country; although police are not meant to discriminate, they do. Police stops are racially targeted. In fact, black drivers are 31% more likely to get pulled over by the police. Black drivers are searched 3 times more likely than white drivers.
Furthermore, traffic tickets have become more of an issue for poor-income individuals. They are fined for unpaid tickets, and this usually only affects poor income families. African Americans have the highest poverty rate at 24.7%. The bailout system penalizes poor people. There are thousands of individuals who are presumed innocent and awaiting trial because they are not able to make the bail payment.
Furthermore, poor people usually have public defenders that are underpaid and overworked. Lack of education in the justice system and lack of support from their public defenders lead many of these individuals to plead guilty. If African Americans were incarcerated at the same rate as White Americans, jail populations would decline by 40%. Overall, we have a justice system that works against these individuals. This is not a simple issue that can be solved with a 2 parent household. To insinuate that single-parent households are the main reason African American individuals end up in jail is simply wrong. 

Sources 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is White Privilege?

Throughout undergrad and graduate school, I had multiple discussions with my college professors about white privilege. Only recently did I realize that many conservatives do not even believe white privilege exists. And I have concluded that most people do not understand the definition of white privilege. Therefore, the first step to understanding is to define it. In the article,  White Privilege in Health Care: Following Recognition With Action,  Joseph Hobbs states that "White privilege is defining a set of privileges available to white people because of their race and unavailable to others." With this definition alone, I can start to understand the issue some individuals might have understanding white privilege. The most common misconception of this concept is that white people believe that this means they get handed free stuff due to their skin color. This is not the case. The way one should be thinking about white privilege is not based on what white people have but ins...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is our Justice System Targeting Minorities?

The justice system throughout history has shown that it targets minorities in a very unfair manner. This is shown in many different ways specifically, let us talk about New York Cities stop and frisk policy. This policy allowed police officers to stop New Yorkers, interrogate and search them simply due to "reasonable suspicion." This policy started because of the high crime rates in New York City, but this is deemed to be not a plausible way to stop the crime rates from going up. The stops mainly targeted the African American and Hispanic populations. In 2019, 13,4459 stops were recorded by the NYPD. Of these 13,459 stops, 66% were innocent, 59% were black, 29% were Hispanic, and 9% were white. The stop-and-frisk policy came into play in 1968. It was often called the Terry stops because of the court case Terry vs. Ohio. This court case said that the stops had to be "reasonable." By 1999, Hispanic and African Americans accounted for 50% of New York City but made up...
Post a Comment
Read more