Assignment: Philosophical Orientations and Theories of Corrections

p.260

12 Minorities and Corrections

© iStockphoto.com/BlakeDavidTaylor

Media Library

CHAPTER 12 Media Library

P R E M I U M V I D E OP R E M I U M V I D E O

C a r e e r V i d e oC a r e e r V i d e o

Payne career video 12.1: Legal Assistant

S AG E N e w s C l i pS AG E N e w s C l i p

SAGE News Clip 12.1: US Ferguson

SAGE News Clip 12.2: Arizona Racial Profiling

J o u r n a l A r t i c l eJ o u r n a l A r t i c l e

Journal Article: 12.1: Race and Ethnicity Missingness in the Traffic Stop Data Reported by 308 Massachusetts Police Agencie

p.261

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Define race, ethnicity, disparity, and discrimination

• Describe some of the history of minority group members in this country

• Identify the connection among class, race/ethnicity, and crime

• Explain the special challenges faced

by minority group members in corrections

• Discuss how the criminal justice system has not been race neutral in its treatment of minorities

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Test your current knowledge about minority groups in this country and their experiences as staff and inmates in corrections by answering the following questions. Check your answers on page 393 after reading the chapter.

1. The race of a person is determined by his or her biology. (True or false?)

2. The ethnicity of a person is determined by his or her culture. (True or false?)

3. Explain what happened in the Scottsboro case and why it is considered emblematic of how African Americans were handled by the criminal justice system during the earlier half of the 20th century.

4. Name at least three facts that would indicate that racism still exists in the criminal justice system of today.

5. Very few Native Americans were in the Americas when Columbus landed. (True or false?)

6. Chinese and Japanese American immigration was widely supported during the 19th and 20th centuries. (True or false?)

7. Describe the reasoning for the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. Why weren’t German Americans also placed in such camps?

8. There is a connection among class, race/ethnicity, and crime. (True or false?)

9. The drug war has led to the increased incarceration of Hispanics and blacks in the United States. (True or false?)

10. Crack cocaine and powder cocaine are pharmacologically different. (True or false?)

11. Research shows that blacks and Hispanics use more drugs than whites. (True or false?)

UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS AND THEIR SIDE OF THE STORY

One of the largest groups of cases

before the federal courts and in some form of federal corrections (jails and prisons) involves unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and Latin America (Light, Lopez, & Gonzalez- Barrera, 2014). Yet although they violate U.S. immigration laws, De La Torre (2013), in her ethnographic research on Mexican migrants and their version of their immigration story, found that these immigrants do not see themselves as criminals at all; rather, they see themselves as moral actors confronting impossible circumstances that require crossing the border in order to provide for themselves and their families. One can well imagine that refugees fleeing war-torn Syria for Europe in 2015, 2016, and 2017 would likely make the same argument.

p.262

The immigrants, in interviews, characterized coming to the United States as a moral act necessitated by the lack of decent living conditions and sparse opportunities in Mexico. As it was, they were unable to support their families in Mexico and did not see a future there:

For instance, Juan Carlos, in his mid-20s, came to work in Chicago because he wanted a better economic position that would

allow him to afford necessary things, among them, milk to feed his newborn daughter. His opportunities were limited as he struggled to provide for his family while living in Acapulco. Women also recounted how they had to sacrifice to feed families, raise their children, and take care of their elderly parents and relatives while engaged in paid work. For example, Araceli, in her early 30s, came to the USA because she was the only provider in her household, as her elderly parents could no longer work and her younger siblings started college in Guanajuato. In coming to the USA she sacrificed her own chance to attend college in Mexico. (De La Torre, 2013, p. 272)

But coming to the United States carries its own hazards and risks. One of them is incarceration and then expulsion from this country. As Light and his colleagues (2014) documented, “Among federal sentenced offenders in 1992, 12% were unauthorized immigrants. By 2012, that share had increased to 40%” (p. 1).

INTRODUCTION

© Patrick Tehan/MCT/Newscom

PHOTO 12.1: California inmates in Chino State Prison sitting in mixed-race groups.

The races and ethnicities of America’s population have shaped its law and practice from the beginning. At the very writing and ratification of the Constitution, full citizenship was denied to those who were not white and, for many decades, to those who were not male and in possession of significant amounts of property. The institution of slavery, the forcible seizure of American Indian lands, and the limitations on the immigration of non- whites and their rights while in the United States all have marked and marred this country. Accordingly, police agencies, courts, correctional institutions and programs, and their actors have historically treated people differently based on their race and ethnicity.

Minority group members were more likely in some parts of the country to be incarcerated when they were innocent or sentenced for

periods that were longer than their white brothers and sisters. Once in the correctional system, minority group members were sometimes segregated into separate institutions, sections of institutions, and programs. At times, they were given less desirable jobs and housing in jails and prisons and were prevented from working in such places. Whether such discriminatory treatment continues today is a matter of some debate, but there are indications that some laws, police, courts, and correctional practices have the effect of maintaining a separate and unequal system for minority group members. In this chapter, we briefly discuss this history and use it as a context for current practices and experiences in corrections.

p.263

DEFINING RACE, ETHNICITY, DISPARITY, AND DISCRIMINATION

RACE

Race is a term that refers to the skin color and features of a group of people. The extent to which different racial groups truly differ biologically is still being determined by scientists. Scientists are still putting together the collective pieces of our human history. However, the genotyping of the whole human race indicates that our species likely originated in Africa (Diamond, 1997; McAuliffe, 2010). Waves of migration then

occurred, beginning at least 50,000 years ago and continuing over thousands of years, to Europe and Asia, resulting in variation in skin color and other features of racial groups, who in turn migrated to other continents and islands (Mann, 2006; McAuliffe, 2010). It is worth noting that even as these physical distinctions developed, there has been much intermingling, both historically and currently, among groups, resulting in populations that are substantially mixed rather than distinct in their “racial” heritage. For this reason, using racial designations, such as white, black, and Asian, might be necessary to ensure that one group is not advantaged over another, but we should recognize that they can be somewhat arbitrary designations because true racial differences, although visible to the eye, may be measured more in gradations than in clear distinctions, particularly in the most racially mixed communities.

ETHNICITY

Ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to the differences between groups of people based on culture. An ethnic group will often have a distinct language as well as distinct values and traditions and a shared religion and history. An ethnic group may be made up of several races and have a diverse national heritage. For instance, the term Hispanic is applied to an ethnic group in the United States that includes white, black, and Asian racial groups whose ancestors may hail from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, or Central or South America.

Descendants of Italians, Irish, French, German, and other ancestral ethnic Europeans who immigrated to the United States are usually racially white but not always; while in Europe or after immigrating to the United States, those groups may have intermingled with Africans and Asians. For instance, people known as Creoles are both ethnically and racially differentiated by their white and African racial background and the French ethnic cultural influences in Louisiana. And who are “black Irish” Americans but primarily white ethnic Irish people who intermingled with Spanish Moorish people while in Europe (who were at least partially from North Africa) and who then immigrated as Irish to the United States. Among black people in the United States, there are distinct ethnic differences between those whose ancestors have been in the country for hundreds of years, either as free people or as those forcibly brought here through slavery, and those whose families are more recent immigrants from Africa or predominantly racially black areas of the world (e.g., immigrants from Caribbean Islands like Haiti). More recent immigrants from the Sudan, Nigeria, or Kenya are different ethnically; that is to say, they have a distinct culture, as well as nationality, from each other and from those blacks whose families have been in the United States for generations.

DISPARITY AND DISCRIMINATION

Clear, Cole, and Reisig (2011) defined

disparity as “the unequal treatment of one group by the criminal justice system, compared with the treatment accorded other groups” (p. 527). In turn, they defined discrimination as “differential treatment of an individual or group without reference to the behavior or qualifications of the same” (p. 527). We would add that disparity can happen in many organizations and entities and is not just restricted to the criminal justice system, and often discrimination is linked in law to classes of people distinguished by race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, religion, nationality, sexual orientation or identity, and income.

p.264

A LEGACY OF RACISM

The legacy of racism (or discriminatory attitudes, beliefs, and practices directed at one race by another) runs long and deep in the United States. Notably, sometimes the term racism is also applied when one ethnic group holds discriminatory attitudes or beliefs about, or engages in discriminatory practices against, another ethnic group. Correctional institutions and programs, as social institutions, are products of their larger social, political, and economic environments, and therefore the legacy of racism has affected and continues to affect their operation.

AFRICAN AMERICANS

In the United States, slavery historically involved the involuntary servitude of black Africans by white Europeans and was practiced almost from the settling of the United States (Davis, 2008). Many of the founding fathers were slave owners, and the practice of slavery was protected in the Constitution (through the three-fifths designation of slaves in Article I [the worth that slaves had for states that wanted to count them for representation in Congress] and Article IV [which caused fugitive slaves to be returned to the slave owners]).

Slavery was a lucrative business for ship owners in the colonial United States, both northern and southern, and for plantation owners in the South because it provided the backbreaking agricultural labor that built the southern economy. Although slavery officially ended with the Civil War between the northern and southern states and the subsequent adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865, it lived on in civil society and law for 100 years through discriminatory laws and practices (see the discussion of Jim Crow laws later in this chapter).

Correctional institutions, particularly in the South following the Civil War, were devised to maintain the slave system, with newly freed and often unemployed blacks incarcerated for minor or trumped-up charges. Once incarcerated, their labor was leased out to

southern farmers for work on the same plantations where they or their brethren had been slaves (Oshinsky, 1996; Young, 2001). During the same time period, in the North and Midwest, African American inmates were sometimes segregated from whites in prisons and jails and were given substandard housing and the least desirable work assignments (Hawkes, 1998; Joseph & Taylor, 2003).

IN FOCUS 12.1

Hate Groups in the United States

Unfortunately, as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC, a well-respected nonprofit organization that tracks hate groups and their activity in the United States), the number of hate groups in this country in 2017 stood at 917; this constitutes a doubling of such groups since 1999 when that number was 457 (SPLC, 2017, p. 1). Among these groups, there has been a 197% increase in anti-Muslim groups, and there are 130 Ku Klux Klan groups, 663 anti-government “patriot” groups, and 193 black separatist groups. Not surprisingly the number of hate crimes reported by the media has also risen, with the latest at the time of this writing (May 2017) being two white men killed on a train in Portland, Oregon, while trying to defend two Muslim women, by

Wikimedia, public domain

PHOTO 12.2: The Scottsboro accused meeting with their lawyer in jail.

a white man involved in Klan activities who had racist views and who had been harassing and threatening those women (Piggott, 2017).

p.265

IN FOCUS 12.2

The Scottsboro Case

Nine African American teenage boys were hoboing in 1931 on a freight train headed to Memphis, Tennessee. The train was stopped, and they were

arrested and accused of the rape of two white girls on the train. The case was first tried in Scottsboro, Alabama, where the boys received little representation, and the trial was rushed. All of the boys in this first trial, except the youngest (a 12-year-old), were convicted of rape and sentenced to death.

The case was appealed and made it all the way to the Supreme Court. In the famous decision Powell v. Alabama (1932), the Court ruled that the due process rights of the accused—in this case, their right to counsel in a capital case, particularly because these teenagers were indigent and illiterate— were violated. The Court reversed their convictions and sent their case back for retrial.

In the second trial, seven of the eight convictions were upheld by all-white juries. (Black voters in Alabama were purposefully excluded from lists for juries.) The reconvictions happened despite the fact that the case was moved to Decatur, Alabama, for retrial, and one of the two victims recanted her story, claiming that the story was made up and that the boys never touched either of them.

The Supreme Court, in 1935, again reheard the case in light of the all-white jury composition; the Court reversed

again. The Alabama judge set aside the verdict and scheduled a new trial, where the accused were again found guilty.

Eventually, charges were dropped for four of the nine defendants, but the others received sentences of 75 years to death, and three of those five served prison time. The one who was sentenced to death was eventually pardoned in 1976 (Walker et al., 1996). This case is widely regarded by legal scholars as a gross miscarriage of justice and as emblematic of the way African Americans were treated in racist sectors of this country well after slavery was abolished.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think the time and place of this event affected its outcome?

2. How does this case and how these teenage boys were treated compare with how young black men and boys are treated by the police today?

3. Is there room for improvement in race relations between the police and African American community members?

4. Why is it so difficult for racial and ethnic groups in this country to, as Rodney King asked, “just get along”?

The Scottsboro case exemplified the racist attitudes of communities and how those attitudes were translated into discriminatory practices by law enforcement, courts, and corrections (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 1996; see In Focus 12.2). The lynching of black men, fueled by mob rule and widespread Ku Klux Klan hate group activity, was also practiced in many states and communities following the Civil War and well into the 1900s (Keil & Vito, 2009). Lynching reinforced a culture of fear that prevented African Americans from achieving an equal and decent footing in communities. The Klan’s avowed purpose was to target and persecute Catholics, Jews, and non-whites, especially blacks, particularly in the South and in the midwestern states. Membership was widespread among public and criminal justice officials during the first half of the 1900s and even included those who rose to such lofty heights as Supreme Court justices (e.g., Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was a member during the 1920s) and members of Congress (e.g., Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was a member and defender of the Klan well into the 1950s).

p.266

IN FOCUS 12.3

Fourteen Examples of Racism in the Criminal Justice System

By Bill Quigley*

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the U.S. criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is—are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the U.S. criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African Americans?

Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system— from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom. Look what these facts show.

1. The U.S. has seen a surge in arrests and putting people in jail over the last four decades. Most of the reason is the war on drugs. Yet whites and blacks engage in drug

offenses, possession and sales, at roughly comparable rates— according to a report on race and drug enforcement published by Human Rights Watch in May 2008. While African Americans comprise 13% of the U.S. population and 14% of monthly drug users, they are 37% of the people arrested for drug offenses—according to 2009 congressional testimony by Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project.

2. The police stop blacks and Latinos at rates that are much higher than whites. In New York City, where people of color make up about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD [New York Police Department] stops were of blacks and Latinos. When whites were stopped, only 8% were frisked. When blacks and Latinos are stopped 85% were frisked according to information provided by the NYPD. The same is true most other places as well. In a California study, the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] found blacks are three times more likely to be stopped than whites.

3. Since 1970, drug arrests have skyrocketed, rising from 320,000 to close to 1.6 million according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice. African Americans are arrested for

drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than the rate for whites— according to a May 2009 report on disparity in drug arrests by Human Rights Watch.

4. Once arrested, blacks are more likely to remain in prison awaiting trial than whites. For example, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice did a 1995 review of disparities in processing felony arrests and found that in some parts of New York, blacks are 33% more likely to be detained awaiting felony trials than whites facing felony trials.

5. Once arrested, 80% of the people in the criminal justice system get a public defender for their lawyer. Race plays a big role here as well. Stop in any urban courtroom and look at the color of the people who are waiting for public defenders. Despite often heroic efforts by public defenders, the system gives them much more work and much less money than the prosecution. The American Bar Association, not a radical bunch, reviewed the U.S. public defender system in 2004 and concluded, “All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring. . . . The fundamental right to a lawyer that

America assumes applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the U.S.”

6. African Americans are frequently illegally excluded from criminal jury service according to a June 2010 study released by the Equal Justice Initiative. For example in Houston County, Alabama, 8 out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by prosecutors from serving on death penalty cases.

7. Trials are rare. Only [3% to 5%] of criminal cases go to trial—the rest are plea bargained. Most African American defendants never get a trial. Most plea bargains consist of promise of a longer sentence if a person exercises their constitutional right to trial. As a result, people caught up in the system, as the American Bar Association points out, plead guilty even when innocent. Why? As one young man told me recently, “Who wouldn’t rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk twenty-five years for a crime they didn’t do?”

p.267

8. The United States Sentencing

Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes. Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project reports [that] African Americans are 21% more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and 20% more likely to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants.

9. The longer the sentence, the more likely it is that non-white people will be the ones getting it. A July 2009 report by The Sentencing Project found that two-thirds of the people in the U.S. with life sentences are non-white. In New York, it is 83%.

10. As a result, African Americans, who are 13% of the population and 14% of drug users, are not only 37% of the people arrested for drugs but 56% of the people in state prisons for drug offenses (Marc Mauer, May 2009 congressional testimony for The Sentencing Project).

11. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in 3. Latino males have a 17% chance and white males have a 6% chance.

Thus, black boys are five times and Latino boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail.

12. So, while African American juvenile youth [are] but 16% of the population, they are 28% of juvenile arrests, 37% of the youth in juvenile jails, and 58% of the youth sent to adult prisons (2009 Criminal Justice Primer, The Sentencing Project).

13. Remember that the U.S. leads the world in putting our own people into jail and prison. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the U.S. has [5%] of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prisoners, over 2.3 million people behind bars, dwarfing other nations. The U.S. rate of incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed countries, and black males are the largest percentage of inmates, according to ABC News.

14. Even when released from prison, race continues to dominate. A study by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that 17% of white job applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers, while only 5% of black job applicants with criminal records received call backs. Race is so prominent in that study that whites with criminal

records actually received better treatment than blacks without criminal records!

So, what conclusions do these facts lead to? The criminal justice system, from start to finish, is seriously racist.

Discussion Questions

1. Have recent events involving videos of unarmed or lightly armed minority group members being shot by the police changed your mind about whether there are racist elements in the criminal justice system?

2. If so, what are the biggest challenges to changing that system?

*Note: Bill Quigley is legal director for the

Center for Constitutional Rights and a law

professor at Loyola University New Orleans

College of Law. This excerpt was taken from

an article he wrote for the Huffington Post

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-

quigley/fourteen-examples-of-

raci_b_658947.html). Reprinted with

permission.

There is little doubt that up until the civil rights movement and the implementation of laws and practices that reduced racism in public and private organizations, there was

institutional racism—or racism practiced by many, if not most, institutional members—in criminal justice and other organizations. In correctional institutions, it was not until the civil rights movement morphed into the prisoner rights movement in jails and prisons that these practices were changed, and African American and white inmates were treated more similarly, or were legally required to be so treated, in correctional institutions (Belbot & Hemmens, 2010). But despite these reforms, African Americans constituted about 35% of total state inmates in 2013, although they composed only about 13% of the general population that year (Carson, 2014, p. 15; U.S. Census Bureau, 2014a, p. 1).

p.268

NATIVE AMERICANS/AMERICAN INDIANS

American Indians are another group of people who have been victims of racism in this country. Note that the terms Native American and American Indian both are used to describe the first peoples who lived in the Americas when Christopher Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas in 1492. Columbus mistakenly thought he was in India and thus dubbed the native peoples “Indians.” The name stuck, giving rise to the more recent use of the name Native Americans by those not wishing to associate these native peoples with Columbus. Other terms often used for native peoples in the United States are indigenous

peoples and first peoples. The problem is that sometimes people who are not Indians have adopted the Native American term and might adopt the indigenous people term because they were born in the United States. The term first peoples is not much used in the United States, although it has gained currency in other countries as a term to describe indigenous peoples. However, the most common names used by natives and non- natives in the United States are American Indians and Native Americans, and they will be used interchangeably in this book (Mann, 2006).

At the time of the arrival of the first of Columbus’s ships and the subsequent growth in European expansion to North, Central, and South America, there were reportedly as many as 20 million native people residing in North America (Colbert, 1997; Davis, 2008; Diamond, 1997; Mann, 2006). Emerging archeological evidence has established that complex cities and agriculture flourished in the Americas, particularly in South and Central America, thousands of years before this wave of Europeans arrived. (There are theories and some evidence that Africans, other Europeans, and Asians all made trips to the Americas and did so many times over the millennia and well before this latter foray by Columbus and the Spaniards [Awes & Awes, 2010; Mann, 2006].) Within a few short decades, those populations had been decimated by disease (mostly smallpox), wars, and massacres. Over the course of a few

hundred years, only a small percentage of those original peoples survived, and they were overwhelmed by the influx of European immigrants who, through wars and treaties, relocated American Indians, often forcibly, off of their lands and onto reservations.

Such reservations, at least initially, were in essence forms of correctional institutions whose purpose was to incarcerate a whole people on a piece of land by restricting their movement away from the reservations. Such land was usually less desirable than the land the tribe originally resided on and was often inadequate to support the survival of that tribe. As a consequence, American Indian reservations of the 1800s and 1900s were populated by poor, underfed, and undereducated people with few prospects for regaining their land, wealth, or status (Blalock, 1967; Kitano, 1997; Stannard, 1992). Federal policy regarding American Indian tribes has shifted over time, from efforts to segregate them from white communities, to efforts to integrate tribal members into the larger community, to more current efforts to respect their identity, independence, and cultures.

As a result of this complicated history, the interplay of tribal, federal, and state laws is complex and depends on the time period and the state and tribe involved. Currently, there are 566 federally recognized tribes in the United States, and there are a number of tribes that have not received or sought this

recognition (Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2014, p. 1943). On large reservations, more minor criminal offending by tribal members falls under the jurisdiction of that tribe, whereas felony offenses or off-the-reservation criminal activity by tribal members might be handled by the tribe, the state, or the federal government. Larger reservations maintain their own jails for tribal members accused of crimes, for minor offenders, and for those with shorter sentences of incarceration. Despite the existence of these separate legal and correctional systems on larger reservations, at least regarding less serious offending, the number of Native Americans in federal and state prisons is often disproportionate to their representation in the larger population of that state (Perry, 2004).

p.269

As reported in a recent Bureau of Justice Statistics publication regarding Indian jails (Minton, 2015, p. 1), there were 79 jails in Indian country in 2014, and the number of inmates confined in those jails has been increasing, although admissions decreased slightly between 2013 and 2014, and the percentage of people held for violent offenses also decreased in Indian jails.

HISPANICS/LATINOS/LATINAS

As mentioned previously, the term Hispanic is used to designate an ethnic group that spans many races and nations of origin, to the point

where it might not be descriptive (Martinez, 2004). For this reason, other monikers are often used to describe Hispanics that may better represent who they are, such as the more general Latinos/Latinas (which can be used to describe those who originally hailed from Latin America or whose ancestors did) or terms that identify a particular national heritage—specifically—Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, and so forth. Each of these groups of people has a history with a distinct American experience. Sometimes that history has included discrimination by criminal justice actors during incarceration.

IN FOCUS 12.4

Documented Lynchings of Mexican Americans

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, a publication of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI, 2015), details an investigation into lynching in the South after the Civil War and up to World War II. There were 3,959 lynchings in southern states during this time period (1877–1950) (p. 1). According to the authors of this publication, the lynchings were public events, widely attended by whites, tolerated by state and local officials, and “used to enforce racial subordination and segregation” (p. 1). “Crimes” might include “bumping into a white person,

or wearing their military uniforms after World War I, or not using the appropriate title when addressing a white person” (p. 1).

In a 2015 New York Times editorial, William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb described a little-known dirty American secret (derived from the same publication): “Blacks weren’t the only victims of violence by white mobs” (Carrigan & Webb, 2015, p. A23). Although blacks were the most likely targets of lynching in America’s past, particularly in the South, the authors noted that Mexicans and, to a lesser extent, Native Americans, Italians, and Chinese were also singled out in other parts of the country. From 7 Mexican shepherds hanged by white vigilantes near Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1878; to 547 newspaper-documented cases of lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas from 1848 to 1928; to thousands killed by Texas Rangers and other law enforcement and vigilantes along the Mexican border from 1915 to 1918, the practice was reportedly widespread in the southwestern United States.

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think spurs people to lynch other people?

2. What makes the people who commit such atrocities, termed acts of terror by the EJI, think they can get away with it?

p.270

The history of Mexican Americans, the largest subgroup of Hispanics or Latinos/Latinas in the United States, has been one in which they and their land were forcibly made part of the American Southwest. As a result of the Mexican–American War, which lasted from 1846 to 1848, Mexico lost nearly half of its land—the area that has become the American Southwest, from Texas to California and all of the states in between. However, there is evidence that at least some of the Mexicans in these territories were willing to become citizens of the United States (Espinosa, Komatsu, & Martin, 1998).

Today, in border states, the number of Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans is so high, and their assimilation into the culture is so thorough (e.g., in New Mexico, Arizona, parts of Texas, California, and Florida) that the existence of a clear racial or ethnic majority group has disappeared or has become the Hispanic/Latino/Latina group itself. The increased numbers of Mexican Americans in these states and the immigrants crossing over the southern border into the United States have sparked a political debate over recent

Mexican immigrants and whether or not they should be accorded citizenship rights. At the center of the debate is the passage by the state of Arizona of an immigration law that allows law enforcement there to demand papers from any person whom officers suspect might be in the country illegally without further cause (Archibold, 2010). Civil libertarians and civil rights groups allege that this law has resulted in discrimination against Hispanics in Arizona and creates the potential to fill jails, if not prisons, in that state. In the Supreme Court case Arizona v. United States (2012), the Court upheld the requirement that law enforcement verify immigrant status during lawful stops but struck down three other provisions of the law (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2012).

Whether in Arizona or in other states, however, and as with American Indians and African Americans, the representation of Hispanics in American prisons and jails is already disproportionate to their representation in the general population. In 2013, Hispanics constituted 21% of state inmates when their representation in the larger population was estimated at 17% for that year (Carson, 2014, p. 15; U.S. Census Bureau, 2014a, p. 1). Looking at just the number of inmates incarcerated tells an important story (Figure 12.1), but it is the rate of incarceration (Figure 12.2) that demonstrates more clearly the disparity in our correctional system.

Public domain

PHOTO 12.3: A cartoon that appeared in Harper’s Weekly regarding the “Chinese Question,” which depicts Lady Justice defending a Chinese man being persecuted by a racist mob.

ASIAN AMERICANS

As with most immigrants to America during the 1800s and 1900s, Japanese and Chinese immigrants (who collectively represent the largest group of Asian Americans but certainly not the only group [space prevents

us from sufficiently exploring the Korean, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian, Pacific Islander, and other East Asian experiences]) were looking for a better life for themselves and their families. Although they found such a life to varying degrees, their experience, like that of the other ethnic and racial minorities mentioned in this chapter, was tinged with racism. Originally settling primarily in western states during the 1800s and early 1900s, Chinese and Japanese immigrants were heavily involved in mining and agriculture in pioneer communities.

Chinese labor was crucial to the construction of the first transcontinental railroad (1863– 1869). Later barred from owning property in some states and from voting in others, Chinese people made do by engaging in service professions (e.g., laundries, restaurants, herb shops) and settling together in parts of cities for both comfort and safety (J. Jones, 2016; Lennon, Angier, Tsui, Cheng, & Chin, 2003; Wei, 1999). When economies soured in some of those cities or states, Asian immigrants were blamed for taking jobs from poor whites—much like the way blacks were blamed by poor whites in the South after the Civil War or recent Mexican immigrants are blamed by poor whites in much of this country today—and they were often run out of town. They were literally placed on ships and sent home even though they and their families may have lived in the United States for decades if not generations.

p.271

FIGUREFIGURE 12.112.1 Number of Inmates by Demographic Characteristics, 2014

Source: Carson (2015, Table 10).

*Includes American Indians and Alaska Natives;

Asians, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific

Islanders; and persons of two or more races.

FIGUREFIGURE 12.212.2 Rate of Imprisonment by Demographic Characteristics, 2014

Sources: Carson (2015, Table 10); U.S. Census

Bureau, Population Division (2016).

*Includes American Indians and Alaska Natives;

Asians, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific

Islanders; and persons of two or more races.

The first restrictive immigration law in the country, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, was directed at reducing immigration from China (J. Jones, 2016; Wei, 1999). This act was not repealed until 1943. Some of the first drug laws, laws against opium dens dating from the 1870s onward, were passed because Chinese immigrants were thought to be corrupting the white population by spreading the use of the drug; such laws were ironic because opium was first introduced to China by Westerners (Lennon et al., 2003).

Much like Chinese immigrants, Japanese immigrants provided cheap labor as they were employed in the construction of railroads, as well as agriculture, restaurants, and many other businesses, primarily in the American West. In fact, when Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese immigrants filled the gap, beginning during the 1880s, until their own immigration was also restricted in 1908. Barred from owning their own land, many Japanese Americans earned their livings during the late 1800s and early 1900s by leasing land and growing beets in Oregon and Idaho, for instance. As their economic strength grew, however, they were regarded as a threat by the local white population, and there were numerous instances where they were forcibly run off of their land and out of town (Mercier, 2010).

p.272

Despite the Issei’s [another term for the first Japanese immigrants] hard work in the early twentieth century, envy and racial discrimination led to increasing anti-Japanese attitudes on the West Coast, much as the sentiment had developed against perceived Chinese competition. Residents of Mountain Home, Nampa, and Caldwell, Idaho, drove out Japanese workers, and white mobs near Coeur d’Alene and in Portland threatened Japanese railroad workers. Tensions led to the so-called “Gentleman’s Agreement” between the

U.S. and Japan that effectively limited after 1908 the numbers of laborers that could emigrate from Japan. Instead, the two governments allowed wives and brides to join earlier male immigrants in the United States, changing the character of the immigrant community. (Mercier, 2010, p. 10)

The internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans in 1942 in 10 inland concentration camps during World War II, along with the confiscation of their property, was not based on the actual threat they presented to the safety of western states—or at least no more, say, than the German Americans who were scattered all over the United States at the time and who were not incarcerated (Mercier, 2010, p. 1). The internment of whole Japanese American families in prison camps was instead based on racially tinged beliefs about who could be trusted and on ignorance regarding the allegiance that such citizens felt for this, their country.

As far as the incarceration of most Asian Americans these days goes, they tend to be underrepresented in correctional organizations in relation to their representation in the general population. It is not clear why such underrepresentation exists, but it is likely related to their tight-knit and supportive families and communities and the value those cultures have placed on education and achievement, resulting in higher incomes and education for many Japanese and Chinese

American citizens (Mercier, 2010). Notably, successful integration into American society, as measured by economic and educational achievements, is not uniform across all Asian Americans. Those emigrating from war-torn Cambodia and Vietnam during the latter half of the 20th century were not always as “successful” or able to stay out of the criminal justice system and its correctional institutions.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CLASS AND RACE/ETHNICITY

Americans are often averse to recognizing the existence of a class system in the United States. In part, this dislike of class labels springs from our history of revolution, which was spurred, in part, by a desire to separate ourselves from the rigidity of the class system in England and Europe. In addition, our economic, political, and social systems have allowed people in lower classes to advance through ingenuity, education, or drive—or some mix of those—to the middle or upper classes. However, this upward mobility is hampered in any number of ways by poverty and related ills such as poor nutrition and schools, limited access to health care, and parents who are absent or neglectful. When poverty is combined with long-term and systematic discrimination against a people such that their families are destroyed, as occurred with the social institution of slavery and the continued discrimination against African Americans, recovery of communities

can take generations. Not surprisingly, illegal drug use catches on in such poor communities, as do other forms of involvement in street criminality.

p.273

Certain racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be poor and thus caught up in the criminal justice system and overrepresented in correctional institutions and programs (see Table 12.1). Race and traditions of discrimination against African Americans have stymied their ability to assimilate in many cases. Language barriers and discrimination regarding race have also prevented some Hispanics, American Indians, and Asians from moving to the middle and upper classes. Cultural differences have created a similar barrier for these groups. The drug war, which is discussed more fully in the following, has tended to target illegal drugs and their use and has had a disparate impact on minority groups such as Hispanics and African Americans. The drug war has led to the phenomenon of disproportionate representation by these minority groups in correctional organizations.

MINORITIES: POLICIES AND PRACTICES THAT HAVE RESULTED IN INCREASED INCARCERATION

As has been mentioned in other chapters in this book, African Americans and Hispanics

particularly, but also American Indians, are disproportionately represented as the accused or convicted in jails, prisons, and community corrections in the United States. Asian Americans are overrepresented in federal prisons. As already mentioned, most of these minority groups are also overrepresented among the poor in the United States and among those accused or convicted of street crimes (see Table 12.1). During the 1950s an estimated 70% of the inmates in America’s prisons were white, but by the year 2013 about 56% of inmates in prisons were African American (35%) or Hispanic (21%) (Carson, 2014, p. 15). Yet according to the 2013 U.S. Census, only 13% of the population as a whole was black or African American and 17% was Hispanic or Latino of any race, whereas 78% was white (with other races constituting Asian [4.9%], Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander [0.2%], and two or more races [2.3%]) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014b, p. 1).

Stated another way, among the largest racial and ethnic groups in 2013, black non- Hispanic males had an imprisonment rate that was six times higher than white non-Hispanic males and 2.5 times higher than Hispanic males (Carson, 2014, p. 8). Likewise, black non-Hispanic females were imprisoned at twice the rate of white non-Hispanic females in 2013 (although the former’s numbers had decreased from 2012) (Carson, 2014, p. 8). All of this means that no matter how one views the data, blacks or African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos/Latinas are

disproportionately incarcerated in the United States when compared with their population composition.

THE DRUG WAR: THE NEW JIM CROW?

The rhetoric for the modern drug war was initiated by President Richard Nixon. He ran on a hardline law enforcement platform for president and, as a consequence, was interested in implementing tough-on-crime policies and practices. His efforts, however, were stymied by the fact that law enforcement was (and still is) primarily a responsibility of the states and their counties and cities. Ronald Reagan was the next president interested in enlarging the reach of the federal government into the states’ business regarding law enforcement. His administration was responsible for declaring a war on drugs and for asking Congress to allocate money for prisons and law enforcement. Therefore, President Reagan is often credited (or blamed, depending on one’s perspective) for starting the modern drug war.

p.274

TABLETABLE 12.112.1 Number and Percentage of People in Poverty by Different Poverty Measures, 2016**

Source: Fox (2017).

†The margin of error (MOE) is a measure of an

estimate’s variability. The larger the MOE in relation

to the size of the estimate, the less reliable the

estimate. The MOE is the estimated 90%

confidence interval. The MOEs shown in this table

are based on standard errors calculated using

replicate weights. For more information, see

“Standard Errors and Their Use” at

ftp://ftp2.census.gov/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-

252sa.pdf.

*An asterisk preceding an estimate indicates that

change is statistically different from zero at the

90% confidence level.

**Latest data available at the time of this writing.

SPM = Supplemental Poverty Measure.

p.275

ETHICAL ISSUE

What Would You Do?

You are a black male correctional officer in a jail, working in a living unit for inmates who are new to the facility. It is usually referred to as a classification unit because inmates in it are classified to other units by their conviction status, perceived dangerousness, and programming needs. After working in the unit for a few years, you notice that there are a few other staff members, although not most, who treat minority group inmates with less respect than white inmates. You also notice that some minority group inmates are classified with a higher security ranking than similar white inmates, and this means that minority inmates do not have as much access to reentry programming and to placement in the work release facility as do white inmates. What would you do to make sure that minority group inmates are treated and classified in the same way as other inmates?

Riding this popular tough-on-crime rhetoric of the 1980s and 1990s, Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama each continued to fund—and, at times, expand the reach of—the federal drug war. The practical effect of this modern war, if not the intent of its architects, has been to incarcerate unprecedented hundreds of

thousands of minority men and women, primarily African Americans and Hispanics, who would otherwise not be incarcerated in the correctional system (Lurigio & Loose, 2008).

M. Alexander (2010), in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, asserted that the modern drug war has been focused on the poor and minorities while ignoring the fact that most drug users and drug dealers are white. She noted that in 2004 an estimated 75% of those incarcerated for drug offenses were black or Latino, while the majority of the drug users and dealers were white (p. 97). She argued the case that the drug war, as executed, has the practical effect of reinstating Jim Crow laws in the United States. She maintained that this is so because of the police sweeps of poor and minority neighborhoods, the law enforcement focus on small-time marijuana possession offenders, and the law’s nonsensical emphasis on crack cocaine over powder cocaine even though they are similar in addiction and pharmacologically the same (see the following discussion of this topic and Chapter 5 on sentencing). Moreover, the implementation of the drug war has led to the erosion of civil liberties protections regarding search and evidence.

Jim Crow laws were devised by southern states following the Civil War, starting during the 1870s and lasting until 1965 and the civil rights movement, to prevent African

Americans from fully participating in social, economic, and civic life. These laws restricted the rights and liberties of black citizens in employment, housing, education, travel, and voting. Interestingly enough, voter disenfranchisement, or preventing African Americans from voting, was a key part of the Jim Crow laws back then (M. Alexander, 2010). Today, a felony offense, gained through even a relatively minor drug possession conviction, can mean the loss of employability, access to public housing or food stamps, and the right to vote—much the same effect as the Jim Crow laws of a century ago.

CRACK VERSUS POWDER COCAINE

The concern over crack cocaine started during the 1980s. The sentencing disparity that occurred when crack cocaine possession was treated as 100 times worse than possession of powder cocaine in federal law was tied to the race and class of the persons associated with each drug (M. Alexander, 2010; Sentencing Project, 2011). Poorer and disproportionately black and Hispanic people tended to use the cheaper crack cocaine, whereas richer and disproportionately white people tended to use the more expensive powder cocaine. Although there was never any real evidence that crack was more harmful or addictive than powder cocaine, there were a number of stories sensationalizing news of “crack babies” and mothers—portrayed as black babies and their

mothers—during the 1980s when the Reagan administration promoted the disparate sentencing. M. Alexander (2010) reported that the Reagan administration used the emergence of crack as a means of justifying the drug war and its focus on poor and minority people:

p.276

They hired staff whose job it was to find reports of inner-city crack users, crack dealers, crack babies, and crack whores and to feed those stories to the media. The media saturation coverage of crack was no accident. It was a deliberate campaign that fueled the race to incarcerate. Legislators began passing ever harsher mandatory-minimum sentences in response to the media frenzy. (cited in A. Cooper, 2011, p. 7)

The harsher sentencing for crack cocaine possession is another example of a current criminal justice policy that even the U.S. Sentencing Commission concedes has had the practical and discriminatory effect of vastly increasing the incarceration of African Americans and Hispanics. Although the federal law was changed in 2010, crack cocaine sentences at the federal level are still much harsher than those for powder cocaine by a factor of 18 to 1 (rather than 100 to 1, as they were under the 1986 law). Even so, the U.S. Sentencing Commission (2011) estimated that 12,811 federal inmates would be affected by the retroactive application of

the reduced sentences for crack cocaine and that 85% of those affected would be African Americans (p. 19). Despite efforts by Congress in 2015 and 2016 to pass further sentencing reform at the federal level with an eye to reducing sentences for low-level drug offenses and the retroactive application, proponents of such efforts in Congress were unable to garner enough votes. Moreover, the degree to which state laws treating crack cocaine use more harshly than powder cocaine results in disproportionate incarceration of minority group members varies by state.

IN FOCUS 12.5

Harsh Justice and the Scott Sisters

In 1993, two sisters, Jamie Scott, 22, and her pregnant 19-year-old sister, Gladys, were convicted of using three teenage boys to set up the armed robbery of two men (Pitts, 2010). The Scott sisters supplied the shotgun to the teenagers. Only $11 was stolen during this robbery, and the victims were unharmed. For this crime, the sisters, who had no prior criminal history, were each given a double life sentence and, as of November 2010, had served 16 years of it.

The teenage boys, two of whom testified against the sisters as part of their plea

bargains, each received a 2-year sentence, which they completed years ago. The Scott sisters claimed, and still claim, that they are innocent. The mother of the sisters argues that the harsh sentences were revenge for the family’s willingness to testify against a corrupt sheriff (Pitts, 2010). As news columnist Leonard Pitts explained,

Whatever the proximate cause of this ridiculous sentence, the larger cause is neon clear: The Scott sisters are black women in the poorest state in the union. And as report after report has testified, if you are poor or black (and God help you if you are both), the American justice system has long had this terrible tendency to throw you away like garbage. Historically, this has been especially true in the South. . . . How many other Scott sisters and brothers are languishing behind bars for no good reason, doing undeserved hard time on non-existent evidence, perjured testimony, prosecutorial misconduct or sheer racial or class bias? (Pitts, 2010, p. B6)

The Scott sisters did, finally, get some relief from their sentences. Due to the advocacy of Pitts and others, such as the National Association for the

© Mikael Karlsson/Alamy Stock Photo

PHOTO 12.4: A white officer stopping a black driver. Critics argue that black and

Advancement of Colored People, the original prosecutor of the sisters, the then-governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, suspended the sisters’ sentences as long as Gladys donated a kidney to her sister Jamie, whose kidneys had failed (Diaz-Duran, 2010). They were released from prison in January of 2011.

Discussion Question

1. In what ways does the Scott sisters’ treatment by the criminal justice system seem similar to and different from that experienced by the Scottsboro boys (see In Focus 12.2)?

p.277

brown drivers are stopped more by the police than white drivers and that they are treated more harshly when they are stopped.

RACIAL PROFILING AND DRIVING WHILE BLACK OR BROWN

In addition to the drug war and its effect on increasing minority involvement as the accused or convicted in corrections, scholars note that racial profiling by the police can have a similar effect. DWB, which stands for driving while black or brown, refers to the police practice of focusing law enforcement attention on black- or brown- skinned drivers. The research in this area has been mixed, with some researchers finding that this practice affects arrests, while others are unable to establish the existence of this practice (Rice, Reitzel, & Piquero, 2005). Lundman’s (2010) research also raised questions about the validity of police reports on the race or ethnicity of stopped drivers, noting that there were unaccounted for missing data on drivers from predominantly poor and minority neighborhoods in some research.

SAGE News Clip SAGE News Clip 12.1: US Ferguson

Police officers will tend to stop older vehicles, and such cars are often owned by poorer and minority group members. Having said this, Langan, Greenfield, Smith, Durose, and Levin (2001) found, in a review of Bureau of Justice Statistics data from a police and public national contact survey, that blacks and Hispanics were more likely to report being stopped by the police than were whites. Notably, in a presentation at the annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in October 2015, President Obama stated that he had been stopped for DWB. The researchers also found that minority group members were more likely to report negative criminal justice outcomes for themselves such as being ticketed, arrested, handcuffed, searched, or subjected to the use of force by officers when stopped. Rice and colleagues (2005) found, in their study of the perceptions of 700 randomly selected young adult (aged 18–26) New Yorkers, that the nuances of these stops might hinge on what shade one’s skin is (p. 63). They found that blacks and black Hispanics were more likely to report that racial profiling was widespread and that they were racially profiled more than were whites or non-black Hispanics.

SAGE News Clip SAGE News Clip 12.2: Arizona Racial Profiling

In a study of drug arrests in Seattle, Washington, Beckett, Nyrop, Pfingst, and Bowen (2005) found that the disparity in arrests between minorities and whites can be explained by racialized justice. The drug problem there was seen as a dangerous crack problem, which in turn was seen as a problem of use by blacks and Hispanics despite comparable use of illegal drugs by whites. Therefore, more minorities were stopped by the police because they were seen as more involved in illegal drug use.

JOURNAL ARTICLE Journal Article: 12.1: Race and Ethnicity Missingness in the Traffic Stop Data Reported by 308 Massachusetts Police Agencie CLICK TO SHOW

Of course, the more such stops one is

subjected to, the more likely that one is to run afoul of the law and to enter a correctional institution, such as a jail, or to find oneself on probation (Hawkins, 2005). Relatedly, these experiences are also more likely to result in the building of a record that, should one become entangled in the system again later, might be used to justify a conviction or a more severe sentence.

p.278

EVIDENCE-DRIVEN PUBLIC HEALTH PROSECUTION USED TO REDUCE MINORITY GROUP CORRECTIONAL POPULATIONS

Prosecutors play a key role in determining what to charge and whether an offense will lead to significant jail or prison time for the offender. In recognition of this fact, the twice- elected district attorney for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, John Chisholm, adopted what he terms an evidence-driven public health model for prosecution with a focus on the question, “What’s the most effective way to keep a community healthy?” (Toobin, 2015, p. 27). Rather than being wholly concerned with winning or losing cases, this model puts primacy on keeping the public safe from violent offenders, but then for the more minor offenders, the model shifts to an effort to keep them out of the system. Proponents of the model argue that low-level offenders are likely to be harmed by placement in corrections and to bring that harm back into

their communities in the form of more petty crimes by those who are low-skilled and undereducated, who are likely to remain unemployed and impoverished, along with their families. A disproportionate number of these low-level offenders in Milwaukee and the nation are minority group members.

In the Milwaukee experiment, an early intervention program in the prosecutor’s office was established to assess whether the accused is a low-level offender and whether he or she is likely to reengage in crime (based on an eight-question assessment and a review of the rap sheet and police report) (Toobin, 2015). Respondents who score low on this assessment are given probation, and if they successfully complete it, they walk away with no record. Those who score high are further assessed and may garner a criminal record if convicted, but their charges might still be reduced. Other efforts related to the model include evaluations of repeat offenders, much like in a drug or other specialty court, and their program progress to determine whether new charges are warranted when violations of probation occur or if they just need other assistance to stay out of crime.

As a result of these efforts, there have been far fewer prosecutions of African Americans and whites for low-level drug offenses, including possession of drug paraphernalia, in Milwaukee County since the experiment began in 2006. The number of misdemeanor prosecutions has dropped by more than a

third, and the number of African Americans sent to state prison from Milwaukee County has dropped by half (Toobin, 2015, p. 32). But the number of murders in Milwaukee and serious violent crimes like it have remained unusually high, and this, the district attorney concedes, is due to factors outside of his and his office’s control in that it includes larger societal problems such as “poverty, hopelessness, lack of education, drug addiction, and the easy availability of guns” (Toobin, 2015, p. 32).

MINORITIES: EXPERIENCING INCARCERATION

Victor Hassine, a writer and inmate doing life since 1980 in Pennsylvania prisons for a capital offense, commented that race was and is an integral part of the prison life he has experienced and still does experience (Hassine, 2009). Segregation in housing and by gangs (both voluntary) and racial bias in treatment by staff were common in Graterford Prison, where he was an inmate during the 1980s. Most of the inmates in this prison were black, while most of the staff were white. (Notably, during the 1980s, in Graterford Prison the only choices for self-identifying inmate race or ethnicity were white and black.) Most of the staff in this prison identified as Christian, while a sizable proportion of the black inmates were Muslim. Added to these differences based on race and religion was their place of origin; many

inmates tended to come from urban areas, while many staff were raised in more rural settings. Such differences between staff and inmates led to a difficult adjustment for minority inmates (see the following discussion of minority staff) and were cited as one of the complaints by inmates in the 1971 riot at Attica Prison in New York.

p.279

Wilbert Rideau, in his first-person account of incarceration in Louisiana prisons, described the setting for his third trial and the racial politics of the day in Baton Rouge in this way:

In 1970, at the time of my third trial, the Klan was using the kind of intimidation for which it was famous. It invaded North Baton Rouge—the black part of town—and plastered the utility poles and other upright surfaces with signs showing a rearing white-hooded horse carrying a hooded white rider, his left hand holding aloft a fiery cross. Beneath the horse’s feet was the Klan’s motto: FOR GOD AND COUNTRY. The poster was dominated by the horse and rider and by the big, bold print in the upper left corner that read SAVE OUR LAND, and beneath the picture it read JOIN THE KLAN. (Rideau, 2010, p. 61)

Rideau (2010) encountered racism from some staff and inmates over the course of his long incarceration, but he noted that it lessened in

degree and frequency as the years went on. Today, the racial mix of staff is more likely to reflect that of the community where inmates come from, which has tended to reduce race as a source of conflict between staff and inmates. However, Ross and Richards (2002) noted that a “color line” still divides prison inmates into at least these groups: blacks, whites, and Hispanics. Between and among these groups, there are different styles of living and means of surviving.

ETHICAL ISSUE

What Would You Do?

You are a white female counselor working in a privately owned juvenile detention facility, and you are interested in hiring a more racially and ethnically diverse staff to better match your community and clientele. Your company has an equal employment opportunity policy in place, but it has rarely been implemented in practice considering that nearly all of the staff are white, whereas almost all of the clients are black or Hispanic. You are on the selection team for a new position at the facility. After several interviews, you notice that at least one other member of the team—and possibly more—is not interested in hiring a minority group member given that this person consistently ranks such applicants’ resumes and interviews lower than those

of white applicants even though you do not think they merit it. The vote on the applicants is approaching, and there are three top candidates for the job who all seem similarly qualified for it. One of those applicants is a Hispanic male, and the other applicants are white. What would you do to ensure that this vote is fair and that the best applicant for the job gets the position?

VICTIMIZATION BY RACE AND ETHNICITY

Regarding victimization in prisons, Wolff, Shi, and Blitz (2008) found that African Americans were more likely to report sexual or physical violence from staff than from other inmates, non-Hispanic whites were more likely to report victimization by other inmates than by staff, and Hispanics had above- average reporting of victimization by both staff and other inmates. When both types of victimization were accounted for, however, all three groups reported about the same amount of victimization, just from different sources.

PROBATION OR PRISON?

Some research indicates that black offenders may prefer prison over community alternative sentencing, whereas white offenders express the opposite preference. In a study by Wood and May (2003), the authors noted that blacks

and whites “differed in their willingness to participate in alternative sanctions, in their preference for prison over alternatives, and in the amount of these alternatives they were willing to serve” (p. 624), with blacks being less willing to participate in alternatives or the number of alternatives and more likely to prefer prison over alternatives. There are several explanations for these differences discovered by these and other researchers.

p.280

PERSPECTIVE FROM A PRACTITIONER

James Watkins, Classification Counselor

Position: Classification Counselor (3), Washington State Department of Corrections

Location: Airway Heights Correction Center, Spokane, Washington

Education: North Idaho College and Spokane Community College

Career Video Payne career video 12.1: Legal Assistant

What previous criminal justice experience do you have?

I previously served as a correctional officer for 4.5 years, a sergeant for 1 year, and a classification counselor (2) for 4 years.

What are your primary duties and responsibilities?

• Supervise counselors on a behavior change unit

• Work with offenders to ensure correct classification levels

• Complete offender needs assessment per RNR (risk, need, and responsivity) model of offender classification

• Facilitate program services to include mental health services, education, chemical dependency, and evidence- based programs when available

• Provide inmates with information about reentry and release resources

• Engage offenders with programs to

increase success on release

• Connect families through the facilitation of increased communication with families

• Mentor language, role-modeling prosocial behaviors for effective communication with staff and offenders

• Manage a caseload of adult criminal offenders who I am responsible for counseling and informing regarding community resources and problems they might encounter in their transition to work release, parole, or release

• Work with internal and external entities to facilitate offender reentry into the community, enforce court- ordered conditions, and impose DOC (Department of Corrections) conditions

• Participate in risk management with a multidisciplinary team

• Maintain communication with offenders to assist with attorney calls, child custody and child support hearings with DSHS (Department of Social and Health Services) and courts, and family contact through crisis/emergency situations

• Arrange translator services

• Evaluate offenders for early release

• Regularly review and update offender plans, needs assessment, and programming prioritization

• Make recommendations for offender program progression, earned time, and other incentives

• Exercise sound judgment, aligned with department policy, in decisions concerning sanctions, treatment, and education referrals

What are the characteristics and traits most useful in your line of work?

• Effective communication skills

• Honesty and integrity

• Flexibility and dependability

• Strong time management skills

• Stability, willingness to change, adaptability, and humor

• Do not take things personally, and be understanding of clientele.

• Thick skinned—withstand more than the average individual

• A superior mindset

• Understand that clients and staff are a diverse group of individuals and that inmates and staff come from a huge variety of social and economic

backgrounds.

• Ability to accept individuals’ beliefs that are far from your own and still be able to deal with those individuals

• Be levelheaded, not reactionary.

• Develop an ability to stand alone, stand on your morals and beliefs, and be very independent.

p.281

• Have positive avenues of relief outside the job environment.

• Ability to deal with difficult situations appropriately

• Be more rooted and grounded in who you are to overcome perceptions of others’ beliefs about who you are.

• Ability to take the higher ground— as a minority, you need to show it more than others.

• Be independent because of the cultural perception of how you treat offenders within your same culture and race; you are under the spotlight more.

• Overcome the perception of giving preferential treatment to the same culture, race, and minority. That stereotype is always in the back of your mind—how others perceive

your treatment of a minority and offenders of the same race.

• Do not compromise the self, and act even more professional. Coming from the Spokane area and becoming a part of the criminal justice system while living in the same community and having to withstand scrutiny and stereotyping, I had to maintain values, integrity, and goals regardless of my culture or race.

• Ability to deal with direct and indirect prejudicial statements from staff and references toward race, politics, community, and family

• Ability to deal professionally and maturely with the assumptions, stereotypes, and direct racism and indirect racist undertones

Please describe a typical workday.

• Come to work and check mail messages and calendar for the day

• Return phone calls and e-mails from DOC staff, offender families, offenders, criminal justice system attorneys, and judges

• Check on any information passed down from previous shifts pertaining to safety and security of unit staff and offenders

• Check list for classification case management issues and offender reviews and release dates

• EBC and unit responsibilities include program schedules, class facilitation, and specific unit and prison meetings.

• Meet with offenders; attend to classification issues, reentry/release, and security release; address offender jobs and programming

• Deal with insubordinate staff and offenders

• Maintain safety and security of unit in collaboration with unit supervisor

What is your advice to someone who wants to enter your field?

• Make sure to understand who you are. This is a job you want to perform well, but it isn’t your life.

• Be prepared every day.

• Be very aware of who you are going to work for and what the job responsibilities are.

• You have to be very aware of the clientele with whom you are dealing on a day-to-day basis on both sides of the spectrum—that is, both the staff and the offenders.

• You need to be aware of how you will be perceived; go against the

stereotype.

• You need to be aware of the stereotypes—for example, how you dress “like a gang member” versus going golfing, wearing identical clothes but being perceived differently, and how you conduct yourself at work and away from work. Stereotypical perceptions include that one is uneducated, is athletic, has low writing and language skills, or has an STG (security threat group, aka gang) affiliation.

• Prove that you are above the stereotypes; you may have to be patient. You want people to judge you on work performance, not by your race and culture.

• Unfortunately, the bigger burden is that how you conduct yourself influences others’ perspectives of African Americans.

• Always take the high road. Fair isn’t an option. You cannot think about what fair is or should be. You just have to follow your values, integrity, and beliefs and take the high road at all times.

• Have a “superior mindset,” in the words of Professor Jigoro Kano, founder of judo.

© John Smierciak/MCT/Newscom

PHOTO 12.5: An inmate being cuffed by an officer. Inmates in transit between institutions or who present a danger to staff are cuffed before they are removed from cells.

p.282

Crouch (1993) argued that blacks might be more able to accept prison and adjust to it over alternatives because they are more likely to find people they know housed there and are less likely to be threatened by prison life than whites given that they have suffered the violence and deprivations of the cities already. Wood and May (2003) added that it is possible that blacks may also prefer prison because the alternatives to it in the community may subject them to abuse and harassment and ultimate revocation of their probation anyway. Therefore, it is not likely true that blacks or whites “prefer” prisons or the alternatives (e.g., probation or other

programming); they just disagree about which is the lesser evil.

MINORITIES WORKING IN CORRECTIONS

As with women, the employment of minority group men and women in correctional organizations did not increase until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and affirmative action plans were developed to encourage their employment. Today, however, the number of minorities employed in corrections, although not always reflecting their representation in the community (particularly regarding minority group women), has increased substantially. Although data in this area are not always consistent or up to date, we do know from the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (Pastore & Maguire, 2000, Table 1.104; Pastore & Maguire, 2005, Table 1.101 and Table 1.107) that black non-Hispanics accounted for 23.7% of local jail correctional officer employees in 1999 (when their representation in the general population was about 12.2%, according to the U.S. Census for 2001); 19.5% of all employees in state, federal, and private prisons in 2004; and 24.3% of correctional officers in federal prisons in 2004. On the other hand, non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics are underrepresented among staff when compared with their representation in those communities. In 2001, whites constituted about 69.0% of the U.S. population and Hispanics constituted about

12.9% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). In these same data, whites were still the majority racial group employee (59.3%, 63.3%, and 60.6%, respectively) in these jails and prisons, and Hispanics constituted a substantial ethnic minority (7.7%, 7.3%, and 12.4%, respectively).

SUMMARY

• American history contains a racist past, which has affected the operation of correctional entities and the criminal justice system generally.

• Those who fall below the poverty line in the United States are also more likely to be enmeshed in street criminality. Some racial and ethnic groups who are more likely to be poor (e.g., African Americans, Hispanics) are also more likely to be engaged in street crime.

• Police, courts, and correctional practices have had the effect of increasing the disproportionate incarceration of minority group members. Driving while black or brown, the drug war generally, and the harsh sentencing for crack cocaine specifically, along with the disenfranchisement that comes with

a felony conviction (and in some states stays with a felony conviction), all serve to reinforce the disparity in treatment of racial and ethnic minorities by the criminal justice system.

p.283

• Physical and sexual victimization in prisons varies by type of victimization and by race and ethnicity, although the total amount of such victimization appears to be similar for these groups.

• The numbers of racial and ethnic minorities working in corrections has increased substantially over the years, and for African Americans, at least, it appears that they mirror their relative numbers in the community in a number of jurisdictions.

KEY TERMS

Discrimination, 263

Disparity, 263

Driving while black or brown (DWB), 277

Ethnicity, 263

Jim Crow laws, 275

Race, 263

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What sorts of criteria differentiate race and ethnicity? Why might it not always be clear what race or ethnicity a person is? Are there reasons to make such distinctions?

2. What evidence is there of disparity and discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities in the United States in the past?

3. What evidence is there of disparity and discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities in the United States currently?

4. How and why is adjustment in corrections affected by one’s race and ethnicity?

5. Discuss how we might reduce the amount of disparity and discrimination against minorities in the United States. What specific steps can be taken in this direction? What are the likely barriers to accomplishing these changes?

Review → Practice → Improve

Sharpen your skills with SAGE edge at edge.sagepub.com/stohressentials3e.

SAGE edge offers a robust online environment featuring an impressive array of free tools and resources for review, study, and further exploration, keeping both instructors and students on the cutting edge of teaching and learning.

FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION AND APPLICATION, TAKE A LOOK AT THE INTERACTIVE EBOOK FOR THESE PREMIUM RESOURCES:

Career Video 12.1 Legal Assistant

SAGE News Clip 12.1 U.S. Ferguson

SAGE News Clip 12.2 Arizona Racial Profiling

Journal Article 12.1 Race and Ethnicity Missingness in the Traffic Stop Data Reported by 308 Massachusetts Police Agencies