The Cost of Color

THE CO$T OF COLOR Addressing the alarming link between incarceration and race in America

Beltsazar, Shutterstock

BY HAROLD DEAN TRULEAR AND CHARLES LEWIS

The consequences for African American families and communities are enormous.

The vast number of prison inmates comes from a small number of communities across the United States.3 These communities suffer economic, social, and health costs as a result of their disproportionate contact with the criminal justice system.4 More than 95 percent of prisoners eventually return to their communities, and that number is estimated to exceed 1 million by the year 2010.5 Formerly incarcerated persons most often return to communities where they have difficulty securing stable employment, housing, and social services needed for suc-

The federal and state prison population in the United States grew from 300,000 in 1972 to more than 2.2 million at midyear 2005.1 The pertinent subplot of this huge surge in incarceration is the disproportionate impact on people of color, particularly African American males who, while comprising approximately 6 percent of the nation’s population, account for more than 40 percent of the inmate population. Hispanics now account for 20 percent of the state and federal prison population, a 43 percent increase since 1990.2 While the number of incarcerated African American females is low compared to men, they are much more likely to be placed in custody than white women.

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cessful societal reintegration.6 Two-thirds are re-arrested and half of those re-arrested are returned to confinement within three years of their release.7 While much of the focus has been on the impact of formerly incarcerated persons returning from federal and state prison, more than 7 million people are released from short-term confinements in local jails in the United States each year, a substantial number of whom are people of color.

Researchers estimate that approximately 27 percent of African American males will spend some portion of their lives behind bars.8 Many of these men will suffer profoundly negative consequences for having been incarcerated.9 One in seven African American males is already barred from voting because of felony convictions, and as many as three in 10 of the next generation of African American males may lose their right to vote, amounting to a severe political penalty for African American communities.10 African American children also suffer disproportionately from the impact of massive incarceration. It is estimated that more than 2 million children have parents who are currently incarcerated, and African American children are nine times as likely as white children to have an incarcerated parent.11 Children of incarcerated parents are much more likely to suffer mental problems and exhibit antisocial behaviors.12 The numbers present parallel problems when we consider the situation of adolescents. Here, the situation has drawn the attention of criminal justice officials, community leaders, scholars, and politicians concerned with the effects of incarceration on young people of color. Across the country, people of good will are convening to discuss ways in which to address the skewed numbers of African American youth in the criminal justice system.

“Police precinct buildings should not be one-stop agencies for city youth with problems.” So offered one corrections official at a recent meeting of criminal justice, social welfare, and educational professionals at a gathering to discuss the issue that has become known as Disproportionate Minority Contact, or DMC. DMC refers to the numbers of black and Latino youth and young adults who are arrested and incarcerated at rates that far exceed those of their white counterparts.

Juveniles of color are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system.13 Minority adolescents comprised 61 percent of adolescents incarcerated in the United States in 2003, according to the most recent available data. African American youth accounted for 38 percent of all juvenile offenders.14 Although there has been a decline in the number of juveniles in confinement and a higher rate of decrease for minorities (10 percent) than non-Hispanic whites (5 percent), minority adolescent offenders were more likely to be placed in detention centers and long-term secure facilities.15 Incarcerated adolescents are severely hurt by confinement that interrupts their education and reduces their labor market prospects. As many as two-thirds of adolescents confined in secure facilities are likely to suffer with diagnosable mental health disorders, yet less than a third receive ongoing treatment.16 Overcrowding and systemic violence can exacerbate their mental disorders.

HOW DO PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE RESPOND? A highly complex and even controversial issue, DMC has drawn response from both sides of the political spectrum, with the right pointing to the breakdown of family values/structure and the left decrying racist attitudes on the part of the criminal justice system as the primary cause of such disproportion. Thoughtful observers, however, understand that the tension reflected above demands a search for a holistic approach to a clear and present problem.

Those who point to family breakdowns and the absence of fathers in poor communities promote personal responsibility, family strengthening, and intervention at the level of those who perpetrate crimes (or are alleged to have done so).

Advocates who cite the continued prevalence of racism in America call for the need for system reform, justice, and parity in sentencing and police sensitivity in handling juvenile contact. However, the late Harvie Conn, who was professor of missions at Westminster Seminary and the Center for Urban Theological Studies in Philadelphia, offered a balanced approach to which Christians should relate. In his book Evangelism: Preaching Grace and Doing Justice (Zondervan, 1982), the former minister to prostituted women in Korea stressed that the best approach to a true outreach ministry is to rec-

Inform yourself.

Read “Race Matters: Unequal Opportunities for Juvenile Justice” at the Annie E. Casey Foundation website (aecf.org).This fact sheet offers a quick source for analysis and strategies related to issues of inequity surrounding juvenile justice. It is part of a series of documents in the “Race Matters Toolkit” designed to help decision-makers, advocates, and elected officials get better results in their work by providing equitable opportunities for all.

While you’re there, check out the Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, which is having success reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact in sites across the country.

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that three things must be in place for punishment to be an effective deterrent to criminal (or any other form of inappropriate) behavior. First, the consequences must be immediate: Punishment needs to be meted out as a swift consequence of improper and criminal behavior. Second, punishment must be severe—harsh enough for persons to think seriously about the consequences of their behavior. And third, punishment must be consistent. Persons must know that whenever they behave badly there will be consequences.

American criminal justice offers none of these three dimensions of punishment with any regularity. Punishment is not immediate: Our system rightly takes persons through a series of proceedings to ensure a fair trial, but this process is often dragged out unreasonably and unjustly by bureaucracy. Punishment is not severe: For some, prison or jail time is a badge of street credibility, for others a stable place of food and shelter (“three hots and a cot,” in the vernacular).

Punishment is not consistent: Between unreported/unsolved crime and disparity in sentencing, people never know what the consequences of criminal behavior will be.

The foregoing is not, however, an argument for immediate consequences—that would lead to too many mistakes affecting innocent people and depriving all people of their right to a fair trial and proof of guilt. Neither is it a call for more draconian sentencing—the results of which are often counterproductive, leaving incarcerated persons ill equipped to return to society, not to mention creating conditions in some correctional facilities that constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Nor is it a push for consistency in the form of mandatory sentencing laws that often mitigate against common-sense consequences.

Put simply, punishment, as we know it in contemporary corrections, does not—and, in most cases, will not—work as the ultimate crime deterrent.

Speak out against crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparities.

Americans believe in a system of justice where all individuals are treated fairly under the law. But mandatory minimum sentencing laws prohibit judges from considering all the facts in a criminal case when determining sentences. The result is one-size-fits-all justice that ignores defendants’ life circumstances, criminal history, and role in the offense.

The 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts established mandatory penalties for crack cocaine that were the harshest ever adopted for low-level drug offenses and created drastically different penalty structures for crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine, which are pharmacologically identical substances. The law has diverted precious resources away from prevention and treatment for drug users and from communities ripped apart by incarceration.

Today a new consciousness about the unfairness and ineffectiveness of harsh crack cocaine mandatory sentences has emerged among advocates, policymakers, judges, and the United States Sentencing Commission.

To learn more about crack cocaine sentencing reform and how to end the sentencing disparity, go to sentenc ingproject.org/crackreform.

ognize that people are “both sinners and sinned against.”

Conn’s framework takes the issue of DMC beyond the polarization characterizing the current debate and bids Christians seeking justice to handle both sides of the equation. If juvenile offenders commit crimes, they are sinners and must be treated accordingly. This does not mean “lock them up and throw away the key,” for this leads to the warehousing of young black and Latino men (and increasingly women) in facilities designed for far fewer numbers and with dwindling resources for rehabilitation and preparation for reentry. But it does mean that offenders must be held appropriately accountable for their actions, including consequences that have the best chance of changing behavior. This means the investigation and mobilization of policies, services, and methods that are designed to help. Christian faith is rooted in metanoia, the theological concept of a changed mind.

Unfortunately, the rush to punishment as the primary consequence begs the question of the effectiveness of the means of punishment, especially as a means of engendering metanoia. In a lecture at Howard University, Devon Brown, commissioner of the D.C. Department of Corrections, noted

CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS With this in mind, Brown and other progressive corrections leaders are promoting policies and programs that focus on changing attitudes of young men and women who are incarcerated, focusing on developing an appropriate sense of self-

Partner with pastors and congregations across the country.

Go to the National Alliance of Faith & Justice program page (nafj.org/programs) and download the National Black Church Taskforce Initiative on Crime and Criminal Justice.

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reliance, responsibility, and achievement as ways of altering behavior.The National Alliance of Faith and Justice (nafj.org), under the direction of Addie Richburg, a lifelong federal corrections official and committed churchwoman, has created Operation Pen or Pencil: Education (Pencil), not Penitentiary (Pen). OPP is a crime prevention and reduction program offering incentives for creative research and writing on community issues for youth and young adults deemed at risk for criminal behavior. Both Brown and Richburg, as corrections professionals, recognize that personal responsibility cannot be divorced from DMC, and offer their work as examples for those wishing to address the need for attitudinal change in the hearts and minds of those who are currently incarcerated or seem to be candidates for such. Their efforts, and those such as the Prisoner Reentry Initiative of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, recognize that personal responsibility is a critical issue, both on the part of juveniles themselves and their families, their communities, and our institutions.

Conn’s notion of the “sinned against” requires signal attention as well.While the Justice Department claims that research

Organize Justice Sunday at your church.

Scheduled to coincide with Martin Luther King Day, Justice Sunday 2008 will be celebrated in many churches across America on January 20. This is a perfect opportunity to bring the issue of racial disparity in arrests, sentencing, and incarceration to the attention of your church members. You’ll find Justice Sunday resources at nafj.org/actsites/index.php. Consider inviting a speaker from Families Against Mandatory Minimums (famm.org). indicates that police bias against black and Latino youth does not contribute to disproportionate minority confinement, one would have a difficult time getting people such as the corrections official quoted above to believe that. He and others note that suburban youths picked up by law enforcement are often driven home to the custody of a parent, while poor urban young people are taken directly to the “one-stop” center for juvenile problems: the police precinct.

Indeed, racial profiling has been documented in enough cases to warrant a look at police training and attitudes.

In addition, progressive organizations such as the Sentencing Project (sentencingproject.org ) point to the need for policy reform that directly addresses disproportionate incarceration rates. They note that “incarceration rates and racial distributions are affected by resources devoted to policing and prosecution initiatives that emphasize large-scale drug arrests, as well as policing in communities of color, at the expense of drug treatment and diversion programs,” and that policymakers should “take into account the wealth of empirical evidence demonstrating the efficacy of investing in prevention and treatment, rather than a law enforcementcentered approach.” Additionally, the Sentencing Project notes that “the federal crack cocaine mandatory sentencing laws...have produced highly disproportionate rates of incarceration for low-level offenses. Similarly, school zone drug laws produce severe racial effects due to housing patterns, whereby drug offenses committed near the urban areas that contain many communities of color are prosecuted more harshly than similar offenses in rural communities populated largely by whites.” Higher-level offenders—users and mass distributors of powder cocaine—do not face such targeted prosecution and sentencing. Finally, they point to the likelihood of persons from low-income communities “to rely on an overburdened public defense system and live in communities with limited access to treatment and alternative sentencing options.”17 Clearly, resources are needed to ensure that people from poor communities have access to proper

Protest Harsh Sentences for Low-Level Offenses Tell Speaker Pelosi to reduce racial disparity in federal prisons by ending unjust punishments for lowlevel crack cocaine offenses.

In January 2007, Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) introduced H.R. 460, a bill that would reduce penalties for low-level crack offenses that disproportionately impact African Americans. The bill deserves swift attention by the House Judiciary Committee and approval by Congress, but because Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) helps set the legislative agenda for the House of Representatives, her support is crucial. Tell the Speaker that 20 years of harsh mandatory minimum penalties for low-level drug offenses has burdened federal law enforcement and disproportionately incarcerated African Americans for small-time drug offenses. Her leadership is needed to advance federal sentencing reform through Congress.

For contact info for Speaker Pelosi and a sample letter that expresses the crucial issues, go to Sentencing Project.org and click on Get Involved on the left side of the homepage.

While you’re at it, write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or radio station. Families Against Mandatory Sentencing makes it easy at capwiz.com/ famm/home.

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issue, which only suffers when political poles seek to address either systemic injustice or personal responsibility as monocausal explanations. Personal responsibility requires a reconstruction of the social capital that helps young people make the types of decisions that strengthen—not threaten—community. Systemic justice demands that the laws of the land —and their enforcement—reflect the best of the biblical tradition of justice. Both require real change of heart and mind in all concerned. Both reflect a holistic approach to a horrific problem—the devastating effect of mass incarceration on people of color and their communities. The gospel calls us to action (see sidebars for action ideas). ■

resources for legal representation.

None of this is to deny the fear engendered in those neighborhoods because of the presence of drugs, their use, sale, and attendant criminal and violent collateral damage. Rather than ignore the seeming helplessness of neighbors and neighborhoods to face the havoc wreaked in their communities by criminal behavior, efforts by the above-named organizations call for new partnerships which include neighborhood participation, as well as accountability by individuals and families and sincere reform in policy and enforcement that leads to community transformation and not simply removing people from neighborhoods only to have them return illequipped for meaningful life in society.

Disproportionate Minority Contact is indeed a complex

Harold Dean Trulear, Ph.D., is associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, D.C.; convener of Prison Ministry and Theological Education at Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio; and consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Faith and Families Portfolio. Charles Lewis, Ph.D., is assistant professor in the School of Social Work at Howard University in Washington, D.C. A former editor at the New York Daily Challenge and Norfolk Journal and Guide, he has written extensively on African American males and youth, as well as the social policy and social welfare.

Protest unbalanced systems of criminal justice.

As a precursor to the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, any middle- and highschool-aged youth will be able to volunteer their participation in a series of boycotts as part of a contemporary civil rights movement of nonviolent social protest against unbalanced systems of criminal justice.

Learn more at nafj.org/busbriefingpoints.php.

(Due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article have been posted at esa-online.org/EndNotes.)

to “the big house.”

What the correctional system has created here is the perfect business plan: Prisons are literally manufacturing their own future customers. And there appears to be little hope of ending this $63-billion-a-year fraud on the American public. If anyone challenges the prison-industrial complex, he or she is quickly denounced as “soft on crime.” So the penitentiary population keeps on growing, by an average of 3.3 percent annually since 1995.92 Crime may not pay, but prison sure does. ■

Correctional Capitalism in the “Land of the Free” continued from page 18. complex’s role in the Cold War. Both complexes derive(d) their power from the quiet collusion of organized labor and big business, and both complexes exploit(ed) fear to enrich themselves at taxpayers’ expense. However, there is also a major difference between the two.While the overpriced weaponry produced by the military-industrial complex successfully deterred large-scale attacks by the Soviet Union, the bloated correctional system does little to reduce crime. In fact, there are increasing signs that the prison-industrial complex may be contributing to crime.

Every year America’s correctional facilities discharge 672,000 inmates who have finished their sentences.90 Of these, 67.5 percent will re-offend within three years of their release.91 So all of those extra jails and penitentiaries built since the 1970s can truthfully be described as factories that produce 453,000 brand-new recidivists every 12 months.

And as luck and good planning would have it, the prisonindustrial complex stands ready to welcome them all back

Jens Soering is serving a life sentence in Virginia. His most recent book is The Church of the Second Chance: A Faith-Based Approach to Prison Reform, to be released this spring by Lantern Books. The Convict Christ: What the Gospel Says About Criminal Justice (Orbis Books, 2006), won first prize in the Social Concerns category of the 2007 Catholic Press Association Awards.

Learn more at jenssoering.com.

(Editor’s note: due to space limitations, the end notes for this article have been posted at esa-online.org/EndNotes.)

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