There is disproportionately harsh treatment of minorities in the juvenile justice system, and that imposes ominous consequences for minority communities. A study of minority youths disproportionately targeted for arrest in the war on drugs in Baltimore, Maryland identified eighteen White youths and eighty-six Black youths who were arrested for selling drugs in 1980. One decade later, juvenile drug sale arrests increased more than 100 percent overall, and the almost 5-to-1 racial disparity that existed a decade earlier had become a 100-to-1 disparity. By 1990 White youths were arrested thirteen times for selling drugs, actually less than in 1980, but Black youths were arrested 1304 times. That is an astounding 1400 percent increase from 1980, and a disaster for the inner city of Baltimore.
These numbers from Baltimore are not unique. They reflect the broader national experience: Nationally–from 1986 to 1991–arrests of White juveniles for drug offenses decreased thirty-four percent, while arrests of minority juveniles increased seventy-eight percent. All this is despite data indicating that drug use rates among White, Black, and Hispanic youths are nearly the same. In fact, drug use has been lower among Black youths than White youths for the last twenty years. Similar disparities appear in relation to non-drug-related crimes. This can only be accounted for by institutional racism.
The United States has five percent of the world's population but a twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners with over 2.3 million people incarcerated. 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. Race continues to be a dominating factor even after convicts are released from prison. A University of Wisconsin study found that seventeen percent of White job applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers while only five percent of Black job applicants with criminal records received call backs. Race was so prominent in that study that Whites with criminal records actually received better treatment than Blacks without criminal records. This is clear-cut, if not entirely intentional, racism. The result for African-Americans is a vicious cycle that has evolved into a self-fulfilling prophecy for recidivism: More minority arrests and convictions perpetuate the belief among the general public and among law enforcement authorities that minorities commit more crimes, which in turn leads to racial profiling—however subtle–and more minority arrests. Data from the Washington State Department of Corrections and Employment Insurance records show how “the wages of black ex-inmates grow about twenty-one percent more slowly each quarter after release than the wages of white ex-inmates.” Black ex-inmates earn ten percent less than white ex-inmates post incarceration.
There can be no dispute over the fact that a major challenge for prisoners re-entering society is obtaining employment, especially for individuals with a felony on their record. This is also a major ongoing challenge for society A study utilizing U.S. Census occupational data in New Jersey and Minnesota in 2000 found that “individuals with felon status would have been disqualified from approximately one out of every 6.5 occupations in New Jersey and one out of every 8.5 positions in Minnesota”. Since African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately affected by felon status, these additional limitations on employment opportunity were shown to exacerbate racial disparities in the labor market.
These factors all impact released prisoners who try to reintegrate into society. According to a national study, within three years of release, almost seven out of ten former convicts will have been rearrested. Many released prisoners have difficulty transitioning back into societies and communities from state and federal prisons because the social environment of peers, family, community, and state level policies all impact prison reentry; the process of leaving prison or jail and returning to society. Men eventually released from prison will most likely return to their same communities, putting additional strain on already scarce resources as they attempt to garner the assistance they need to successfully reenter society. Due to the lack of resources, these same men will continue along this perpetuating cycle.
With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be Black because law enforcement is already concentrated in the areas with high violent crime and drug crime. With this new drug legislation, the U.S. government has increased the use of incarceration for social control which has resulted in sharper disproportionate effects on African-Americans. With violent crime on the rise in the late 20th century coupled with the war on drugs violations, penal population growth sent shockwaves through the most fragile families and neighborhoods in the country that were least equipped to deal with the attendant problems. Since the majority of people in the prison population are minorities and lower class individuals, the people they leave behind have to deal with extraordinarily difficult circumstances. This created burden has left many families broken and children are the victims of dysfunctional single-parent homes which increases the percentage of these children going to jail earlier than most. With the majority of the prison population being men, women are left dangling in society to rear families and later to contend with ex-prisoners returning home after release who are bitter, often abusive, and educated in a criminal life-style.
Children reared in single-parent homes anywhere in the country are less supervised which leads to less emphasis on education and self-determination. This effect is compounded in predominately minority communities with all of the attendant crime and danger. The result of this situation is that American society is damaged and has to take on the financial burden of children growing up in crime-ridden neighborhoods and going to prison. Taxpayers throughout the nation are increasingly burdened with the costs of the problems generated by the judicial system and its impact on minority communities. When a family member is arrested, the family loses not only that person's income, but also acquire additional expenses involved in keeping contact with the incarcerated family member
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, forty-six percent of Black female jail and prison inmates were likely to have grown up in a home with only their mothers or their grandmothers. A study by Bresler and Lewis shows how incarcerated African-American women were more likely to have been raised in a single female headed household while incarcerated. White women were more likely to have been reared in a two parent household. Education, fertility, and employment for Black women are affected due to increased mass incarceration. Black women’s employment rates were increased, due to increased education and vice versa. Higher rates of black male incarceration lower the odds against nonmarital teenage motherhood and Black women’s ability to get an educational degree, thus resulting in early and less profitable employment.
This dysfunctional system all too often causes disintegration of familial life and structure. Black and Latino youth are more likely to be incarcerated after coming in contact with the American juvenile justice system, which is an altogether too common experience. Furthermore–and most unfortunately–societal institutions whose purpose is to uplift the lives of children–such as schools, families, and community centers—too often impact youth by initiating them into this system of criminalization from an early age. These institutions–traditionally set up to protect the youth–contribute to mass incarceration by mimicking the criminal justice system. Parents in prison face further moral and emotional dilemmas because they are separated from their children. Both Black and White women face difficulty with where to place their children while incarcerated and how to maintain contact with them.
Studies reveal that Black women are more likely to leave their children with related kin whereas White women’s children are likely to be placed in foster care. In a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed how in 1999, seven percent of Black children had a parent in prison, making them nine times more likely to have an incarcerated parent than White children. The impact on families of all races is highly deleterious and self-perpetuating. The Black children left in the care of overburdened grandmothers and aunts are left alone and unsupervised all too often and become prey of gangs, rapists, and the criminal industry that prevails in the poor minority communities. The children of White women who become wards of the state become increasingly separated from their families, from loving nurturing, and from the institutions that further their opportunities for success. Reactive detachment disorder is not a rare occurrence, and that leads to life-long impaired ability to relate positively to other people and to a higher crime rate than exists in the general White society.
Setting aside statistics to consider actual numbers, disparate and unfair treatment based on race within the criminal justice system is not rational: The majority of crimes are not committed by minorities, and most minorities are not criminals. Less than ten percent of all Black Americans are even arrested in a given year, let alone convicted, sentenced, or serve time.
Critics of the judicial system argue that racial and ethnic discrimination must stop or else the nation will continue to harbor an increasingly angry and desperate subset of our population and will see periodic violent outbursts such as have occurred in Watts, California in 1965 with thousands wounded, arrested, thirty-four killed, and millions of dollars in damages; in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in 1991; in the Rodney King riots in South Central Los Angeles in 1992 with assaults, riots, lootings, arsons, murder, and other civil disturbances which lasted five days and overwhelmed police services. The disturbance was not quelled until the National Guard and the Marines were brought in. The financial cost was in the billions of dollars. Similar riots occurred in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1996, Cincinnati, Ohio in April, 2001, in Toledo, Ohio in 2005, Oakland, California, 2009, and Ferguson, Missouri and New York City, in 2014. The critics, including very recently the chief of police of Brooklyn have expressed understanding at the anger and the pent-up deep antagonism that erupts when a catalyst such as happened in Ferguson and New York presents itself. That understanding is translated into at least quasi justification.
As examples of other catalytic events, the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund Twitter posted a series of tweets naming 76 men and women who were killed in police custody since the 1999 death of Amadou Diallo in New York. Essayist Sally John says, “Maybe you know that a black man or boy is killed every 28 hours in America by police or vigilantes.