America needs to invest in Black communities to help minority people succeed and not wait to spend money on rehabilitation of prison inmates, a recent report by the Economic Policy Imitative concludes.
“Black children born in 2001 are roughly five and a half times more likely than their White counterparts to be incarcerated,” according to the report.
“It is time for society to make the difficult choice that it has been avoiding since the passage of the Voting Right Act of 1965, to wholeheartedly invest in the Black community in order to achieve the social and economic equality,” wrote Robynn J.A. Cox, the report author. Cox is an assistant professor at Spellman College.
“We are already employing and providing education and job skills training to individuals imprisoned because most state departments of corrections also have a charge to rehabilitate. Why not offer these programs on the front end prior to committing a crime instead of after it is too late?”
The mass incarceration of Blacks is America’s way to maintain the social and economic status quo, according to Cox
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 is held responsible for the disproportionate rates of incarceration of Blacks in federal prison, Cox wrote.
Many rural communities sought to benefit economically from mass incarceration by using prison construction for economic growth, according to Cox.
To stimulate their economics through job creation, political officials hoped prisons would be a recession-proof industry. Therefore, state and local officials lobby for prison construction, since crime has been tied to federal funding.
For minorities, the burden of proof for a conviction is low, while for Whites it is a higher standard, the report says. Prosecutors are twice as likely to charge a Black defendant with a crime that is under the mandatory minimums versus a White defendant, it says.
Where Blacks make up less then 13 percent of the nation, they made up more than half of the prison population during the height of the prison boom, the 20-page report states.
