Collateral Damage: What Happens When Dad Goes to Prison?
February 20, 2013
High incarceration rates in certain neighborhoods perpetuate poverty over generations. Read a New York Times story here. How can we mitigate the negative impacts to communities and families that incarceration of loved ones causes? Any ideas?
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CJS-360 Diversity Issues 
The natures of crimes committed in American cities which usually have a minority majority are much easier to prosecute and get a conviction out of. There is also the fact that those kind of environments where trouble with the law is expected, it happens, just like an Ivy League family expects their kid to go to an Ivy League college, that kid would grow up around it, be immersed in it, and, probably go to an ivy league college, it’s a part of their lifestyle. The same idea applies to negative environments, people lose hope, then they lose sight of their goals, then they live day to day, and in the streets that’s tough to do. A murder is easier to find evidence for and appeal to a jury for, while embezzlement or nonviolent crimes aren’t, they also carry low to no sentence recommends. Even though both white and black folks do commit tons of violent crimes, a good percentage of white folk’s crimes are serious violent crime as well: Racism is an obvious factor too.
The best example is the disparity between the sentences for crack and cocaine. Crack is much cheaper and pushers sent it into black neighborhoods. Cocaine, far more expensive, was the drug of choice of businessmen. They were both devastating in the 1980’s when they came on to the scene in massive quantities. But the response in the law, even though they are two forms of the same drug and very similar in most ways except price, the sentencing guidelines for crack are several times as long as those for cocaine because people who tended to do cocaine had political connections and politicians didn’t want to send their high value contributors to jail.
I agree the environment you grow up in has a tendency to predict your path as an adult. For minority groups, and especially black men, this means a life in and out of the criminal justice system. In my class text called the Color of Justice, it covers a lot of the racial disparities within the criminal justice system. From arrest, to incarceration, to death penalty cases, black men are at a disadvantage. Chapter 8 of this text explains some of the reasons for the death penalty disparity, including maintaining power by the dominant groups, focusing on the race of the victims, and the devaluation of African Americans. I do not know if this explanation is sufficient to really explain the problems with the criminal justice system and the inability of it to be fair to those of every minority group, but it has its valid points for sure.
Cocaine and Crack are different in more ways than they are similiar. The irradication of hydrochloride and the introduction of cutting agents such as baking soda makes crack easier to transport (being solid; cocaine is powder), cheaper (meaning more people can get it), stronger high but less duration (usually smoked instead of snorted or gummed), and more dangerous (violence is more associated with crack than it is with cocaine, additionally the health effects of crack are more devastating than cocaine even if the difference is minimal). Usually the cocaine users are not on the streets packing guns. Crack is worse because of its higher correlation with violence. A gram of coke that costs 85 bucks might cost as little as 8 in crack form. Plus a coke buzz lasts for about 20 min and a crack buzz lasts for 10 min. This leaves the user with an extreme crash resulting in major irritability. The crack buzz leaves users more irritable and requires more crack to increase the stimulation. Thus, crack is cheap and requires users to intake more. Because cocaine is rarely ever pure for street value, it has become less popular. Therefore, crack is booming and it freaked people out. Both drugs are bad, but crack is a little worse.
It is a sad thing to see a dad leaving his children behind and heading to prison for a number of years. The devastating thing about it is that the kid(s) will be raised alone by the mother, who, might not have a good job or any source of income to keep the family in the absence of dad. The government and the corporate organizations must help to create serious awareness and educate our teenagers about the consequence of dealing with crime, especially illegal drugs. According to Prentice Hall in Investigating Difference,” consider the following data from 2003 to 2004: 24.4% of African Americans were living below the poverty line, compared with 10.5% of whites; the median family income for African Americans was $30,134, compared to $46,697 for whites; and 60% of African American children were living in poverty”. The panacea to this poverty level, I think, is education. Many dads who are African American come back from prison, but they do not have jobs, because of the background check, and they will continue to live in poverty.
Ola Charles-Oni Thank You very much you hit the nail on the head. How can we keep fathers (black, White or Blue) out of jails when the system is built to keep people from getting better. Just like you said you try and get a Job, Apt or INS they run background checks and it keeps you from trying to get your family out poverty. Why should I continue to be judge by what I did 15 years ago? Book after book have told us that 30% of inmates in jail aren’t there for new crimes or violent crimes. Let’s look at the big picture. America is the cause for why more fathers aren’t with their children today.
Stories like these happen far too often. Men, rarely white men, get sentenced far to long for the crime that they commit. Some drug crimes have a sentence that’s far to lengthy for the act. I’m not condoning the sale of drugs or there use. But during the height of the war on drugs society deemed extreme penalties would help alleviate the growing drug problem but, it did not. It only increased the populations of local jails and prisons. In the book Investigating Difference, by a collective of Northern Arizona University students and faculty, it states that the U.S. had the highest incarceration rate in the world and the majority of the incarcerated were black (pg. 106-107). This man was convicted of illegal possession of a handgun and was a known drug dealer, but the crime that he was convicted of didn’t fit what actually happened. He should have been convicted of a lesser crime and only served half the time. I do believe that if your going to commit crimes you should be punished for them and when it comes to drug dealers they should be sentenced fully for their crimes. But in this and many other instances the punishment was pumped up because of who they were. They weren’t punished just for their crime, they were punished for their crime and for who they were. Certain areas breed hostility and delinquency, poverty stricken areas are more susceptible to crime because it is seen as a easy way to get what you want when there is no other way to get it. Areas like these need to be addressed or the vicious cycle of crime and poverty will always continue.
Though Mr. Harris got caught in the War on Drugs campaign of the Reagan era, I found it interesting how he matured in prison. He seemed to realize what he had left behind and how his family had struggled without him. I wonder if these factors contributed to his “rehabilitation” or if it was purely age alone. I’m sure there are plenty of teens that still idolize the wrong people for the wrong reasons like he did. Even his wife testified that he did belong in prison at that time. I do believe that the sentencing was absurd in his case however. Mr. Harris mentioning the police were unable to catch him dealing and as a result charging him with assault and armed burglary seems to be the standard in cases such as these. It appears that the bottom line is that representatives of the criminal justice system wanted Mr. Harris removed from society, by any means necessary. Loosely tying him to a crime which may or may not have happened illustrates weakness on the behalf of system as a whole in that justice was not done but favorable outcome reached for those with a bias.
Joseph,
I have a completely different take on the issue. The article indicates that Mr. Harris acknowledges that he deserved to be in prison. But he also feels that he didn’t deserve such a long sentence. If you go back and reread the article, you’ll see that he was sent to prison before he was sentenced to 20 years for illegal gun possession. While in prison, he continued to sell drugs and remained a dealer when he got out of prison. The charge that got him sent to prison was assault, but he was also involved in a number of illegal activities. Some of those he disclosed, but who knows what else he did. It took Mr. Harris to the age of 30 before he chose to turn his life around. Even now that he’s out of prison he’s still passing the buck by stating the police “made up charges against him”. To me this does not sound like an individual who has fully matured and accepted responsibility for his actions. To me he sounds like someone that is bitter and jaded by what happened. He appears to be looking for ways to rationalize it. That doesn’t involve seeing how his own actions got him there.
This article just happens to co-inside with the reading of my class dealing with the significance of race in the criminal justice system. African American men have a 1 in 3 chance of going to jail. Crimes committed by minorities are far more likely to be punished more harshly than that of white counter parts committing the same crime. When a particular set of people have programs targeted at them, it’s hard not to be an African American and not be incarcerated, prime example is the “War on Drugs”. Instead of a “War on Drugs” how about a “War on Wall Street and Banks” to lockup all the white collar crime criminals. These institutions do more to harm the American economy and families than all minority crime combined.
I found it interesting that this article takes this story to explain how high incarcerations rates perpetuate poverty in certain neighborhoods over generations. Although, Mr. Harris’ story is sad and he may have been wrongfully accused of a crime he didn’t commit, he still was a drug dealer. I find it hard to believe that his situation may have been different had he not gone to prison for that particular incident. His families life may have been harder, leading the life of a drug dealer and constantly having to look over your shoulder as well as protecting your family. Prison may have been what changed his life and made him realize that he needed to “man-up” and do something better with his life. As for his wife struggling throughout his prison term, she made that decision not to work and to follow him across the country to visit him. It seemed more important to her to maintain their relationship than to take care of her children.
I can’t say that incarceration rates don’t perpetuate poverty, but I also believe that poverty perpetuates crime, which results in high incarceration rates. Some people turn to crime to survive or to chase false hopes of a better life financially (ie drug dealing). Although, I know that it may be hard to get out of poverty, I feel that if a person really had the drive to better themselves, they would be able to achieve a better way of life.
This article was very interesting, correlating incarceration rates to the continued poverty among African-American families. I think it’s the never ending cycle, more poverty equals more crime, and vice versa. It’s interesting that America has a higher incarceration rate than any other nation, and I wonder if it is necessary to continue to lock up this many people for such long sentences. Our book, Investigating Difference, has a whole chapter about African Americans and the criminal justices system. It was sad to hear how that family struggled without dad around, but it was also great how he took responsibility for what he did. But, maybe they’re right; the incarceration time was too long? Was it overboard, or would he have come out and gone back to the same life if he was released too soon? I do believe we lock up too many people in general, and sometimes the wrong ones. You definitely deserve the time you get if you break the law, but what about those white collar criminals that get away with much, much, more? Why are we so afraid to go after them while certain neighborhoods and communities, like the one in this article, continue in the cycle of poverty with many of their males going to prison? We really should start to take this issue seriously, spend more money on educating and giving people the resources to better themselves, instead of spending so much money on the prison system. Although prison is needed, I think more education and more programs are needed just as much, probably more. We could cut down on the prison population by getting people out of poverty and ending the cycle, but that is much harder than locking them up and forgetting about them. It takes a lot more work, which is probably why it doesn’t happen.
Living in certain neighborhoods in America can have a huge impact on the type of person you are and the type of people you hang out with. If you live in a neighborhood that doesn’t have many people in it chances are that you are going to be able to stay out of trouble since there aren’t many people to get in trouble with. Less people usually equals less crime it’s as simple as that. But if you live in a neighborhood that has a lot of people then the chance of you getting in trouble with the law is much higher. It might even consist of you just being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being with the “wrong” type of people but you could still get in trouble for that. There are always people who will do the right and moral thing no matter where they are living but living in a higher populated area leads to a better chance of you getting in trouble with the law. This can go hand and hand with our book. It states that the races with the highest incarceration rates and longest sentencing rates are that of Hispanics and African Americans. Usually people in these types of races live in higher populated areas that have more crime. If you have a prior record then usually the judge is going to be less lenient with your sentence which leads to longer sentence rates that these 2 races get.
When a father goes to prison I sometimes wonder did he really think about all of the lives that he affected would affect while he was committing the crime. Lets face it for every man that is in prison there is a child that does not have their father around for the support that the children of today need. Lets face it our children need both parents in todays world whether the parents are together in the same household or not our children need our support.
A girl needs her father to show her the type of man to have and an example of what a real man is like. A daughter needs her father to give her that support when mom can’t and sometimes dad is a little more understanding than mom is. A daughter also needs her father there to protect her and to know that there is a man in her life that she can depend on.
A boy needs his father to be that role model on how to become a young man and then turn into that adult man. As a single mother I raised 3 sons all alone none of their fathers were incarcerated 2 of them just did’nt care enough about thier sons to participate in their life, although I received all of the financial help in the world I would have given every dime of it back to see a smile on my sons face tro have their dad around. My youngest sons father continued to be involved in my sons life after we divorced however when I look at all 3 of my sons he is the most sucessful one and has the most drive and I give a huge credit to his father and I for vowing to raise him together and vowing that our son will always know that we are doing this together although we are in separate homes.
My other 2 sons are also doing well but I will always remember the questions of why??? the need to have their father around is very important to a child so I say this because I know have a chance to look at my grandson who is 3 years old and longs for his father whenever his father is just away at work he cries for him the relationship that they have built is a sttorng unity, however recently that same child witness his father getting sentenced and going to prison for 1 year. The effects that I see my grandson goining through tells me ans shows me that every child needs their father to be there for them no matter how young or how old they are. So men please think before you committ a crime because when it comes to raising our children we as women do the best that we know how, however I can raise my sons to a certian point but at some point a son needs his father to show him how to be a man and a daughter needs her father to show her what a real man is like.
Always keep in mind you made the choice to bring a child in the world be there for your child.
Mr. Harris is a prime example of what happens when we have institutionally racist legislation. He received such a harsh sentence because he was the poster child of what was characterized as a dangerous drug offender; high school dropout, black male, unemployed, drug-dealer, poor community; all factors that would land you in prison during the 80’s and 90’s. Deterrence was the main objective behind stricter sentencing because crime statistics were showing significant increases in violent crimes in relation to drug use, but look what happened; poverty shot up, single-parent homes increased, generations of family members were becoming incarcerated, and all we did was exasperate the problem. Long-term what we are left with is increased juvenile delinquency/crime, lack of competent education, money, shelter, mates, opportunities, and the list goes on. What happened to him was not fair by all means, but it is a great example of what doesn’t work when it comes to solving societal issues.
This was an interesting article that gave insight into hardships that some prisoners and their families might experience while their spouse is incarcerated. The article also highlighted some difficulties that former prisoners face once they are released from correctional facilities. I believe this article does a good job portraying the negative revolving circle that families face when a father or mother is incarcerated. Not only is stress from the inability to help care for their family placed on the person incarcerated but stress and hardship is placed on the family and their community. There is no simple easy cure for families, those incarcerated, communities, or the problem as a whole. Those in law enforcement, criminal justice, and community positions must work towards finding solutions to the growing problems that were highlighted in this article. Without a successful solution this problem might continue to grow until it spirals out of control and is nearly impossible to find a solution for. If this problem spirals out of control community members, families, and our criminal justice system will all be negatively affected because of it.
In this article it says “Prison has become the new poverty trap,” said Bruce Western, a Harvard sociologist. “It has become a routine event for poor African-American men and their families, creating an enduring disadvantage at the very bottom of American society.” I agree with this point in the article. I think there’s an high percentage of African Americans in communities of proverty,since there’s a high crime rate in proverty communities incarcenration of the dad in households is also high. I think the high rates of farthers in prison contribute to the cycle of high incarcenration rates in these communties. This is because many times in these communities kids are raised with a single parent which may put them at a disadvantage; when raised in proverty causing the fartherless cycle to be repeated.
It’s difficult to hear the disparity that was and still continues to happen in the criminal justice system. I don’t think it’s fair that Mr. Harris was convicted of assault, but sentenced for a more severe crime – burglary. Since Mr. Harris had to spend the better of 20 years in prison, he missed out on life with his wife and kids. He also started using heroin in prison, which he probably never used had he not been in prison. Instead of being able to help his family, it caused pain for Mrs. Hamilton because she couldn’t afford to live in a permanent house or even in one state. Had Mr. Harris been sentenced for his original crime, neither he nor his family would have been put in that situation. At the end of the article, it stated that had Mr. Harris not gone to prison, he probably would have ended up dead on the streets. While prison did help turn his life around, he only needed 5 years to turn his life around, not 20. Had Mr. Harris not been a part of the African American poor class, he probably wouldn’t have been in the same situation. A white male in the same situation as Mr. Harris would probably have received a prison sentence, however, would most likely not received the same treatment.
This article Collateral Damage: What happens when dad goes to prison? was very interesting. It gave interest into the view of prison and poverty. Carl Harris is a poster example of this issue. At the age of twenty-four he was incarcerated under false accusation of burglary in order for the officer on duty to arrest him. Harris was charged and sentenced but the sentencing lasted longer than expected. The article depicted that ninety percent of all individuals incarcerated were men. It also depicted that every six out of ten individuals are all males that are incarcerated but only in some neighborhoods. As Harris’s wife Ms. Hamilton had to deal with struggles when he husband was locked behind doors. This lead to her poverty trap and the trap that is dealt with by several individuals. Coersive mobility is known as incarcerating of at least one family member in a poverty stricken neighborhood. Being incarcerated at such a young age like Harris was leads to negative side affects for his future. This relates to the book The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America chapter nine Corrections in America: A Portrait in Color. This chapter looked at racial disparities in the American correctional populations. Some racial ethnicities are over represented in both the state and federal prison. African Americans make up 34.2 percent of incarcerated individuals. This is an issue that needs to be looked at on several levels.
This is a tragic personal story for the Harris family that I believe is probably very common in the U.S. today. Several of the comments made have addressed that Mr. Harris should have made better choices, or that he didn’t think about all the people it would affect when he decided to sell drugs, etc. While those type of statements are all true I think its also important to add that when he was put away he was a young man in his early twenties, who lived in poverty, so he probably did not have the big picture outlook running through his head when he was considering selling drugs to make it ahead in life. In my humble opinion it is clear that living in poverty limits your opportunities of growth as a human being. I personally have never lived in a poverty stricken area. With that said I suspect living and growing up in poverty exposes a young person to harsh realities and struggle in life, crime is high, money is low, and its a daily grind with a lack of positive role models. Growing up in that type of situation would turn a great deal of people towards crime, I try to picture myself in those shoes and have no idea how I would have turned out had i had to grow up in a situation like that. While opportunities are there for these young people, sometimes those opportunities go overlooked because the youth are not being shown the correct way to conduct themselves in life, school, etc. The only solution I can see when it comes to poverty in America is making education the emphasis, more affordable, and at every turn to show these young men and women that there is real way out and that’s an education. The second issue this article addresses is how severe our punishments are in America and I agree with a lot of the previous comments in regards to this particular story. While we don’t have all the details of the sentencing available, being locked away for that long does seem like overkill. It not only negatively affected Mr. Harris in his life it hurt his family, and at the end of the day it hurt society keeping him in prison that. Our system as a whole needs to be able to evaluate prisoner’s, look at there sentences, and make a fair and correct decision regarding the future of that person. Recidivism is a well documented problem in society today and releasing these men and women who no longer pose a threat is an essential step towards the solution.
I found it interesting that Mr. Harris matured in prison. It was exciting to hear about his and his family’s positive outlook on life. It was unfortunate for Mr. Harris to be sentenced under a burglary charge but it wasn’t incorrect. When I first read the article I was thinking poor guy got hit with bogus burglary charges, but then I realized he did commit burglary. I looked up the Washington state statutes and according to this story he did commit burglary in the first degree which carries a pretty stiff penalty as it is a felony. I don’t know if it would have necessarily been better to have been charged with a drug dealing crime especially when the drug in question was crack. I’m certain Mr. Harris would probably still be in jail if the prosecutor would have been able to have him charged with a drug dealing related crime along with the burglary crime. Given that Mr. Harris was an African American male selling crack during the 1980’s I would have to say his sentence could have been much worse than what it was. This article brings up valuable information about poverty and inmate populations, but it can come off as very misleading with how it presents Mr. Harris’s story. On an off note, I am curious as to what was used for barter while Mr. Harris was dealing drugs while imprisoned and I wonder if the people who were smoking Mr. Harris’s crack received charges as well.
I am glad you brought up your initial impression of the article. It seems you immediately thought that Mr. Harris’ incarceration was due to a “bogus” charge. I suppose that is exactly what I was expecting to read about considering the publication source, however, we find out that was not the case.
Its a tough problem (if it wasn’t, it would have been solved already). I believe Mr. Harris’ last statement was very telling and it highlights the catch-22 society is faced with. I will be the first to acknowledge that the disparate crack sentencing guidelines are complete nonsense and have cost many men (predominantly black men) their lives. On the flip side, society yearns for safe, drug-free streets.
For a moment, lets pretend that Mr. Harris had been imprisoned for a crack charge. What is the appropriate punishment for it? I agree with you that it likely would have been more severe than his burglary sentence, but for the sake of discussion, we’ll call it twenty years. By Mr. Harris’ own admission, it seems it took him some time to “mature” in prison. This could be attributed to the fact that he knew he would be in prison for a long time. I think we can agree that twenty years would be too severe. If the sentence is too lenient, there will be less of a deterrent effect. The laws needs to fall somewhere in the middle, and they need to be consistent with the other drugs. If we lock up criminals too long then the cycle of poverty and incarceration continues (if you subscribe to the hypothesis of the article). If we slap criminals on the wrist, crime worsens.
I am inclined to agree that the mass, long-term incarceration is huge factor in generational poverty. Fundamentally, this article is focusing on the disparities in crack sentencing and its effects on the community. Maybe we would be most successful if we start by addressing that.
I think a lot of the issues of minorities having higher drug related sentencing is the injustice in the racially disproportionate rates of arrest. In 1996 62.6% of drug related crimes were African-American offenders. In some states it was so much distorted that 90% of drug related-crimes were African-American. I find it sad that these convictions get padded to keep people behind bars. It does not only affect the person being sentenced, but the family as well. The education in these men becomes a major issue because they struggle to get jobs so they turn to something that is common in their neighborhoods and something they know. By placing them behind bars for an extensive period of time they are therefore hurting the economy and the family and the offender even more. I think the extended lengths of crack cocaine come because of the dangerous effects of the drug. I think therefore, poverty may come from crime but also from lack of jobs, education, and right state of mind.
I think that Mr. Harris is a good example to society on what a person can do to try to help out his family due to the lack of income that they are receiving into the family. This shows that poverty is playing a factor into crimes that are being committed by people because of things that they are lacking. He decided to sell drugs because he needed more money which his job was not giving him because he was working minimum wage. Selling drugs was the fastest way to make money which ended up with faster and more income to the family. I’m pretty sure that at the time he was committing this crime, he was not thinking about the consequences that he could get into. He had two daughters and a wife to support which he may have felt that they were dependent on him because he was the man on the house. Not only is poverty an issue, it is also the lack of education that he has. If he would have continued his education after high school, maybe he would have gotten a better job that have paid him well. I am not only targeting Mr. Harris but I am simply stating that if the people who are in poverty is able to get an education, maybe this could help with improving their life from being in poverty.
Mr. Harris had what he had coming for him. Reading about his time era in his twenties I did not have any sympathy for him. I realized that he wanted to give his kids a better life as well as his wife but he could have finished school and got a job like the rest of us. There is absolutely no excuse for what he did but looking at the stats in our textbook as well as just knowing background information it did not surprise me. It is a chain reaction. His kids might grow up some day and realize if they want to make money they might have to obtain illegal actions or on the other hand they might realize how bad it was growing up without their dad and make something of it. Mr. Harris is a great example of someone who was changed in a positive way from prison. Knowing he let his family down and now his actions resulted in them suffering he matured in many ways. It is obvious that prison was a good thing for him. Yeah, people can complain about the life they have after they get out of prison but I still do not have sympathy, everyone knows what can happen to you when you commit crimes..like the old saying states “if you do the crime, you will pay the time.” It is just the way it goes…In my opinion I believe that if we made it easy for people when they came out of prison then we would have more and more people committing crimes and going behind bars.
This article showed insights of a different perspective. There are similar stories like this where it seems the criminal justice system may have been unfair. This story is a good example of what chapter 8 is about in the book Investigating Differences. In the book there is a section about disparities in crime involvement. Education opportunities, neighborhoods, family dynamics, social class, peers, unemployment rates are all factors that shapes a person’s life, and criminal rates. African Americans are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. I think the main issues of this story is to recognize the different factors that lead people to crime in order to lower crime rates and to also recognize the flaws of the criminal justice system in sentencing crimes. By educating each other on the factors of crime and noticing the flaws and discrimination in the system we can try to improve the system and try to decrease crime rates in high crime neighborhoods.
washro
I agree, that it didn’t have to take twenty years. If he had the right lawyers he should have taken it to trial. Based on the charges of the police and the prosecutor in this case. Starting from birth African American Men are given 1 in 3 options of ending up in prison and White males are given 1 in 17 . Direct racial discrimination is what happend here. The unequal treatment of an individual based upon their racial/ethnic group identity during the criminal justice system process.
This is a sad reality of the criminal justice system. Most areas throughout the country have a higher rate of minority (especially black) arrests than the rate at which they commit crimes. This isn’t because the defendants are not committing crimes. More likely reasons is because they are either, (1) uneducated because past life history, and give more information then the majority to police, (2) are poorer than the majority race, and cannot afford the proper level of legal council to defend them, or (3) crimes that involve minority suspects are focused on more than majority suspects.
The criminal justice system has also focused on the poverty line before when sentencing. Crack cocaine was given a much harsher sentence than powder cocaine, even though they are virtually the same drug. Crack cocaine was more prevalent in poor communities, while powder cocaine was big in the rich community.
This article raises a number of interesting points regarding sentencing. The first is that and what I think few people seem to take into account including the justice system is how much of an affect prison has a person’s friends and family. This is not a consequence I believe that is well known to the general public and should be talked about more. I think if people knew the long-term effects prison has not only on an individual but also on the family it might cause them to stop and think about their actions. I hear and understand the struggles his wife and daughter went through but at the same time that’s the price you pay. Yes, Mr. Harris went to prison for assault but he was also selling cocaine and doing a lot of other things that he was never caught for. Yet at the same time I don’t agree with him being sentenced to spend twenty years in prison I think the justice system also needs to take into account the study that was mentioned in the article that was conducted by Raymond V, Ledka that found “that the crime-fighting effects of prison disappear once the incarceration rates gets too high” and figure out some alternative. Better yet would be some kind of community program that works to strengthen the bonds between individuals and their friends and families as well the community around them since research has shown that individuals with strong relationship bonds and community ties are less likely to engage in criminal activity.
It’s heartbreaking to hear these stories because even though I am in favor of law enforcement and believe in institutionalization, it saddens me to think that people are serving such extensive sentences. I understand that he was arrested for assault and selling drugs, etc. however, punishing him for two decades for just those offenses, when there are far worse crimes that are being committed and people are getting just a slap on the wrist for them. Now maybe this does have something to do with race. Though it can’t really be proven it is mentioned throughout the article that 40% of black males are likely to end up in prison or jail. Leaving the odds almost as equal to getting a job. In relation to chapter 7 of The Color of Justice, there are 5 explanations for why African Americans and Hispanics are sentenced more harshly than whites for the following 5 racial disparities in sentencing. The chapter 7 text supports the articles statistics regarding poverty and the correlation with African Americans.
1. They commit more serious crimes and have more serious prior criminal records than whites………racial disparity but not racial discrimination
2. They are more likely than white to be poor, being poor is associated with a greater likelihoods of pretrial detention and unemployment, both of which may lead to harsher sentences……..indirect discrimination
3.They are more likely to be subject to facially neutral laws and policies that prescribe more severe sentences or sentence enhancements…. institutional discrimination
4. Judges are biased or have prejudices against racial minorities….racial discrimination
5. The disparities occur in some contexts but not in others…..subtle racial discrimination.
After reading this article if I placed Mr. Harris into one of these categories, I would have to say that it would result in the indirect discrimination. Being from a poor neighborhood and seeing what selling drugs could get him….nice clothes, expensive cars, etc. resulted in him getting involved with drug dealing. The problem didn’t only stop there after being incarcerated. The family remained in turmoil and was unable to get out of poverty because there was not a second income coming in.
I know that I have responded to this article once before in relation to the chapters throughout the text in the Color of Justice, however, this too correlates with Chapter 9. Chapter 9 talks about the impact on the war of drugs whereas this article also touches on drugs and incarceration rates. As the article stated that a large amount of people are being incarcerated for long sentences, multiple decades, over drugs, which is far past the peak age of crime. The book stated 42% of the total growth of black inmates were incarcerated because of drug related offenses. That is a HUGE amount of people incarcerated. It is difficult to have a family or a life after serving such a sentence. In the other text it stated that women are more likely to go to jail and serve for drug offenses more-so then males. This was extremely fascinating. Females are basically considered a minority in the criminal world also. Majority of people who are convicted at an early age and are supposed to serve a long sentence doesn’t give them a chance in life to make anything of themselves. The war on drugs is a battle because the sentences are so long. It is too difficult to recover from such a long term effect.
There is no such thing as the “same crime”. When we say that someone committed the same crime as someone else and yet received a less punishment, we are saying that all the variables were the same except one thing; race. There could be other reasons why people get higher sentencing. For example, history of criminal offenses, the series of events that led up to, during, and after the crime was committed, age of the offenders, and the likelihood of recidivism. No crime is exactly identical to another, nor is the types of people that are in the court system. We should really start saying similar crimes.