[Ppnews] Mass Black Incarceration Ending? Don't Hold Your Breath

[Political Prisoner News]

Created 12/27/2011 - 20:49
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/mass-black-incarceration-ending-dont-hold-your-breath

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

It’s been two generations since the beginning of 
modern mass Black incarceration. Prison 
populations, which only doubled from 1925 to 
1972, increased more than seven-fold over the 
next 38 years, with Blacks accounting for ever 
higher proportions of inmates. The latest 
statistics do not indicate that white people 
“have reconsidered – or even acknowledged – their 
extraordinarily broad support for placing more 
Black people in captivity over the past 40 years 
than at any time since slavery.”

Mass Black Incarceration Ending? Don't Hold Your Breath

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“Half of the states reported decreases in their prison populations.”

For the 
<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-correctional-population-declined-for-second-consecutive-year-135656893.html>first 
time since 1972 [5], the total number of people 
held in U.S. prisons has gone down. And, for the 
second year in a row, the number of persons under 
supervision – such as parole – by state departments of correction, decreased.

Does this mean the beginning of the end of mass 
Black incarceration in the United States? Not 
hardly. That would require an historic reversal 
of a nationwide policy to find new places to put 
Black people who refused to stay “in their 
place,” in the wake of the Civil Rights and Black 
Power Movements. There is little in the current 
American political conversation that indicates 
white people have reconsidered – or even 
acknowledged – their extraordinarily broad 
support for placing more Black people in 
captivity over the past 40 years than at any time since slavery.

It takes the government almost a year to tabulate 
the past year’s prison statistics, so the latest 
numbers are from 2010. They show about 7.1 
million people under some kind of correctional 
supervision – one out of every 33. That’s down 
1.3 percent from 2009, the year that saw the 
first decrease in supervision in two generations. 
The total population in state and federal prisons 
– not counting local jails – stood at 1.6 million 
inmates, down six-tenths of one percent. State 
prison populations decreased by almost 11,000, 
and local jails by almost 19,000, but federal 
prison populations grow by eight/tenths of one 
percent, to almost 210,000 inmates. That was, 
however, the smallest percentage increase in a generation – since 1980.

Half of the states reported decreases in their 
prison populations, with California and Georgia shrinking the most.

“Twenty-four states and the federal prison system 
increased their inmate populations.”

Speculation on why prison populations have, at 
least temporarily, peaked, centers on the 
financial crisis. It is true that states are 
experiencing unprecedented difficulties paying 
their bills. Some states have clearly responded 
to their fiscal crises by finding ways to 
incarcerate fewer people. Michigan reduced its 
prison population by 6,000 inmates in three 
years, mainly by decreasing the number of inmates 
who wind up serving more time in jail than they 
were originally sentenced to. California is under 
court order to cut its prison population by 30 
percent, or 40,000 inmates. But the court order 
came too late to have a significant effect on 2010 prison numbers.

Only half the country has seen any decrease, at 
all. Twenty-four states and the federal prison 
system increased their inmate populations, with 
Illinois, Texas and Arkansas leading the pack. 
And states have found other ways to cut down on 
inmate costs without putting fewer people in 
prison, through wholesale privatization of 
prisons, and imposition of draconian fees on 
prisoners, probationers and parolees.

The 
<http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/report_detail.aspx?id=57653>Pew 
Research Center on the States [6] cites programs 
that divert some offenders to probation, and 
accelerated release of low-risk inmates. However, 
studies have shown that such diversion programs 
tend to serve disproportionately white offenders. 
Therefore, it is highly premature for anyone to 
speculate that the era of mass Black 
incarceration may be ending. For the foreseeable 
future, one out of eight of the world’s prison 
inmates will continue to be African American.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted 
at <mailto:Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com>Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com [7].




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