Racial inequality in the American criminal justice system have a strong effect of many realms of society such as the family life, and employment. Education and race seem to be the most decisive factors when deciding who goes to jail and what age cohort has the greatest percentage chance of incarceration. Going to prison no longer affects just the individual who committed the crime but instead, the family and community left behind gain a new burden by one individual's actions. The United States still has a large disparity between Whites and Blacks and now a growing Hispanic population. This racial disparity in the educational system, job sector, and neighborhoods have all contributed to the booming prison population in the latter part of the 20th century which has only continued to widen in the 21st century.

Race inequality in prison (data)

At the end of 2006 the Bureau of Justice

United States Bureau of Justice Statistics

The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics is a federal government agency belonging to the U.S. Department of Justice. Established on December 27, 1979, the bureau collects, analyzes and publishes data relating to crime in the United States. The agency publishes data regarding statistics...

 released a group of data that stated that there were 3,042 black male prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,261 Hispanic male prisoners per 100,000 Hispanic males and 487 white male prisoners per 100,000 white males.

Likelihood of going to prison

The likelihood of black males going to prison in their lifetime is 16% compared to 2% of white males and 9% of Hispanic males. Other social factors can be linked to the racial inequality in the criminal justice system such as Socioeconomic status

Socioeconomic status

Socioeconomic status is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation...

, the environment in which a person was raised, and the highest educational level a person achieves. It has been argued by some that the race a person is born into has a substantial effect on the amount of discrimination they experience in their lifetime. In a sociological experiment conducted by Steven Raphael, a black male with no criminal record applying for a certain job had a 14% chance of getting a callback for an interview while a white male applying for the same job had a 34% chance of getting a callback for an interview. If both the black male and white male had criminal records the callback percentage was 5% and 17% respectively. This shows that there are significant negative effects on blacks even after their prison sentence has been served. With less opportunity than whites to enter back into the workforce after incarceration, blacks end up having a higher rate of return to prison.

Likelihood of being accused or convicted

Various studies have shown that, in recent decades, there has been no noticeable disparity in black vs white crime statistics in black-run vs white-controlled cities, say Atlanta vs San Diego. In the largest counties, the rates of conviction for accused blacks was slightly less than the conviction rates for whites, for example.

Racial inequality in the death penalty

There is also a large disparity between races when it comes to sentencing convicts to Death Row

Death row

Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...

. Looking just at the federal death penalty data released by the Department of Justice between 1995–2000, 682 defendants were charged with death-eligible crimes. Out of those 682 defendants, the defendant was black 48% of the cases, Hispanic in 29% of the cases, and white in only 20% of the cases.

Racial inequality in bail setting

Studies have documented racial disparities in the amount of money required for bail. For example, a study of Wake County, North Carolina found that African Americans had bail set 18% higher than whites charged with similar crimes.

Contributing factors to the rise in the penal population

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe. In the 1980s U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession

Drug possession

Drug possession is the crime of having one or more illegal drugs in one's possession, either for personal use, distribution, sale or otherwise. Illegal drugs fall into different categories and sentences vary depending on the amount, type of drug, circumstances, and jurisdiction.A person has...

 to drug trafficking

Illegal drug trade

The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...

. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs

War on Drugs

The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...

 has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to steadily decrease. A lot of urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. 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." In politics, blacks are still in the minority when it comes to winning legislative seats in the state and federal government. Because of this, legislation is being formed and issued through the eyes of the white majority in congress which has led to the continued burden in black communities across the United States.

Factors contributing to people going to prison

Blacks have a higher chance of going to prison especially if they dropout of high school. The importance of getting a high school education is the difference between going to prison and functioning as a good citizen in society. If a Black male drops out of high school they have a 32.4% chance of going to prison while their White and Hispanic counterparts have a 6.7% and 6% chance respectively. Bruce Western and Becky Pettit use the example of the age cohort that grew up during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. These men had to learn to value economic security because of the mass unemployment during the 1930s. They delayed marriage and fatherhood in order to establish themselves with economic security to provide for their families and became the “Greatest Generation

Greatest Generation

"The Greatest Generation" is a term coined by journalist Tom Brokaw to describe the generation who grew up in the United States during the deprivation of the Great Depression, and then went on to fight in World War II, as well as those whose productivity within the war's home front made a decisive...

” in America.

In the latter part of the 20th century the age cohorts born in this time period never experienced a major event in their lives like the Great Depression and therefore underestimated their roles in society which has led to less educated individuals especially among minorities. Less education in urban areas tend to lead to negative influences on children growing up in this situation. Children who have a parent in prison are easily influenced by older children in their neighborhoods. They are then exposed to the life of drugs and violent crime that can lead them to join gangs and follow the same path as those adults in their neighborhood who are incarcerated.

Effects on families and neighborhoods

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 that were least equipped to deal with the problem. Since the majority of people in the prison population are minorities and lower class individuals, the people they leave behind have to deal with extraordinary circumstances. This burden has left families broken and children are the victims of 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 in free society to raise families and contend with ex-prisoners returning home after release."

Children raised in single-parent homes are less supervised which leads to less emphasis on education and self-determination. The result of this situation is that society is damaged and has to take on the financial burden of children growing up in crime ridden neighborhoods and going to prison. 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. Mothers then have to leave the home and children behind to take on more jobs in order to provide the basic needs for the family. As a result, the children are left behind to fend for themselves and get involved with the wrong people who will guide them down the path that their incarcerated family member went down.