It is likely that no one would argue that blacks are disproportionately represented within the US prison population. This fact is nearly, if not entirely axiomatic. People talk about this, but none have inclined themselves to theorize as to why this is so, beyond vague speculation, that is.
I mean to change this by offering a theory of my own. I believe it to be sound, but, at the same time, I invite engagement of thought.
When compared to the population statistics of the whole of the United States the number of black persons in prison is undeniably disproportionate, but when compared to the population statistics of the United States’ impoverished class it does not appear so disproportionate. While approximately thirteen percent of the national population is black, I seem to recall a statistic that suggested that approximately forty percent of the nation’s impoverished class is black. It is notable then that blacks comprise also approximately forty percent of the US Prison Population.
These statistics offer testimony in support of another theory that I have long held: that the impoverished population is being specifically and actively targeted, in a hybrid racist-classist scheme, by law enforcement and other criminal justice actors. Every society the world has ever known, and the United States is no exception, has been built on the shoulders of the poor. State actors profess that the laws apply to all equally, but this is a myth. For the laws to apply to all equally they must be enforced against and applied to all equally. And this does not describe criminal law and its enforcement and prosecution in the United States.
This practice of targeting the poor supports the age-old racist undercurrents of the US Criminal Justice System. It ensnares just enough non-black persons in its net to keep the State and its actors out of Equal protection establishments with the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment blacks were targeted directly, especially in the South. But after its enactment the Government was forced to adopt less direct and less obvious approaches to express its actors racial animus.
Steven McCain 2096064
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