There are many aspects that can lead to someone being arrested that are out of their control. Characteristics including their skin color and where they live increases the risk of being arrested by police. Arrest rates in the United States are high and racially disproportionate. This article discusses why that is, and how we can work to change it.
The United States has the highest number of incarcerated individuals in the world (Sentencing Project). Within this number, there is a noticeable trend in who is being arrested most frequently. According to the NAACP, “32% of the US population is represented by African Americans and Hispanics, compared to 56% of the US incarcerated population being represented by African Americans and Hispanics” (NAACP). This is compared to white people who are proportionately represented in the incarcerated population. Much of this overrepresentation is due to negative racial stereotypes. When disucssing the exoneration of the previously incarcerated, a study from the University of Michigan stated, “Most innocent African American defendants who were exonerated for sexual assault had been convicted of raping white women. The leading cause of these false convictions was mistaken eyewitness identifications—a notoriously error-prone process when white Americans are asked to identify Black strangers” (UMichigan). Misidentification has played a huge role in the high arrest rates of innocent people of color. Some people in the United States have tried to begin reversing these negative stereotypes, and addressing the implicit bias that affects mass incarceration. Implicit bias is defined as “when we have attitudes towards people or associate stereotypes with them without our conscious knowledge” (Perception Institute).
One organization that provides implicit bias training for attorneys and police is Fogbreak Justice, based in Oakland, California. In an interview with Fogbreak’s co-founder Shanti Brien, Shanti stated “in general, people in our country associate African-Americans and more generally, people of color, with crime, criminality, weapons, violence, and aggression. Not only does the bias go in that direction, but… the bias goes the other way so that when many of us think about crime, criminality, weapons, aggression, violence, we tend to associate that with African-Americans”. This unconscious relation plays a role in arrest rates, as police officers often perpetuate this bias. This means that, according to Brien, something as simple as saying “let’s go get those bad guys” instead of “let’s protect our community” can prime police to look for crime and, in turn, look for people of color.
Specifically, arrest rates for marajuana possession show the extreme racial bias that occurs within the criminal justice system. In 2010, data showed that “despite the fact that Black and white people use marijuana at similar rates, Black people were arrested at over three times the rate of white people” (ACLU). The graph shown in this article also reveals that this trend has not changed much since 2010, with Black arrest rates still almost three times as high in 2018. Police make “over one million drug possession arrests each year” and “drug crimes… result in the incarceration of almost half a million people” (Almost Innocent).
But if usage is the same among white and Black people, why is there such a difference in arrest numbers? The answer to this is that it largely depends on who is coming into contact with police officers more often. In an interview with Jarvis Idowu, Senior Programs Advisor with Young New Yorkers, a creative arts program for court-involved youth, he stated “oftentimes arrest is not necessarily the result of behavior, but rather the result of over policing. So what I mean by that is it really depends on where the microscope is.” Most over policing occurs in lower income, urban areas, which is also where the number of people of color tends to be higher than the number of white people. Statistically, Black people are being arrested more often simply because they are coming into contact with police officers more often and because police target their communities. This disparity also does not just begin and end with being arrested. “People of color experience discrimination at every stage of the criminal legal system and are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced and saddled with a lifelong criminal record. This is particularly the case for drug law violations” (Drug Policy Alliance).This problem, in tandem with implicit bias, results in a difference between serving time with Black and white people for drug possession. According to the Center for American Progress, “the average Black defendant convicted of a drug offense will serve nearly the same amount of time (58.7 months) as a white defendant would for a violent crime (61.7 months)” (American Progress). This difference in time served can result in a huge setback for many Black and Latine Americans, who will suffer even after their time has been served because of their criminal record and time away from society. (More will be said on this topic in Article 3).
From the ACLU
One way that the United States has tried to combat this disparity is by decriminalizing marajuana and other narcotics as a whole. This way people can not be arrested for drug possession, keeping them out of the prison system. An example of these efforts occurred in 2020, when Oregon passed a law to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of all drugs (NPR). The ideal outcome of this law would be to have people with drug addictions directly begin rehabilitation and treatment for drug addiction rather than being incarcerated. This system is based off of Portugal’s decriminalization which resulted in their drug-related deaths becoming “the lowest of most western countries” (Almost Innocent).
Overall, the racial disparity in the United States’ arrest rates is due to many factors. Negative stereotypes, misidentification and harsh drug sentences have all played a role in the overrepresentation of Black and Latine people in arrest rates, but there are ways to combat this. One is contributing to organizations whose job is to help free innocent people from prison, such as the Innocence Project. This organization uses DNA evidence to free previously incarcerated people whose sentences were based on an eyewitness misidentification. You can also vote in your state elections to reduce drug laws, and write to your senators to vote to reduce federal drug laws. Lastly, be sure to continue educating yourself on these disparities and teach yourself to recognize your own biases. This will all take time, but the results will be innocent people returning to their normal lives and being reunited with their families.
References:
American Civil Liberties Union (2020). A tale of two countries: racially targeted arrests in the era of marijuana reform. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform
Brien, S. (2021). Almost innocent: From searching to saved in America’s criminal justice system. Amplify Publishing.
Drug Policy Alliance (n.d.). Race and the drug war. https://drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war
Gross, S.R., Possley, M. & Stephens, K. (2017). Race and wrongful convictions in the United States. National Registry of Exonerations. http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf
Westervelt, E. (2021, June 18). Oregon’s pioneering drug decriminalization experiment is now facing the hard test. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/18/1007022652/oregons-pioneering-drug-decriminalization-experiment-is-now-facing-the-hard-test
Implicit bias (n.d.) Perception Institute. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://perception.org/research/implicit-bias/
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (n.d.) Criminal justice fact sheet. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
Pearl, B. (2018, June 27). Ending the war on drugs: by the numbers. Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/ending-war-drugs-numbers/
The Sentencing Project (2018, March). Report to the United Nations on racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system. https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/
