Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.
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Black Directions v2n5: Criminal Justice Reform
As important as it is to address racial disparities in sentencing, this issue is just the tip of the iceberg for criminal justice reform. We need a complete overall of the criminal justice system to undo the damage and waste caused by more than 30 years of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs legislation. The harm of these failed policies has been born most heavily by blacks.In 1970, the incarceration rate in the United States was about average for a developed, Western country. Today, it is about seven times the average. Are we seven times safer than we were in 1970? Not even close.
America has the toughest criminal justice policies and the highest incarceration rate in the West. Are we the safest country? Not at all.
Tough-on-crime policies are extremely expensive; weaken black communities economically, politically and socially; and do precious little to reduce crime. It is time for civil rights activists to insist that we engage in constructive crime prevention instead of continuing the destructive crime prevention of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs policies.
High-quality pre-kindergarten education has been proven to reduce crime. It is more effective at crime prevention than incarceration, and it has none of incarceration’s negative effects. Providing jobs for poor black youth will reduce crime, and it too has none of the negative effects of incarceration. We need to invest in and develop more constructive crime prevention policies. Three decades of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs policies have proven them to be harmful, inefficient and extremely expensive. The current issue of Black Directions begins the necessary discussion on fundamental criminal justice reform.
What’s in the current Black Directions
- Comparing Constructive and Destructive Crime Prevention
- The Three Biggest Myths about Blacks and Drugs
- Clifford Thornton’s Plan to Stop 90% of Drug-Related Violence
- The Flaws of Relying on Incarceration for Crime Prevention
To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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