Experts Criticize Prison Demographics

Criminal justice experts criticized the increasing proportion of minorities in U.S. prisons at a Harvard Law School (HLS) panel last night.

The panel, which consisted of two HLS faculty and a former inmate-turned-activist, argued that racism and the profiteering of the prison-industrial complex were responsible for skewed prison demographics.

Until recently, the American prison population had been much more representative of the population at large, according to panelist Assistant Law Professor Margo Schlanger.

According to Schlanger, the number of inmates began to soar in 1980, and that increase gave rise to a disproportionate minority inmate population.

Soffiyah Elijah, a clinical instructor at the Criminal Justice Institute at HLS, explained this trend by pointing out that minorities became targeted as part of stricter law enforcement in the 1980s.

“Mostly poor people are coming through the courts,” she said. “Without question, mostly people of color.”

According to Elijah, 62 percent of last year’s sentences to more than one year of prison time were handed down to African-American and Hispanic defendants.

Elijah explained the theory of the profiteering prison-industrial complex—the industry and economy surrounding the incarceration of inmates—which she said is in part to blame for the demographic trends.

The complex includes the construction of prisons, the manufacture of state soap, the hiring of criminal justice officials and any other economic venture associated with incarceration.

According to Michael Bonds, an ex-convict who now works with the community-based activism group BLACKOUTBoston, the government has many economic incentives to keep a large prison population.

“All of these people are getting paid off of crime and punishment,” Bonds said. “I’m not mad at them for making money, I’m mad at them for using people to make money—that goes back to slavery.”

But Schlanger said there were more fundamental social reasons behind the high incarceration rate.

“I’m not a big believer in the prison-industrial complex. I would say [it’s] racism,” she said. “If it were white kids doing time for their crimes. . .laws would get changed.”

But panelists also noted that income disparity between white and minority populations was responsible for disproportionately high incarceration rates for minorities.

“Poor people commit more crimes, so you would expect to see different offending rates” across groups, Schlanger said.

Elijah also said that it is easier for police to apprehend lower-class offenders.

“Affluent people get high inside,” she said. “Poor people get high outside.”

Different groups are also characterized by different crime patterns, according to Schlanger.

For example, she said that possession of crack cocaine is treated as a more serious offense than powder cocaine, which tends to hurt minorities.

Schlanger also said that some states, including Massachusetts, impose more stringent penalties for dealing drugs near schools—and that such laws affect mostly minorities, since a larger percentage of minorities live in urban areas, and thus near schools, than whites do.

The panel was organized by the American Constitution Society (ACS) and the Black Law Students Association to raise awareness of the circumstances surrounding the disproportionate demographics of American inmates, according to BLSA President Joshua Bloodworth ’97.

“People don’t necessarily understand the size and the scope of the problem,” said Alixandra E. Smith ’02, ACS publicity director.