Recidivism: It’s a Revolving Door

When people are released from prison or jail, they seem to go right back. There is a revolving door of sorts that keeps them rotating in the same cycle. Just how bad is the problem? According to one study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 77% of 404,638 prisoners who were released in 2005, were rearrested within five years.

In Georgia, the numbers aren’t as high, but they are still alarming. The 2010 re-conviction rate for private prisoners was 28%. It was 27% for state prisoners, 25% for those just starting probation and 15% for those who had successfully completed probation.

The recidivism rate for juvenile offenders is worse. After 1 year, the rate of rearrest for black juvenile delinquents was 39% compared to 25% for white offenders and 33% for Hispanic offenders. The rate for males was 37% and the rate for females was 24%.

Of course, these numbers are not this high because people enjoy being locked a way. On the contrary, believe it or not, it is hard for people with prior convictions to make it in society. Felons are not protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which means legally they can be discriminated against. Employers, thus, have the right to deny employment to anyone with prior convictions. Without employment, they have little opportunity for upward advancement.

Additionally, research by Kubrin, Squires, and Stewart (2007) has shown that  many of the obstacles faced by people recently released from prison “are related to an increasing series of restrictions placed on people convicted of drug offenses.” Accordingly, “an 18-year-old with even a first-time conviction for felony drug possession now may be barred from receiving welfare benefits for life, prohibited from living in public housing, denied student loans to attend college, and/or permanently excluded from voting” (p. 13).

Unfortunately, harsh policies are not the only factors contributing to high recidivism. When people are let out of prisons and jails, they are released to the same areas from which they came. According to Kubrin, et al. (2007) “neighborhoods vary in their capacity to provide …resources that facilitate reintegration into society and curb recidivism; [therefore], recidivism levels may be determined, in part, by the places to which ex-offenders return” (p. 9).

If it sounds grim, that is because it is. However, you don’t have to take my word for it.  Take a look at a new episode of my video blog In His Own Words.

References

Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. (2011). Recidivism Report December 2011. Retrieved from http://www.djj.state.ga.us/ResourceLibrary/_PDFfiles/RecidivismReportFY2011.pdf

Georgia Department of Corrections. (2014). Office of Planning and Analysis. 3-year felon reconviction rates for calendar years. Retrieved from http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/Research/Standing/3-Year-Reconviction-Calendar-Years.pdf

Kubrin, C. E., Squires, G. D., & Stewart, E. A. (2007). Neighborhoods, Race, and Recidivism: The Community-Reoffending Nexus and its Implications for African Americans. SAGE Race Relations Abstracts, 32, 7-37. DOI: 10.1177/0307920107073250

National Institute of Justice. (2014). Recidivism. Retrieved from http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx

Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance Policies

The school to prison pipeline is a very real, very serious problem. Black youth, especially black males, are suspended and expelled from school at alarming rates for fairly small offenses.

For example, in Desoto County, Mississippi a young man was suspended from school for putting up what the school administration thought was a gang sign. However, the boy was simply holding up three fingers to represent his school jersey number.

This young man was kicked out of school because of this photograph of him holding up this hand gesture. School administrators thought is was a gang sign.

Even though this was a simple gesture, according to the ACLU “the schools ‘zero tolerance’ approach to discipline” causes it to treat “even minor infractions as dangerous crimes.” Furthermore, “when the student is a person of color, those infractions are often treated more harshly.”

Lewis et al. (2010), researchers from Texas A&M University, state that “zero tolerance refers to policies that harshly punish all forms of student misconduct and wrongdoings with little or no regard to the severity of the offense that is committed” (p. 8). This means that there is no mitigation process and children are suspended or even expelled for things as small as hand gestures or their style of dress.

According to Lewis et al. (2010) these policies “originated during the early 1980s as a response to federal policies that were developed to combat the war on drugs by imposing ‘immediate, harsh, and legally mandated punishments’ on dealers/drug traffickers” (p.8).

Thus, teenagers who might merely be entering their rebellious years are treated like hardened criminals. Zorka Karanxha, a researcher from the University of Southern Florida who studies the causes of the school to prison pipeline stated that “these policies are yanking these children out of classrooms and funneling them into the criminal justice system…and once a child is in the system, the opportunity is lost.”

Not only are the punishments harsh, but they are unfairly applied. Let’s compare two Fulton County, Georgia  schools – one that is predominately black and one that is not. Tri-Cities High School  was 79% black in the 2012-2013 school year and in 2012 the school had a yearly suspension rate of 20%. Northview High School was 9% black in the same school year and had a yearly suspension rate of 3% in 2012. It appears that as the number of black students increases the the rate of suspension increases as well.

The bottom line is that something needs to be done to keep our kids in school. Once they have been pushed out they are more likely to drop out. Once they drop out they are more likely to enter the justice system. All of this could be prevented if we keep them in class from the beginning. Instead of being quick to send them to the office, teachers should ask if their offense is worth sending them down a path into the school to prison pipeline.

References

Georgia Appleseed. Find my schools school suspension rate. Retrieved from http://www.gaappleseed.org/toolkit/suspension-rate

Governor’s Office of Stdent Achievement. K-12 Public Schools Report Card. Retrieved from https://usg.gosa.ga.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Dashboard

Lewis, C. W., Butler, B. R., Bonner, F. A., & Joubert, M. (2010). African American Male Discipline Patterns and School District Responses Resulting  Impact on Academic Achievement: Implications for Urban Educators and Policy Makers. Journal of African American Males in Education, 1, 7-25.

Lowery, W. (2013). Zero Tolerance Policies. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/zero-tolerance-policies-are-these-post-columbine-measures-putting-minority-students-on-the-fast-track-to-the-prison-system/

“Can’t we All Just Get Along?” – Apparently Not

On Saturday, August 10, 1963, at a Black Unity Rally in Harlem, New York, Malcolm X made the following statement:

We want an immediate end to the police brutality and mob attack …that our people are confronted by every single day, every single week, every single month, every single year across the land.

The previous year, in April of 1962, one of Malcolm’s Muslim brothers, Ronald Stokes, was killed by police in Los Angeles. Even before that, in February of 1946, Issac Woodard, a World War II veteran, had his eyes gauged out by police in Georgia. In 1963, the same year of Malcolm’s speech, Birmingham, Alabama police officers turned their dogs and water hoses on to a group of peaceful marchers.

Fast forward to 1991, 28 years later, and we see Rodney King brutally beaten by police officers in Los Angeles, California and subsequently go free even though their crime was caught on tape.

22 years later, in August of 2014, an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed by a police officer in Furguson, Missouri, and the police officer’s identity is under protection by the Furguson Police Department.

There is a grim pattern forming here. Police cannot seem keep their hands off black people more specifically black men. This has been going on for the better part of the 20th century and all of the 21st century and there has not been any sign of change yet.

What is it about Black men that make them magnets for police violence? Could it be convenience? Michelle Alexander (2012), in her book The New Jim Crow, states that in the wake of the War on Drugs police officers have targeted black neighborhoods because of the likelihood of making arrests. Since there is a high police presence in black communities, it is more likely that a black man will have a run in with angry police officers.

Or, could it be that black men have been criminalized? Alexander (2012) notes that research has shown that people have an implicit bias towards blacks especially following the War on Drugs media coverage on crack dealers, crack users and crack babies. According to Alexander “once blackness and crime, especially drug crime, became conflated in the public consciousness, the ‘criminalblackman’…would inevitably become the primary target for law enforcement” (p. 107).

The answer is that it is most likely a bit of both with some pure racism mixed in. All of these elements create the perfect storm for police brutality against black men. In truth, Malcolm X or anyone else could make the same statement today and it would be just as appropriate.

References

Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press.