Title: White Men Vs. Black Men Prison Statistics 2016: Why Are More African American Males Incarcerated?
Headings: White Men Vs. Black Men Prison Statistics 2016: Why Are More African American Males Incarcerated?
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White Men Vs. Black Men Prison Statistics 2016: Why Are More African American Males Incarcerated?
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Content: Blacks only represent a small fraction of the U.S. population and they only account for 14 percent of drug users in the country, but they make up 34 percent of people arrested for drug offenses and 45 percent of those behind bars on drug charges. Mauer and Cole suggest this may be because dealers and users are easier to target in urban, impoverished, inner-city neighborhoods as opposed to broader, suburban landscapes. Racial profiling by police may also play a role in the number of black men serving time. Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be stopped by the police than a white driver, according to a 2011 Police-Public Contact Survey report by the Justice Department. Blacks were twice as likely to be searched during routine traffic stops, and five percent of blacks pulled over by police aren’t told why they were stopped. Before stop-and-frisk tactics were deemed unconstitutional in New York City by a Supreme Court judge in 2013, 54 percent of the 191,588 New Yorkers stopped-and-frisked by police that year were black while only 11 percent of searches involved white people. Racism and how others view blacks may also play a role in a jury's verdict and a judge's sentencing. Duane Buck, a black inmate currently appealing his death row sentence in Texas, believes racism may have played a factor in his initial trial after a psychologist testified and perpetuated that he would be more likely to kill again because he was black. During his trial, former prison psychologist Walter Quijano suggested that being black or a minority “increases the future dangerousness” of a person "for various reasons," which Buck believes inevitably led the jury to convict him to death. The inmate, who has been appealing his death sentence for the past 14 years, will get his appeal heard before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.