Title: Black Men and the Criminal Justice System
Headings: African American Men and the Criminal Justice System
African American Men and the Criminal Justice System
Why a disproportionate amount of Black men are in prison
Black Minors at Risk
Disparities Between Black and White Drug Users
A Quarter of Young Black Men Report Police Mistreatment
Race and the Death Penalty

Content: The term “ school to prison pipeline ” was created to illustrate how the criminal justice system paves a pathway to prison for Blacks when African Americans are still very young. The Sentencing Project has found that Black males born in 2001 have a 32 percent chance of being incarcerated at some point. In contrast, white males born that year have only a six percent chance of winding up in prison. Disparities Between Black and White Drug Users
While Blacks make up 13 percent of the U.S. population and 14 percent of monthly drug users, they comprise 34 percent of individuals arrested for drug offenses and more than half (53 percent) of individuals imprisoned for drug-related offenses, according to the American Bar Association. In other words, Black drug users are four times more likely to end up in prison than white drug users. Differences in the way the criminal justice system treats Black drug offenders and white drug offenders became especially clear when sentencing laws required crack-cocaine users to receive much stiffer penalties than powder-cocaine users. That’s because, at the height of its popularity, crack-cocaine was most popular among Blacks in the inner city, while powder-cocaine was most popular among whites. In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which helped to erase some of the sentencing disparities related to cocaine. A Quarter of Young Black Men Report Police Mistreatment
Gallup interviewed roughly 4,400 adults from June 13 to July 5, 2013, for its Minority Rights and Relations poll about police interactions and racial profiling. Gallup found that 24 percent of Black men between the ages of 18 and 34 felt they had been mistreated by police during the past month.