Our Black Prisons

Americans have long taken it for granted that blacks and other minorities are highly overrepresented in prisons. However, the actual extent of that overrepresentation, the reasons for it, and its social, political, economic, and legal implications have remained neglected. A recent study reveals a nationwide pattern of vastly disproportionate incarceration rates for blacks and whites, and comparison with earlier surveys indicates that the problem has grown worse, not better, as greater attention purportedly has been paid to affirmative action. There is an urgent and long overdue need for social scientists, lawyers, criminal justice officials, and concerned citizens to join in confronting these issues. Notwithstanding some fundamental differences between imprisonment and capital punishment, many of the constitutional issues that have been raised for the death penalty can and should be applied to the more pervasive problem of invidious racial discrimination in the imprisonment of black males.