In July, 2013, Netflix aired the first episode of Orange Is the New Black, which brought the attention of the public to the story of women who serve time in federal prisons around the US. Much as the story in the television series is largely fictitious, it confronts the realities around the criminal justice system of the US, and notably, the series has sparked an ongoing discussion about mass incarceration in the country. The incarcerated female population, especially those of color, are often left out of the conversation. Much as women serving prison sentences around the US are fewer in number compared to their male counterparts, it should be understood that the US prisons now have the largest number of female inmates around the globe (Kajstura, 2017). The cited literature suggests that more than 219,000 women in the country are currently serving terms in prison, and sadly, the numbers continue rising every year. The number of female inmates in the US, for example, rose by more than 700 percent between 1980 and 2014, which is almost double the 416 percent that men experienced (Haglar, 2016).
Television shows such as Orange Is the New Black provide their viewers with a glimpse of life in prison for all women in the US, but they also point at the need for policymakers to pay attention to the overrepresentation of WOC, Women of Color, in the criminal justice system. Much as only thirty-six percent of the entire female population are categorized as WOC, which entails a collection of several races that do not meet the classification as White, this group constitutes close to fifty percent of the female prison population as well as two thirds of the local jail population (The Sentencing Project, 2019). Furthermore, the cited literature suggests that African American women are thrice more likely to be imprisoned than their White counterparts while Latina women are close to sixty-nine percent more likely to be put behind bars.
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Informed by the reported statistics on the overrepresentation of WOC in the criminal justice system, this research paper connects the high rates of victimization and incarceration for the African American female population with their overrepresentation in in solitary confinement. The reason for the choice of the subject matter of this paper is that while many researchers have dealt with the representation of the target group in the criminal justice system on subjects such as demographics, rates of arrest, victimization, policing, sentencing, and offending among others, few have focused on levels of discipline that women experience while serving their sentences. The paper finds that compared to other racial groups, African American females, women and girls alike, are more likely to be confined in solitude because of their higher rates of victimization and incarceration relative to the rest of the racial groups in America.
The Overrepresentation of African Americans in Solitary Confinement
Literature consistently reports that African American females are overrepresented in solitary confinement while serving their terms. For example, report published recently suggests a significant level of overrepresentation of the racial group in solitary confinement sentences across the country (Resnik et al., 2016). The cited literature suggests that of the forty jurisdictions that provided data for analysis, which included thirty-eight states, the Virgin Islands, and the federal system, African American women made up to twenty-four percent of the entire incarcerated populations, yet they made up to forty-one percent of the solitary confined women. In comparison, the report suggests that while the White race constituted fifty-eight point three percent of the female jail population, the group made up only forty-two percent of those punished by confinement in isolated rooms. Furthermore, the same literature indicates that Hispanic women in prison only made up to 11.9 percent of those confined in solitary places despite constituting 12.6 percent of the jail population. Figure 1 shows the reported comparison of the representation of Hispanic, White, and Black women in solitary confinement.
Figure 1 : a comparison of the custodial and solitary confined female prison populations by race. Adapted from Resnik et al. (2016).
A further analysis of literature suggests that Latino and Black females serving their jail terms in New York prisons received higher rates of discipline compared to Whites as of 2015 (Winerip, Schwirtz and Gebeloff, 2016b). Commentating on the issue, the cited study argues, “Bias in the types of prison discipline is accompanied by a ripple effect.” The authors of the study suggest that disciplinary tickets carry a limiting effect on matters access to therapeutic, educational, and employment services, which ultimately reduces the chances that the affected persons would be paroled. Founding their analysis on an approximated sixty thousand cases of prison discipline, the researchers in the latter cited literature conclude that African Americans were approximately sixty-five percent more likely to be punished by solitary confinement and that they were thirty percent less likely to get disciplinary tickets compared to White inmates. It is also reported that disparities in the type of discipline persisted even when statisticians accounted for the variations in the offenses leading to conviction and the ages of WCO, and such disparities were most manifested for infractions, which gave discretion to the prison guards, such as disobeying direct orders (The Sentencing Project, 2016).
The outcomes reported in the preceding paragraph could be attributed downstate versus upstate cultural divide. For example, in a study conducted by Winerip, Schwirtz and Gebeloff (2016b), interviews with incarcerated persons, most of whom were Latino and Black from urban backgrounds, established actions of overt racism depicted by guards in upstate prisons, who are predominantly White from less diverse and poorer communities. Nevertheless, in a contrasting finding of the same study, African Americans were treated in the same ways as their White counterparts in Sing Sing Correctional Facility that is located close to New York City, and where most of the uniformed staff are African American. In a related study conducted by Winerip, Schwirtz and Gebeloff (2016a), it was found that less than one in six Hispanic or African American men were released following their first parole hearing compared to one in four for the White race. Consequently, the findings in literature suggest disparities in the types of discipline given to inmates from different racial backgrounds—Black women are overrepresented.
While some states have attempted to deal with the issue of sentencing inequalities, it is notable that inequality is still a problem. For example, a Herald-Tribune analysis revealed that much as Florida employs a point system with the objective of handling sentencing inequality, it is yet to eradicate the problem (Salman, Le Coz, & Johnson, 2016). In the State of Florida, it is reported in the cited literature, prosecutors assign points founded on the severity of the crimes with which accused persons are charged, their prior records, and other factors, which allows the judges to depart from the recommended sentences. The authors of the latter cited study summarize that when White and Black defendants score the same points for a similar offense, the jury is likely to hand the African American offender a longer stay in prison in sixty percent of all felonies. For this reason, the study finds and reports an overrepresentation of African Americans in Florida’s prisons, which increases the chances that they would end up in solitary confinement—the most common type of prison discipline in the state and around the country. Based on their report, it is precisely reported that Black women are thrice more likely to be disciplined by solitary confinement than their White counterparts when they miss to follow the prison regulations and rules.
Gendered Victimization—Dissecting the Root Cause to African American Women’s Overrepresentation
Understanding the trends in racial and gendered victimization is useful in uncovering why female African Americans are overrepresented in solitary confinement discipline while serving their jail terms. One of the ways of dissecting the topic is through studying the trends in tracking hate crimes around the country. In this respect, it is notable that the country’s criminal justice system faces an uphill task in dealing with hate crimes. An analysis by Thompson and Schwencke (2016) reported a rising trend in the number of hate crimes that were experienced in America in 2015 alone. Furthermore, an FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, recently released data that indicated an overall rise in the reported hate crime witnessed between 2014 and 2016 by 6.8% with sixty-seven percent of the reported cases targeting Muslims and sixty-three percent of them directed at African Americans, the same study finds. Nevertheless, it should be understood that the figures could either be an exaggeration or an understatement considering that not all state and local law enforcement agencies around the country report incidences of hate crime to the Bureau while many other do not document such statistics accurately, which could reduce the reliability of the reported findings. Now that African American women are overrepresented in the criminal justice system compared to the rest of the female offenders, hate crimes targeting the Black race could be one of the factors contributing their further overrepresentation in solitary confinement punishments.
Other literature on gendered violence, mass incarceration, and Black womanhood suggests that during the early 1900s, homicide, especially that caused by intimate partners, was the common cause of death among African American girls aged between fifteen and twenty-five (Gross, 2015). Considering the ominous data on African American men and violent deaths, which literature widely reports (Gilliam et al., 2017), the equally stark numbers of Black women should not be surprising. However, in many respects, the relationship is the biggest task that researchers on race, gender, and crime should deal with in future studies. Notably, systematic and structural impediments to the protection of Black women in the American society have put this population at the highest risk of abuse and violence—conditions that have a significant relationship with the rise in the rates of incarceration. For example, close to fifty-seven percent of female inmates in state prisons in 1999 were victims of abuse before their confinement (Gross, 2015). Out of the reported figure, the latter cited literature elaborates, 46.5% were victims of physical abuse while 39% had been assaulted sexually. By 2011, when as many as a million women were either under the control of the criminal justice system or had been incarcerated, eighty-five and ninety percent of the women had histories of domestic and sexual assault, which was opposed to only 22.3% of the all the women in the country (Gross, 2015). Considering the overrepresentation of African American women in the criminal justice system as well as their ongoing and historic vulnerability, there is only little doubt that gender violence is a significant factor in their overrepresentation. Indeed, an approximated sixty-eight percent of Black women who are incarcerated in the US have been victimized by intimate partner violence, and in comparison to Whites, African American women are two times more as likely to be killed by their spouses.
The historicization of gendered and racialized notions of representation in the criminal justice system clarifies the connection between the experiences of African American women and mass incarcerations, which exposes them to the reported chances of being severely punished by prison authorities. Even so the historical studies of intraracial gender violence are available only in limited supply, and the present explorations of mass incarceration and race largely focus on felony disfranchisement and the war on drugs. Notable, both topics are important. Nevertheless, considering that violent criminal activities represent fifty percent of the charges for which present state prisoners are serving (and that crimes related to drugs make up to twenty-five percent), it appears that restructuring priorities could be important. Some scholars suggest that the historical roles that misogyny, patriarchy, and racism play in African American criminal behavior is critical in arresting the alarming rates of mass incarceration, which could be one of the ways of reducing the number of African American women who are subjected to severe punishments while serving their terms in prison (Gilliam et al., 2017).
Additionally, exclusionary notions of protection—most people of the African American background perceive that the government does only so much to protect them—has resulted in the need for African American women to engage in extralegal violence with the objective of enhancing their individual security. Historical information is replete with exemplified cases of otherwise law-abiding African American women who, for example, were found carrying small knives as well as other weapons that would shield them against routine violations and assaults in the workplace and at home, which are behaviors that gesture toward their often ignored vulnerability in the communities that they live (Gilliam et al., 2017). It should be understood that African American females experience domestic violence at thirty-five percent rate higher than that of the White women and at approximately 2.5% higher than that of other races, which indicates that only so much has been done to address the most important issue that leads to the victimization of women from this racial background. The facts reviewed in this paper are never hidden, yet it is notable that they rarely appear to be at the center of the discussions revolving around the issues of gender, race, and justice. Therefore, it could be that America does not have sufficient policing strategies that could lead to equality among races and their representation in the criminal justice system, which contributes to the reported data in this paper.
The Victimization and Overrepresentation of African American Juveniles
The demographics related to the prison population of American women are extreme, yet unsurprising, especially when one considers the discrimination, which occurs at the justice system level. Notably, this type of victimizations do not happen spontaneously. According to the Sentencing Project (2019), discrimination begins early, and racial disparities in female sentencing characterize juvenile courts, largely because of the higher rates of victimization of some racial groups relative to others. As do their older counterparts, for example, Black girls aged between twelve and seventeen years, as do the rest of their counterparts of color, are likely to be incarcerated compared to the White ones. Precisely, the Sentencing Project (2019) suggests that African American girls are more than three and a half times more likely to end up in juvenile justice facilities compared to their White counterparts, which translates to an approximated 110 out of 100,000 Black girls. The imbalance in the rates of representation does not stop there considering that the Black girls are often abused more frequently than White ones, which results them being labelled as offenders and to be punished in ways that could include solitary confinement. Consequently the statistics included in this section of the paper suggests that African Americans receive the least preferential treatment in the criminal justice system, which could largely explain their overrepresentation in solitary confinement while placed in correctional facilities.
In conclusion, literature consistently indicate the fact that the criminal justice system of the US is flawed in the manner it handles people from different racial backgrounds. While some people could argue otherwise, it is clear that WOC are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. Primarily, African American females face the greatest wrath of the system because despite their minority status, they are overrepresented at almost all levels of the criminal justice system, including victimization, incarceration, and prison punishment. The findings of this paper suggest that because they are overrepresented in victimization and offending, African American women are more likely than other racial group to be punished by solitary confinement.
References
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Gross, K. N. (2015). African American women, mass incarceration, and the politics of protection. Journal of American History , 102 (1), 25-33.
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Thompson, A.C., & Schwencke, K. (2016). Hate Crimes Are Up — But the Government Isn’t Keeping Good Track of Them . ProPublica . ProPublica . Retrieved 27 March 2019, from https://www.propublica.org/article/hate-crimes-are-up-but-the-government-isnt-keeping-good-track-of-them?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=1479239909#comments
Winerip, M., Schwirtz, M., & Gebeloff, R. (2016a). For Blacks Facing Parole in New York State, Signs of a Broken System . Nytimes.com . Retrieved 27 March 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/nyregion/new-york-prisons-inmates-parole-race.html?_r=1
Winerip, M., Schwirtz, M., & Gebeloff, R. (2016b) The Scourge of Racial Bias in New York State’s Prisons . Nytimes.com . Retrieved 27 March 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/nyregion/new-york-state-prisons-inmates-racial-bias.html
