Prison Culture: A Crisis In The African American Community Send To Printer | Close Window

By A. Scott Washington, J.D., Workplace ReConnections, Inc.

The criminal justice approach to drug use has contributed to the increasing numbers of African Americans that are subjected to the American criminal justice process. This increase can be attributed to a justice system that disproportionately incarcerates African Americans for drug law violations. Most of the people being locked up in American prisons are African American drug offenders.

This article examines the impact of the racially discriminatory criminal justice approach to drug activity, points out the flaws and inadequacies in the current method for dealing with the complex problem of drugs in America, and finally presents plausible solutions for a problem that cannot be conquered by locking up hundreds of thousands of African Americans.

Obviously, there are identifiable behavior patterns associated with inner city drug activity that have led to African Americans being disproportionately incarcerated. On the other hand, the intersection of drug use and poverty have collided with the forces of history, race, economic theory and human vulnerability to create a social pathology like none seen before in this country.This pathology has given rise to what the author refers to as "inner city prison culture."
The demand for illegal narcotics has created an enormous market and, as a result, the underground drug economy has become embedded in many inner city neighborhoods. Some of the worst affected neighborhoods have become breeding grounds for crime and violence. Street level drug markets are overwhelmingly located in African American neighborhoods.  However, many users serviced by these markets are white. More importantly, the proximity of the inner cities to outlying suburbs has made the inner city drug trade exceedingly diverse. The demand for heroin and cocaine on American street corners is decidedly multi-cultural. The arrest, conviction, and imprisonment rates, however, remain disproportionately weighted in favor of African Americans. Consequently, the inner city drug trade is responsible for the "incarceration explosion" within African American communities.

The rules and imperatives of mainstream American culture do not apply within the inner city drug trade. Here, the social norms and culture that reside in the luxury of reasonable judgments are left behind. The apparent evolving nature of inner city drug trade, and its intersection with contemporary urban poverty has created an environment ripe for a new subculture within the inner city. This subculture is fueled by the customs and values that are born within the concrete walls of this country's correctional institutions. Following 30 years of tough on crime policy that has targeted the inner city drug trade, the affect of generational incarceration and recidivism has become so entrenched in inner city communities that prison culture is permeating entire neighborhoods. Serving time in prison has become a sort of rights of passage for many inner city young persons, both male and female.

Prison culture, which is now abundantly present in the inner city, is directly attributable to current laws and policies aimed at curtailing drug use. Interestingly, these laws and policies have largely failed to reduce the problems attributable to drug activity in America. More correctly stated, national drug policy has escalated incarceration rates among inner city residents, resulting in a extremely violent prison culture in the African American community that grows exponentially, parallel to the prison population in this country. This phenomenon is cyclical and, as the statistics suggest, actually increases criminal activity in both the inner city and suburban communities. Therefore, community safety is significantly compromised by the "lock them all up" mentality that has become the fundamental premise of our national crime policy.

Discriminatory Drug prohibition is the principal cause of this phenomenon. The current drug policy's racially disparate impact has further perpetuated the problems surrounding the increasing numbers of African Americans being socially disenfranchised by the collateral consequences of criminal convictions.  Drug laws, therefore, have played a key role with respect to changes in the criminal justice system, particularly the growth in incarceration over the last 20 years. There are now 11 times as many people locked up for drug offenses as there were in 1980. African American males compose nearly one-half of the prison population in the United States, despite the fact that they constitute only 5% of the total U.S. population. It appears that current drug policies seek to address drug abuse and addiction by incarcerating large percentages of the African American population, particularly, young black males.

The fundamental issue in the "drug war/over reliance on incarceration" debate relates back to a question that was pondered some two decades ago in the court of public opinion: whether building jails, prisons, and courthouses is the correct approach to handling those who commit drug offences. In the twenty-first century, however, the opportunity exists to develop a more effective and dramatic approach to controlling drug abuse and the collateral damage already inflicted on our communities. The current laws and policies directed toward drug users have severely restricted access to intervention services and drug treatment by diverting money away from treatment and towards punitive methods. Now is the opportunity to act on facts, not preconceived notions or prejudices. With established organizations such as the American Medical Association, American Bar Association, and the Centers for Disease Control all defining drug addiction as a disease, lawmakers should work together to devise a strategy to end the criminal justice approach to drug use interdiction.

While medical professionals and many others view drug addiction as a public health problem, it has been defined in the United States as a criminal justice problem.  Instead of a comprehensive public health model combined with aggressive social justice efforts, the country as a whole and most states individually have emphasized draconian sentencing systems and increased use of imprisonment as the method to deal with the larger social/political issue of Americans' desire for drugs and their availability on the streets of this country. The end result of these policies is a inner city prison mentality that permeates the urban landscape of this country. A medical approach, however, by encompassing drug addiction in the medical domain, would allow medical considerations to be decisive in the interpretation of the problem and in the choice of measures to resolve the situation. With respect to drug use, the medical model can have a broad range of meanings and consequences. When it means providing normal, good quality medical care to drug addicts, including the prescription of some illicit drugs, the medical model should be applauded as a positive development. One reason the medical model is often hailed as a more humane approach to drug policy than reliance upon the criminal justice system alone is because of the expectation that in the medical model, addiction no longer will be stigmatizing because it is considered a disease.

As the war on drugs has been a utter failure, the primary focus of our drug policy must change. There should be discussion and debate among policy makers regarding the restructuring of the drug policy from "criminalization to medicalization," therefore, de-emphasizing incarceration for drug use, and increasing public health efforts to combat drug addiction. These efforts should include treatment and rehabilitation for all addicts.

An enlightened policy needs to expand where and how services are provided for all individuals that are addicted to drugs. Anyone who wants to quit using drugs should be able to receive appropriate treatment. Furthermore, addicted single parents need residential treatment that will not break up families. Pregnant addicts especially need treatment, not imprisonment. Today, however, most treatment programs will not accept pregnant addicts. All drug-addicted prisoners should get treatment, but no one should be prosecuted or imprisoned simply to get treatment. If laws and policies were changed in an effort to address the health care issues involved in drug addiction, and thus, shifted the priority away from incarceration to health care and subsequently rehabilitation, there would be more programs and greater ability to address the specific needs of the addict, to educate them, and to expand prevention services.  That would be much better than simply incarcerating people for taking drugs. A public health expansion of drug treatment would reduce crime, health hazards, recidivism, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. There is no question that the expansion of drug treatment would be a tremendous help in our battle to eliminate the extremely violent prison culture that has taken up residence in urban America.

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