Youth Amplify

Racial discrimination in prison is an all-too-common occurrence with unfortunate, long-lasting ramifications. According to Wendy Sawyer of the Prison Policy Initiative, “systemic racism is evident at every stage of the system, from policing to prosecutorial decisions, pretrial release processes, sentencing, correctional discipline, and even reentry.” Therefore, even when it comes to re-entry, issues arise. Similarly, The Sentencing Project goes into this as well. “Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly 5 times the rate of white Americans.” Meaning that there is the issue of people of color being profiled more heavily than non-POC individuals. “Nationally, one in 81 Black adults in the U.S. is serving time in state prison. Wisconsin leads the nation in Black imprisonment rates; one in every 36 Black Wisconsinites is in prison.”

So, what is there to be done? Well, inmates across America launched a nationwide strike in 2016.

Max Blau and Emanuella Grinberg, in a CNN report entitled “Why US Inmates Launched a Nationwide Strike,” looked into this issue. They both stated that “[in September 2016], on the 45th anniversary of the infamous Attica Prison uprising, tens of thousands of US inmates launched a nationwide protest…The inmates’ grievances [were] as varied as the states they came from: Pennies for labor in South Carolina, racial discrimination in California, excessive force in Michigan. However, they share[d] an overarching goal: End legalized slavery inside American correctional facilities.”

Works Cited:

Delaney, R. Subramanian, R. Shames, A. Turner, N. “American History, Race, and Prison.” Vera, 2016, https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-web-report/american-history-race-and-prison

Nellis, A. Liston, S. En, S. “The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons.” The Sentencing Project, 2021, https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Color-of-Justice-Racial-and-Ethnic-Disparity-in-State-Prisons.pdfSawyer, W. “Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration.” Prison Policy Initiative, 2020, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/