ABSTRACT
Black imprisonment rates exploded in the 1980s and 1990s and remain historically high. The primary causes of the rise in Black imprisonment were punitive changes to criminal justice policies—not increases in Black crime. Law enforcement became more stringent, particularly against drug law violations. Prosecutors became more likely to file felony charges. Judges became more likely to imprison convicted offenders, and sentence lengths increased, especially for violent offenders. This punitive shift was fueled by the war on drugs and the tough-on-crime movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which called for cracking down on crime in order to reduce crime. These crime control movements were aided by sentencing structures initially designed to increase fairness but were later transformed to achieve increased punitiveness. These policy initiatives have not achieved their stated goals of increased fairness and crime reduction. Yet they have had and continue to have tremendous negative collateral consequences on those convicted of a felony. Because of racial disparities in felony conviction and imprisonment, these collateral consequences have been concentrated among Blacks. The failure to reverse the ineffective, expensive, and racially biased policies driving America’s prison boom is shameful proof of policy makers’ continued malign neglect of Black Americans.
