Fifty percent of Black children in the U.S. live in poverty. The public foster care system too is removing itself from the care of its wards, one-half of whom are Black. Increasingly, private agencies are monitoring these children, and their well-being is subject not only to the profit margins of private enterprise but also corruption. Corporations contract with local, state, and federal governments to build and operate facilities and to provide food, clothing, and other services to an institutionalized population whose increasing numbers only serve to fuel private profits. Moreover, Black men have a 29 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives.
Black women fare little better.
They are the fastest growing prison population and over one-half of them are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. Overall, juvenile offenders are increasingly being treated as adults. Thus, they are subject to harsher punishments. Racial disparities persist here as well. Sixty-seven percent of juvenile defendants prosecuted as adults are Black.