Given that the high rate of incarceration of black men represents a gaping hole in the nation's social fabric, you'd think the subject would come up in a presidential campaign. Based on current rates of incarceration, 28.5 percent of black men can expect to be jailed at some point in their lives. Try to imagine what placing nearly one-third of its men behind bars does to any community or culture. Those years of early adulthood ought to represent the passage into responsibility, a time when young men start careers and families. This is no plea, by the way, for thugs or gangbangers.
Violent criminals ought to be locked up for a very long time.
But America has purchased a sense of security by incarcerating not only violent criminals but also nonviolent ones. While experts believe that white drug users outnumber black drug users 5 to 1, black men are sent to state prisons on drug charges at a rate about 13 times that of white men, according to Human Rights Watch. Nor does it seem to matter much whether black men are actually guilty of the crimes for which they are convicted. The release of Ronald Cotton, imprisoned in North Carolina for 11 years for a rape he did not commit, has made headlines because of the remorse of his mistaken white accuser, Jennifer Thompson. But Cotton's plight is not so unusual.