The Prison Imperative

What does the above graph say to you? If you can’t see the graph, you can navigate to https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/CA.html to review it there. What is shows is that certain ethnic groups are under-represented in the prison system in California (which is hardly a Republican stronghold—that’s not what this is about). You know which groups are over-represented in the prison system in California? That’s right: blacks are more than 4 times more likely to get sent to prison based on these data. Latino? You also are slightly more likely. So looking at this, and being naive and foolish, one could say “gee, those black people must be committing a lot of crimes.”

But that’s the naive view, and if you’ve listened to Right and Freedom before, you know better. You’ve heard of overpolicing in minority neighborhoods, you’ve come to understand the school-to-prison pipeline, and you’ve also understood the breakdown of prison sentences. At least 15% and as high as 25% of the entire prison population is there for drug possession charges.