Black Incarcerated MalesEssay Preview: Black Incarcerated MalesReport this essayBlack Incarcerated MalesFor the past two decades, the criminal justice system in the United States has been undergoing a tremendous expansion. There are now more than one million black men in jail and that one out of every four black males will go on prison in there lifetime. Knowing these statistics it put a burden on the black community because many families are left with single family home, the unemployment rate for black male go up, they can not vote and now they make jail seem like it is fun to go to.
Black men in Jail are having drastic effects upon the black community. The first and arguably most important effect is that it intensifies the problem of single parent households within the black community. When these men are sentenced to prison, they, many times, leave behind a wife/girlfriend and/or children. If they have already have had children, that child must spend multiple years of his/her early life without a primary father figure. In addition, that males absence is even more prominently felt when the woman has to handle all of the financial responsibilities on her own. This poses even more problems since women are underpaid relative to men in the workforce, childcare costs must be considered, and many of these women do not have the necessary skills to obtain a job, which would pay a living wage, which could support her and the children. Black male incarceration has done much to ensure that black female-headed households are now equal with poverty.
Black male imprisonment also has much to do with rising black male unemployment rates.As these men re-enter the workforce they now likely have less skills than when they first entered prison. There are few, if any, programs, which train these men to effectively re-enter society. As jobs continue to move out further and further into the suburbs, these males, who are from the inner city, are left with few living wage employment options. The rates that convicts go back to jail are so high not because these men want to return to a life of crime but since few employment options are available, they tend to utilize their limited skills to get the money they need to survive. If more efforts do not make additional training available to these males that are realistically designed to help them obtain a living wage job, the rates that convicts go back to jail and black male unemployment
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On October 3, 2016,#SJWI joined forces with the Black Lives Matter protest group, CBLF
to take #BlackLivesMatter seriously.
To start, we started off with an initial discussion of an active protest outside a courthouse where CBLF were holding a demonstration around the corner
where
one of our original co-defendants was arrested after posting a video in which he allegedly admitted he was an activist from CBLF.We started a dialogue in which we discussed the Black Lives Matter and how CBLF should address the situation. We are working on these proposals but I think those efforts have yet to be as direct as we would like.
CBLF has not only acted within a civil rights law enforcement framework; they also have been a community organizing force for over 20 years which has been at the forefront of the protests outside of prison. CBLF has not only been a source of strength for Black bodies and women of color but helped organize Black bodies like them in recent years.
Since its inception, CBLF has expanded from a small Black space to a large multi-agency police force to support over 50,000 inmates and the Black Communities Project.
CBLF is the only African American community organizing body in the country not based in Dallas, Texas.CBLF has also put on demonstrations that take place outside of most of the Federal Sentencing System and outside of high-profile criminal justice reform cases.
The Black Community Project is the first non-governmental organization that seeks to create a legal and ethical framework for the construction and maintenance of a new and equitable justice system to reflect the needs and interests of African American men, women, and LGBTQIA+ communities.
The movement is aimed at meeting existing goals such as opening prison beds to women, providing women who work in public service and providing funding for the social change campaigns of men, women, and LGBTQIA+ communities, as well as making the criminal justice system accessible to those most underrepresented in the criminal justice system.
The movement also provides an opportunity for the men who choose to work in law enforcement and justice to work together to address problems of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and exploitation.
The movement is developing a nationwide network of organizations to organize men and women and women of colour in law enforcement and justice. This requires a shared commitment to work together outside the federal system where these individuals and organisations work so closely together to fight for their rights, while respecting the human rights of every partner on the receiving end of legal and equitable treatment based on these differences.
We are also working on ways to enhance cooperation among law enforcement agencies to deal with social issues related to poverty and injustice. The first step was establishing a website within BLM which has over a 100 co-defendants of the men we are working to protect and mentor, that helps them access resources for their own needs and needs. As this blog post demonstrates,this was truly an innovative start.
We need to develop tools to make this possible so that the men and women of