Criminal Justice System.

Everyone always wonders how successful institutions are at reforming their inmates. There is always a variety of outcomes especially for black males. In class, we learned that almost, “40% of the black male population is under the supervision of the correctional system meaning they are either in prison, jail, or on parole or probation. This statistic is extremely high in the sense that almost half of all the black males are incarcerated in the country. So does being a black poor male virtually set you up for failure?

James Woods, was a black male at the age of 18 and was thrown into jail for a drug bust. He was placed on a three-year indeterminate sentence meaning every few months they would evaluate his behavior and see if he was ready to be placed back into the real world. He got out in a year. Jail impacted James in many different ways. He said that he had a white roommate, and they were treated completely differently. James was beaten, taken advantage of, and jail had shook him and changed him forever.

James used to hustle on the street, and sell drugs but after his horrible experience he was never going back, he knew he had to change. He moved to Miami, Fl and decided to give back to the community. He runs a self-owned cleaning service where he will only charge $3 dollars per bedroom and $5 dollars for a kitchen and living room. James lives a very humble, honest and drug free life. He told his story, about being in jail and how institutionalized systems in America are corrupt, I knew I had to blog about this.

Even though, property, violent and rape crimes have decreased since the 70s, the United States still holds the highest incarceration rates in the world. That may just be because we have money, since it is extremely expensive to hold someone in jail. James was deserving of jail time, served and now is a completely changed person. Despite his mistreatment in jail, and his resentment toward “the white privilege” he managed to better himself. He told my friends stories about how 3 white men including his roommate would beat him in the courtyard at least once a week, or when he had to break up bricks, his white roommate got to serve food.

All in all, James Wood is a perfect example of how our institutionalized facilities in the United States, do provide correctional changes, yet racism is still a persisting issue. While discussing the Black Community and their relationship with drugs, there are two overlapping trends we learned about in lecture. Overall, there has been a massive increase in the number of drug arrests in the US, and blacks have constituted an increasing proportion of those arrests. James was one of many members of the black community jailed for his involvement with drugs. As a nation, we need to focus on lowering drug use, which will help decrease incarceration rates. James is a reformed man now, and the institutional system did that. It changed his life, despite some hardships, in a very significant way.