Criminal Justice: Conversation and Action

The American criminal justice system is in critical need of reform — and the numbers tell us why.

The U.S. makes up 5 percent of the world’s population but incarcerates 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. In only about 30 years, from 1980 to 2008, the number of people imprisoned in this country quadrupled from 500,000 to 2.3 million.

The disparities are stark.

In 2008, African Americans and Hispanics together comprised nearly 60 percent of prisoners, even though they make up 25 percent of the U.S. population. Five times as many whites use drugs as African Americans but African Americans are sent to prison for drug-related offenses at 10 times the rate of whites.

The cost is high.

Approximately $70 billion are spent on corrections annually.

The consequences are sobering.

One in three African American males born today can expect to be imprisoned in their lifetimes. Two-thirds of prisoners reoffend.

Pomona College is committed to the critical examination of this broken system and to encouraging our community to take action towards reform. Pomona students, faculty and staff are engaged in on-going work to highlight the problems of the criminal justice system and to develop solutions.

Sources: NAACP, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, New York Civil Liberties Union, Public Campaign, The Sentencing Project, DrugWarFacts.org, "Prison Population Exceeds Two Million" (Infoplease.com), "Prison Labor - How it is used to eliminate the Middle Class and provide Slave Labor for Corporations" (Daily Kos), Centre for Research on Globalization, "Decades of Disparity: Drug Arrests and Race in the United States" (PDF) by Human Rights Watch, "Who Is in Prison? Who Profits?" (The PPJ Gazette), and "Occupy Wall Street's Race Problem" (The American Prospect).