Race and Crime - Chapter 8: Corrections

Key vocabulary terms, historical cases, sociological concepts, and empirical findings regarding race and the American corrections system.

Continuum of Sanctions

A range of correctional strategies and penalties extending from institutional incarceration across varying security levels to community supervision, fines, community service, and restitution.

Walnut Street Jail

A Philadelphia facility restructured by Quakers following a 1790 Pennsylvania law mandating solitary confinement and hard labor, recognized as America's first prison.

Convict Lease System

A post-Civil War arrangement in the American South exploiting the Thirteenth Amendment's criminal exception clause to lease inmates to private landowners, effectively reintroducing slavery.

Battle v. Anderson (1974)

A legal case instigated by Black Muslim inmates that reinforced the First Amendment constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals.

Northern v. Nelson (1970)

A court ruling determining that Black Muslim inmates must be granted legal access to religious literature within correctional institutions.

George Jackson

An incarcerated member of the Black Panther Party whose letters, published as 'Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson,' brought national attention to abuses within correctional institutions.

Rage Riots

Spontaneous, intense collective disturbances in correctional facilities, exemplified by the four-day 1971 Attica prison uprising, prompted by severe overcrowding and inhumane treatment.

Mexican Mafia (La Eme)

A major prison gang founded along racial and ethnic lines within the American correctional system.

Aryan Brotherhood

A prominent, racially organized prison gang active within state and federal correctional facilities.

Black Guerilla Family

An ideologically and racially organized prison gang formed in American correctional institutions.

La Nuestra Familia

A prominent prison gang whose name translates to 'our family,' formed along racial and ethnic lines inside correctional institutions.

Control Rate

The percentage of a specified population that is under any form of criminal justice supervision, including jail, prison, probation, or parole.

Differential Involvement Hypothesis (Blumstein, 1982)

The empirical finding by Alfred Blumstein that $80\%$ of the racial disproportionality in state prison incarceration rates was accounted for by differential involvement in arrests.

Prison-Industrial Complex

A critique advanced in the late 1990s and early 2000s arguing that governments and private corporations financially profit from the mass incarceration of minority populations.

Critical Resistance Movement

An advocacy movement founded in 1998 dedicated to challenging and opposing the expansion of the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration.

Reentry Courts

Specialized courts requiring a parolee and parole officer to collaborate on a plan built on four components: a transition plan, supportive services, regular oversight hearings, and victim or community accountability.

Felon Disenfranchisement

Statutory provisions that deny voting rights to individuals convicted of felony offenses, which expanded significantly in the United States following the Civil War.

Pager's Employment Audit Study (2007b)

Sociological research documenting racial discrimination in hiring by demonstrating that White job applicants with criminal records received more positive responses than Black applicants without criminal records.

Recidivism Rate

The statistical rate at which released prisoners reoffend or return to correctional custody, reported at approximately $40\%$ across the United States.

Sentencing Project Reports (1990, 1995)

Key correctional studies reporting that the criminal justice control rate for African American males aged $20\text{--}29$ grew from nearly one in four in 1990 to almost one in three by 1995.