Assessing The Differences In the Treatment Of Minority Confinement In Kansas.

Abstract

For the last hundred years in the United States, minority races have been disproportionately held in jail (Cahalan 1986: 91), and during this time a similar disproportion has developed in our training schools for youths (Cahalan 1986: 130). Further, arrest rates for non-Euro-Americans are several times higher than for Euro-­Americans (Sykes and Cullen 1992:109-112). The heated debate over whether or not this disproportionality is caused by discrimination continues, but the weight of the evidence suggests that at least some racism is involved in producing the race ratios in confinement (Maclean and Milovanovic 1990; Tonry 1994; Reiman 1995). At the same time, however, the disproportionately high rates of person offenses by minorities, especially street corner, young, African-American males, are revealed in victimization and self-report delinquency studies as well as in arrest reports (Sykes and Cullen 1992: 110, fns. 33, 34, and 35). On the average, whatever category of people makes up the upper portion of the lower social class at a given time will be arrested and confined disproportionately (Sutherland, Cressey, and Luckenbill 1992: 218-221).