NEW YORK – Today, the Southern Prisons Coalition, a group of civil and human rights organizations, presented a new report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination on the devastating consequences of the incarceration of black people across the world. southern United States. States.
With the long-term goal of eliminating all forms of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, including the prison system, the report outlines the widespread and disparate harm resulting from arrests, harsh prison sentences and incarceration in black communities. The report also cites the devastating impacts of solitary confinement, prison labor, the plumbing from school to prison, and the incarceration of parents in black families.
On August 8, 2022, the UN will review the United States’ compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination for the first time since 2014.
Among the ongoing racial disparities in Southern prisons, blacks are five times more likely to be incarcerated in state prisons. In states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, where black communities comprise 38% of the total population, black individuals represent up to 67% of the total incarcerated population. While incarcerated, blacks are more than eight times more likely to be placed in solitary confinement and are 10 times more likely to be held there for extremely long periods of time.
In submitting the report to the United Nations, the Southern Prisons Coalition hopes to solicit concrete recommendations from the UN Committee, as well as commitments from the US delegation on its plans to address systemic issues in the US prison system, particularly in the South.
According to the report, several US states also failed to comply with several of the UN Minimum Rules for the treatment of incarcerated persons, including;
The work should help prepare incarcerated people for their release from prison, including life and work skills;
Labor safety and protection measures for incarcerated workers must be the same as for non-incarcerated workers;
Incarcerated workers must receive equitable pay, be able to send money to their families, and have a portion of their wages set aside to be handed over to them upon release.
“The US has long failed to meet its international human rights treaty obligations to eliminate racial discrimination, perhaps more in the area of mass incarceration and prison conditions than in any other context,” said Lisa Borden, Senior Policy Advisor, International Advocacy. at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We hope the Committee will help clarify these very grim truths and take the US to take its obligation to make significant improvements more seriously.”
“Forced labor abuses are inextricably linked to racial discrimination in our nation,” said Jamila Johnson, deputy director of the Promise of Justice Initiative. “In Louisiana, for example, people are still sent to the fields to work by hand in dangerously high heat, for little or no compensation, and with a brutal application reminiscent of slavery and the ‘convict rent’ era. .”
“This report reveals the plight of black people in prisons across the US South, whose stories of marginalization and discrimination echo the racial subjugation of slavery and convict rent during our country’s most shameful past,” said Antonio L. Ingram II, attorney. Legal Defense Assistant. Background. “Despite extensive knowledge of age-old racial inequalities in criminal and prison systems, the United States continues to allow egregious human rights violations to persist for people of color incarcerated in violation of international law. This report serves as a sober reminder of how far we need to go.”
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