Annotated Bibliography
Adamson, C. R. (1983). Punishment after slavery: Southern State Penal Systems, 1865-1890. Social Problems, 30(5), 555–569. https://doi.org/10.2307/800272
Adamson discusses the developmental issue of how black men in the South were unproportionally imprisoned immediately after the passage of the 13th Amendment. He examines the changes in the state penal systems in the late 1800s in the South, and how those changes were related to concurrent political and economic developments. White people in the South were unhappy with the abolishment of slavery, so they pushed lawmakers to create legislation that would excessively target newly freed black individuals. Changes in the Southern penal systems prompted the mass incarceration process of black men as a means of legally continuing slavery. The internment of black men in this period of American history relates to Amartya Sen’s definition of development because most white people in the South did not want black people to experience the same legal freedoms they had. Black men in prison were forced into involuntary labor so that white people could still profit off of their exploitation, creating an indecent standard of living for black prisoners, a clear violation of the dimensions of human development. Data in this paper is derived using archival research of prison records in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina from 1866-1870. Adamson found that 1355 black people were imprisoned, which was 95% of the prison population at this point in time. He also found that 34 black females were prisoners in Georgia. For my research, it is important to distinguish whether black prisoners immediately following the 13th Amendment were male or female. However, data about the gender of prisoners is not easily accessible. Considering the statistics from Georgia, it can be assumed that the number of black men imprisoned is more than the number of black females imprisoned during this time frame, and more relevantly, the number of male black prisoners after abolition is far more than the 363 white men who were incarcerated. The unfair mass incarceration of black people started after slavery because white people felt threatened that black people were closer to having the same legal rights as them, and that they could no longer exploit black people for financial gain. Adamson argues that pre-existing attitudes regarding race in the United States need to be remedied in order to stop the use of imprisonment and prison labor as a way to disproportionately punish black people.
Bales, K. (2017). Unlocking the statistics of slavery. CHANCE, 30(3), 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/09332480.2017.1383105
In this article, Bale’s discusses the developmental issue of slavery. He discusses how slavery has been a chronic pattern in global history. Slavery continues to plague the modern world in different forms, and Bales attempts to estimate the current number of global citizens who are victims to contemporary slavery. To orchestrate this research, he firsts inspects the data surrounding the slavery of black people in the United States prior to the 13th Amendment. Using archival research methods, Bales was able to discover that there were 3,950,529 black slaves in the United States just prior to abolition through the United States 1860 Census. Economist Amartya Sen describes development as freedom, and the historical and modern context of Bales’ research embodies that definition because slaves do not have the same freedoms as those who enslave them. In regards to black slavery in the United States before the 13th Amendment, black people did not have access to a decent standard of living, a dimension of human development, because they were subject to involuntary labor, and the injurious consequences of protesting this inhumane labor. At this time, slavery was legal in the United States, and it often benefited those with the ability and influence to change that lawfulness. Part of the reason why American slavory before the 13th Amendment lasted so long was because it was difficult to abolish. Bales goal in his research is to use data about slavery to eliminate contemporary slavery throughout the world.
Taylor, R. J., Miller, R., Mouzon, D., Keith, V. M., & Chatters, L. M. (2016). Everyday discrimination among African American men. Race and Justice, 8(2), 154–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/2153368716661849
These researchers examine society’s treatment of African American adult males by determining how experiences of everyday discrimination relates to experience with the criminal justice system. 1271 African American males were sampled and interviewed about their experiences with everyday discrimination, and in addtion their experiences with the criminal justice system. Researchers asked the subjects to explain how they were discriminated (common responses include being told that others are better than them because they are not black, being told that they are unintelligent, and being told that people are afraid of them because they are black), and were asked to explain any contact they have had with the criminal justice system (jail, prison, arrested, etc …). After statistical analysis, the researchers found that those who reported high levels of everyday discrimination were also more likely to experience serious contect with the criminal justice system. The data discussed in this study speaks to how racism in the United States contributes to the use of mass incarceration of black men as a form of modern day slavery. The United States has a dark history of racism, and as supported by the data in this study, there are contemporary manifestations of that past. High levels of everyday discrimination were reported with an increased likelihood of serious contact with the criminal justice system, meaning that the racism in our society pushes black males into prison, therefore depriving them of their freedom, which negatively embodies Amartya Sen’s definition of development. When these black men are in prison, they are often disproportionately subject to indecent practices, like involuntary prison labor. Researchers urge citizens of the United States to dismantle the racism within American society, which will hopefully disassemble the racism that targets black males within the criminal justice system.
Završnik, A. (2019). Algorithmic justice: Algorithms and Big Data in criminal justice settings.European Journal of Criminology, 18(5),
623–642. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819876762
Završnik explores how the use of big data and algorithms change law enforcement’s knowledge about crime, specifically the likelihood of rearrests, and how these data, algorithms, and machine learning used by law enforcement disproportionately target black men. Many of these predictive tools are based on past data, however, this data inaccurately categorizes black people as having a higher risk for committing a crime after being released from prison. Završnik exemplifies COMPAS, a software used to predict rearrests for prior criminals. The COMPASS algorithm is based on assessments administered by the company over a one year period. They assessed 7381 offenders in prison, parole, jail, and probation sites in the United States; 24.9% of these offenders were black and 76.9% of these offenders were men. The algorithm was found to be inaccurate after a significant number of black offenders were false positives, meaning that they were marked by the software at being at a high risk for rearrest, yet never actually recommitting a crime. Contrastingly, the tool indicated that a significant number of white offenders were not at risk for rearrest, but in reality they were more likely to recommit a crime. Racist data like this that is used by law enforcement contributes to the idea that the United States justice system unfairly targets black people, which leads to an unproportionate number of black men in prison, and consequently, an unproportionate number of black men being subject to prison labor. When police departments use racist algorithms to make legal decisions, more black men will be incarcerated, which directly relates to Sen’s definition of development because these victims will unjustly lose their freedoms and be subject to an indecent standard of living. Algorithms like COMPAS feeds the use mass incarceration of black men in comparison to white men as a means to legally continue slavery. Završnik recommends that law enforcement use algorithms purely as a tool, not as a deciding factor, and that they use software that is based on accurate data.