Historical Context
This set of laws, established after the Civil War, enforced racial segregation and disproportionately targeted African Americans for incarceration
What are Jim Crow laws?
What is the leading cause of wrongful convictions?
What is eyewitness misidentification?
What percentage of the U.S. prison population is Black?
What is 38.9%?
Ratified in 1865, this amendment abolished slavery in the United States, except as punishment for a crime
What is the 13th amendment?
The “War on Drugs,” launched by this U.S. president in the 1980s, led to a sharp increase in the incarceration of Black Americans
Who is Ronald Reagan?
The majority of wrongful convictions are overturned using this type of scientific evidence, first used to exonerate a person in the 1980s
What is DNA evidence?
African Americans are incarcerated at a rate nearly this many times higher than white Americans
What is five times?
This 1986 law introduced harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, disproportionately affecting Black communities due to sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine
What is the Anti-Drug Abuse Act?
This prison system, established in the South after the Civil War, utilized convict leasing to exploit black labor
What is convict leasing?
This term describes the phenomenon where African Americans are disproportionately affected by wrongful convictions due to systemic biases in the justice system
What is racial profiling?
What percent of Black Male and White Male are expected to go to prison by the age of 20?
Roughly 7.9% of Black males will enter state or federal prisons whereas only 0.7% of White males will
This 1994 federal law, signed by President Bill Clinton, contributed to mass incarceration by expanding mandatory minimum sentences and funding for new prisons
What is the Crime Bill?
This term describes the historical practice of arresting African Americans to supply labor for private industries in the post-Civil War South.
What is "peonage" or "debt peonage"
This term describes a legal process where innocent individuals are pressured into accepting plea deals, often leading to wrongful convictions.
What is Coercive Plea Bargaining
The National registry of Exonerations published an annual report in 2023, recording 153 exonerations the prior year, what percent were people of color?
What is 84%
This provision of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act contributed to the rise in Black incarceration by funding the expansion of this type of law enforcement initiative, which led to increased arrests in Black neighborhoods
What are "three strikes" laws?