Tribute To

Malcolm X

Tribute To Colin
Kaepernick

Blacks & Whites

Are Worlds Apart

Stephon Clark
Killed By the
Sacramento
Police Dept.
 Nationwide
Police Killed
Nearly 1,000
People in 2017

Homicide in
America

DMV Shootings
Leave Black
Students Asking
Why

Philadelphia
Police are
Investigating
The Arrest of
Two Black Men
At Starbucks
 Poverty in
America

Immigration
May Be On
Hold In
Congress

The U.S.A. is
the World
Leader in
Incarceration

Unjust Magazine is Published By Greg X

and M.O.R.E. (MOVE ON RACISM
EVERYWHERE)
If you were black like me
Would you act like me
If you see the police
Attacking your people in the streets
Leaving only a memory
and a grieving community
that we see repeatedly on TV
Or an obituary that reads
In memory of a person we loved
and the newspaper story reads
another unarmed Black teen
killed by police in 2018
because he was Black like me44
 Unjust Magazine is Recruiting Writers:

Guidelines For Submitting Your Written Work:

All written work submitted must be an original social
awareness written work that’s 500 or more words
and must be submitted as a Word Document or PDF
file, and must be one of the following: An
inspirational story, a feature article, poetry, or an
essay that is written about one of the following;
discrimination, racism, police brutality, poverty,
violence, crime and victims of crime, harassment,
or mass incarceration.
All writers work must contain your full name, age, city
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Please Submit Your Written Work and Any Photos
with Your Written Work to: unjustmagazine@aol.com
 Malcolm X
(May 19, 1925 to February 21, 1965)
My Mentor You Will Always
Be Remembered
8
Malcolm X articulated concepts of race pride and
black nationalism in the 1950s and '60s.
Malcolm X was a minister, human rights activist, and
prominent black nationalist leader who served as a
spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s
and 1960s.
Malcolm X exhorted blacks to cast off the shackles
of racism "by any means necessary," including
violence.

9
Throughout his life, Malcolm was an activist.
As he remarked in 1964, anything I get in,
I'm in it all the way." In his evolution from
hustler to convicted robber to Black Muslim
to revolutionary internationalist, he was
never content to hypothesize or simply talk
about what he wanted; he was concerned
with the concrete strategies for action which
would enable a goal to become a reality.
Constantly evolving, never stagnating.
Malcolm continually revised his outlook to
accommodate existing conditions.

The first of these changes was his

conversion to the Black Muslim faith, while in
Charleston prison serving a ten-year
sentence for armed robbery, Malcolm
became a devoted follower of Elijah
Muhammed, the "messenger" of Allah.

The intense racial pride of the Muslims, their

strict moral code, and their tight discipline
gave Malcolm a positive self-image. For the
first time, he felt pride in himself as a black
man.
10
The Muslim teachings enabled him to see his
apparent failure in life as being a result of his
oppression as a black man in white American
society. After his release from prison in 1952,
Malcolm joined the Muslim movement and
became a top minister by the early sixties.
His weekly lectures as minister of Temple
Number 7 in New York City, which dealt with
black history and the death of white society,
drew ever flowing crowds.
11
Malcolm began to see that it was not the "evil"
of the entire white race, but the oppression
perpetrated by a certain segment of the white
race, which kept the black man in chains. It
became apparent to him that religious
mysticism and supernatural explanations of
oppression, whether they be Black Muslim or
Christian, put forth no program for actually
changing the conditions faced by an
oppressed people. The Muslim faith had
served its purpose for Malcolm it had provided
him with confidence in his own dignity as a
black man.

12
Malcolm X embarked on an extended trip
through North Africa and the Middle East.
The journey proved to be both a political and
spiritual turning point in his life.

He learned to place the American Civil Rights

Movement within the context of a global
anti-colonial struggle, embracing socialism
and Pan-Africanism.

Malcolm X also made the Hajj, the traditional

Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia,
during which he converted to traditional Islam
and again changed his name, this time to
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

After his epiphany at Mecca, Malcolm X

returned to the United States less angry and
more optimistic about the prospects for
peaceful resolution to America's race problems.
"The true brotherhood I had seen had
influenced me to recognize that anger can blind
human vision," he said. "America is the first
country ... that can actually have a bloodless
revolution."

13
By the time of his historic "Message to the
Grass Roots," one of his last speeches as a
Muslim, Malcolm had already developed a
Third World perspective. The content of the
speech, carefully put into terms which he
deemed acceptable to a militant black
audience, was solidly anti-imperialist. He
called for unity among all peoples of color "on
the basis of what we have in common,"
namely, exploitation by the international
capitalist system. By this time, Malcolm had
long since discarded the race analysis of the
Muslims, and realized that the enemy was not
the white race per se, but the whites who
happen to constitute the international ruling
class.

Malcolm was now calling for revolution instead

of condemning it as impossible. He realized
that the domestic black struggle was only one
facet of the world revolution against
imperialism. Through his fledgling
Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU)
Malcolm was hammering home to American
blacks the message that they were part of a
world-wide struggle, a struggle in which they
were in the majority as peoples of color. 14
Tragically, just as Malcolm X appeared to
be embarking on an ideological
transformation with the potential to
dramatically alter the course of the Civil
Rights Movement, he was assassinated.
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X, the
revolutionary black leader, was killed by
assassins' bullets as he began a speech
at the Audubon Ballroom in New York, fifty
weeks after he had broken with the Black
Muslims and had begun to emerge from a
Black Nationalist approach to a Third
World internationalist approach, he was
shot down.
15
04/21/2018 Amnesty International’s Ambassador
of Conscience Award Transcript of speech
From Colin Kaepernick

It is only fitting that I have the honor of Eric Reid

introducing me for this award. In many ways, my
recognition would not be possible without our
brotherhood.

16
I truly consider him to be more than a friend, Eric,
his wife, his children they are all a part of my family.
Not only did he kneel by my side during the national
anthem throughout the entire 2016 NFL season, but
Eric continued to use his platform as a professional
football player to protest systemic oppression,
specifically police brutality against Black and brown
people.

Eric introducing me for this prestigious award brings

me great joy.
But I am also pained by the fact that his taking a
knee, and demonstrating courage to protect the
rights of Black and brown people in America, has
also led to his ostracization from the NFL when he is
widely recognized as one of the best competitors in
the game and in the prime of his career.

People sometimes forget that love is at the root of

our resistance.

My love for Eric has continually grown over the

course of our ongoing journey. His brotherhood,
resilience, and faith have shined brightly in moments
of darkness.
17
My love for my people serves as the fuel that
fortifies my mission, and it is the people’s unbroken
love for themselves that motivates me, even
when faced with the dehumanizing norms of a
system that can lead to the loss of one’s life over
simply being Black.

History has proven that there has never been a

period in the history of America where anti-
Blackness has not been an ever present terror.

18
Racialized oppression and dehumanization is woven
into the very fabric of our nation the effects of which
can be seen in the lawful lynching of Black and brown
people by the police, and the mass incarceration of
Black and brown lives in the prison industrial
complex.

While America bills itself as the land of the free, the

receipts show that the U.S. has incarcerated
approximately 2.2 million people, the largest prison
population in the history of humankind.

As police officers continue to terrorize Black and

brown communities, abusing their power, and then
hiding behind their blue wall of silence, and laws that
allow for them to kill us with virtual impunity, I have
realized that our love, that sometimes manifests as
Black-rage, is a beautiful form of defiance against a
system that seeks to suppress our humanity.

A system that wants us to hate ourselves.

I remind you that love is at the root of our resistance.
It is our love for 12 year old Tamir Rice, who was
gunned down by the police in less than two seconds
that will not allow us to bury our anger.
19
It is our love for Philando Castille, who was
executed in front of his partner and his daughter,
that keeps the people fighting back.

It is our love for Stephon Clark, who was lynched in

his grandma’s backyard that will not allow us to stop
until we achieve liberation for our people.
Our love is not an individualized love
it is a collective love.

20
A collective love that is constantly combating
collective forms of racialized hate. Chattel slavery,
Jim Crow, New Jim Crow, massive
plantations, mass incarcerations, slave patrols, police
patrols, we as a collective, since the colonization of
the Americas have been combating collective forms of
systemic racialized hate and oppression.

But I am hopeful. I am inspired.

This is why we have to protest. This is why we are so
passionate. We protest because we love ourselves,
and our people.

It was James Baldwin who said, to be Black in

America, “and to be relatively conscious is to be in a
rage almost all the time.” My question is, why aren’t
all people?

How can you stand for the national anthem of a nation

that preaches and propagates, “freedom and justice
for all,” that is so unjust to so many of the people
living there? How can you not be in rage when you
know that you are always at risk of death in the
streets or enslavement in the prison system?

21
How can you willingly be blind to the truth of
systemic racialized injustice?
When Malcolm X said, “I'm for truth, no matter who
tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or
against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and
as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits
humanity as a whole.” I took
that to heart.

While taking a knee is a physical display that

challenges the merits of who is excluded from the
notion of freedom, liberty, and justice for all, the
protest is also rooted in a convergence of my
moralistic beliefs, and my love for the people. 22
Seeking the truth, finding the truth, telling the truth
and living the truth has been, and always will be
what guides my actions. For as long as I have a
beating heart, I will continue on this path, working on
behalf of the people.

Again...Love is at the root of our resistance.

Last but certainly not least; I would like to thank
Amnesty International for
The Ambassador of Conscience Award. But in truth,
this is an award that I share with all of the countless
people throughout the world combating the human
rights violations of police officers, and their uses of
oppressive and excessive force. To again quote
Malcolm X, when he said that he, “will join in with
anyone
—
I don’t care what color you are as long as you want
to change this miserable condition that exists on this
earth,” I am here to join with you all in this battle
against police violence.

23
Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played an NFL game this
season, but he’s still been garnering plenty of
accolades. Sports Illustrated on Tuesday night
presented the free agent quarterback with its
Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, which celebrates
“individuals whose dedication to the ideals of
sportsmanship has spanned decades and whose
career in athletics has directly or indirectly
impacted the world.
24
25
After eight years of Barack Obama as the nation’s
first black president –an event that engendered a
sense of optimism among many Americans about
the future of race relations – a series of flashpoints
around the U.S. has exposed deep racial divides
and reignited a national conversation about race.

26
A new Pew Research Center survey finds profound
differences between black and white adults in their
views on racial discrimination, barriers to black
progress and the prospects for change. Blacks, far
more than whites, say black people are treated
unfairly across different realms of life, from dealing
with the police to applying for a loan or mortgage. And,
for many blacks, racial equality remains an elusive
goal.

An overwhelming majority of blacks (88%) say the

country needs to continue making changes for blacks
to have equal rights with whites, but 43% are skeptical
that such changes will ever occur. An additional 42%
of blacks believe that the country will eventually make
the changes needed for blacks to have equal rights
with whites, and just 8% say the country has already
made the necessary changes.

A much lower share of whites (53%) say the country

still has work to do for blacks to achieve equal rights
with whites, and only 11% express doubt that these
changes will come. Four-in-ten whites believe the
country will eventually make the changes needed for
blacks to have equal rights, and about the same share
(38%) say enough changes have already been made.
27
These findings are based on a national survey by
Pew Research Center conducted Feb. 29-May 8,
2016, among 3,769 adults (including 1,799 whites,
1,004 blacks and 654 Hispanics). The survey –
and the analysis of the survey findings – is centered
primarily around the divide between blacks and
whites and on the treatment of black people in the
U.S. today. In recent years, this centuries-old divide
has garnered renewed attention following the
deaths of unarmed black Americans during
encounters with the police, as well as a racially
motivated shooting that killed nine black
parishioners at a church in Charleston, South
Carolina, in 2015.

The survey finds that black and white adults have

widely different perceptions about what life is like
for blacks in the U.S. For example, by large
margins, blacks are more likely than whites to say
black people are treated less fairly in the workplace
(a difference of 42 percentage points), when
applying for a loan or mortgage (41 points), in
dealing with the police (34 points), in the courts (32
points), in stores or restaurants (28 points), and
when voting in elections (23 points).

28
By a margin of at least 20 percentage points, blacks
are also more likely than whites to say racial
discrimination (70% vs. 36%), lower quality schools
(75% vs. 53%) and lack of jobs (66% vs. 45%) are
major reasons that blacks may have a harder time
getting ahead than whites.

More broadly, blacks and whites offer different

perspectives of the current state of race relations in
the U.S. White Americans are evenly divided, with
46% saying race relations are generally good and
45% saying they are generally bad. In contrast, by a
nearly two-to-one margin, blacks are more likely to
say race relations are bad (61%) rather than good
(34%).

Blacks are also about twice as likely as whites to say

too little attention is paid to race and racial issues in
the U.S. these days (58% vs. 27%). About four-in-ten
whites (41%) – compared with 22% of blacks – say
there is too much focus on race and racial issues.

29
Blacks and whites also differ in their opinions about
the best approach for improving race relations:
Among whites, more than twice as many say that in
order to improve race relations, it’s more important to
focus on what different racial and ethnic groups have
in common (57%) as say the focus should be on
what makes each group unique (26%). Among
blacks, similar shares say the focus should be on
commonalities (45%) as say it should be on
differences (44%).

When asked specifically about the impact President

Barack Obama has had on race relations in the U.S.,
a majority of Americans give the president credit for
at least trying to make things better, but a quarter say
he has made race relations worse. Blacks and whites
differ significantly in their assessments.

Some 51% of blacks say Obama has made progress

toward improving race relations, and an additional
34% say he has tried but failed to make progress.
Relatively few blacks (5%) say Obama has made
race relations worse, while 9% say he hasn’t
addressed the issue at all.

30
Among whites, 28% say Obama has made
progress toward improving race relations and 24%
say he has tried but failed to make progress. But a
substantial share of whites (32%) say Obama has
made race relations worse. This is driven largely by
the views of white Republicans, 63% of whom say
Obama has made race relations worse (compared
with just 5% of white Democrats).

When asked about their views of Black Lives

Matter, the activist movement that first came to
national prominence following the 2014 shooting
death of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white
police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, roughly two-
thirds (65%) of blacks express support, including
41% who strongly support it. Among whites, four-in-
ten say they support the Black Lives Movement at
least somewhat, and this is particularly the case
among white Democrats and those younger than
30.

31
Across the survey’s findings, there are significant fault
lines within the white population – perhaps none more
consistent than the partisan divide. For example,
among whites, Democrats and Republicans differ
dramatically on the very salience of race issues in this
country. About six-in-ten (59%) white Republicans say
too much attention is paid to race and racial issues
these days, while only 21% of Democrats agree. For
their part, a 49% plurality of white Democrats say too
little attention is paid to race these days, compared
with only 11% of Republicans.
And while about eight-in-ten (78%) white Democrats
say the country needs to continue making changes to
achieve racial equality between whites and blacks, just
36% of white Republicans agree; 54% of white
Republicans believe the country has already made the
changes necessary for blacks to have equal rights
with whites.
Trends in key economic and demographic indicators
provide some context for the experiences and outlook
of blacks today. While there has been clear progress
in closing the white-black gap in some areas –
particularly when it comes to high school completion
rates – decades-old black-white gaps in economic
well-being persist and have even widened in some
cases.
32
According to a new Pew Research Center analysis of
data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2014 the
median adjusted income for households headed by
blacks was $43,300, and for whites it was $71,300. 3

Blacks also lag behind whites in college completion,

but even among adults with a bachelor’s degree,
blacks earned significantly less in 2014 than whites
($82,300 for households headed by a college-
educated black compared with $106,600 for
comparable white households).

The racial gap extends to household wealth – a

measure where the gap has widened since the Great
Recession. In 2013, the most recent year available,
the median net worth of households headed by
whites was roughly 13 times that of black households
($144,200 for whites compared with $11,200 for
blacks).

33
Blacks and whites are divided on reasons that
blacks may be struggling to get ahead

Despite these economic realities, when asked about

the financial situation of blacks compared with whites
today, about four-in-ten blacks either say that both
groups are about equally well off (30%) or that blacks
are better off than whites financially (8%). Still, about
six-in-ten (58%) blacks say that, as a group, they are
worse off than whites.

Among whites, a plurality (47%) say blacks are worse

off financially, while 37% say blacks are about as well
off as whites and 5% say blacks are doing better than
whites.

Blacks and whites with a bachelor’s degree are more

likely than those with less education to say blacks are
worse off financially than whites these days. Roughly
eight-in-ten (81%) blacks with a four-year college
degree say this, compared with 61% of blacks with only
some college education and 46% of blacks with a high
school diploma or less.

34
Personal experiences with discrimination

A majority of blacks (71%) say that they have

experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly
because of their race or ethnicity. Roughly one-in-ten
(11%) say this happens to them on a regular basis,
while 60% say they have experienced this rarely or
from time to time.
Among blacks, men and women are equally likely to
report having personally experienced racial
discrimination, and there are no large gaps by age.
There is an educational divide, however: Blacks with at
least some college experience (81%) are much more
likely than blacks who never attended college (59%) to
say they have been discriminated against because of
their race.
Experiences with racial discrimination are far less
common among whites, but a sizable minority (30%) of
white adults report that they have been discriminated
against or treated unfairly because of their race or
ethnicity. Only 2% say this happens to them regularly
and 28% say it occurs less frequently. Whites who say
they have a lot of contact with blacks are more likely to
say they’ve been discriminated against because of
their race than are whites who have less contact with
blacks.
35
College-educated whites are especially likely to
see their race as an advantage: 47% say being
white has made it easier for them to succeed. By
comparison, 31% of whites with some college
education and 17% of those with a high school
diploma or less say their race has made things
easier for them. White Democrats (49%) are also
among the most likely to say that their race or
ethnicity has made it easier for them to get ahead
in life.

For many blacks, the cumulative impact of

discrimination has had a markedly negative
impact on their lives. Four-in-ten blacks say their
race has made it harder for them to succeed in
life. Roughly half (51%) say their race hasn’t made
a difference in their overall success, and just 8%
say being black has made things easier.

There is a sharp educational divide among blacks

on the overall impact their race has had on their
ability to succeed. Fully 55% of blacks with a four-
year college degree say their race has made it
harder for them to succeed in life.

36
More than four-in-ten blacks (48%) and whites
(46%) say that working with community members to
solve problems in their community would be a very
effective tactic for groups striving to help blacks
achieve equality. But the two groups disagree about
the effectiveness of some other tactics.

In particular, while nearly four-in-ten (38%) black

adults say working to get more black people elected
to office would be very effective, just 24% of whites
say the same. Blacks are also more likely than
whites to say it would be very effective for groups
working to help blacks achieve equality to bring
people of different racial backgrounds together to
talk about race (41% vs. 34%). Similarly, blacks see
more value than whites in organizing protests and
rallies, although relatively few blacks view this as a
very effective way to bring about change (19% vs.
7% of whites).

37
 Stephon Clark

The unarmed black man who was fatally

shot by Sacramento Police
On March 22, 2018

38
SACRAMENTO — Two police officers, 10 minutes, 20
bullets. Another young black man dead, this time in his
grandmother’s backyard in California’s capital.
In the 10 days since Stephon Clark, 22, was fatally
shot by officers investigating a vandalism complaint in
his south Sacramento neighborhood, protesters have
stormed City Hall and taken to the streets in anger. In
a city that is mostly white and Latino, the killing, they
say, is a sign of a police force that treats black
residents with disdain and unfairly targets their
neighborhoods.
39
Questions about excessive force hover over the case.
A police helicopter was sent to a routine call. Officers
fired 20 times at Mr. Clark. The police have also been
accused of not giving Mr. Clark, who was unarmed,
enough time to put his hands up and of waiting too
long to call for medical help.
Adding to the scrutiny is the fact that the police muted
their body cameras in the minutes after the shooting
and can be seen on camera talking animatedly while
Mr. Clark lay dead on the ground.
40
The shooting has reignited the kind of protests
against police killings that spread over the past
several years in cities like Ferguson, Mo.; Baton
Rouge, La.; and Milwaukee. Last week, protesters
here shut down traffic on Interstate 5 and blocked the
doors to a Sacramento Kings basketball game.
“Everybody knows that we’re getting killed regularly
out here; that’s the buildup to this,” said Tanya
Faison, who founded the local chapter of Black Lives
Matter.

One thing that police shootings prove is that we know

that guns are ubiquitous. There is an assumption that
all suspects are armed.

The mood was decidedly hopeful in August, when

Daniel Hahn took over the Police Department as the
first black police chief. Mr. Hahn defended his
department in an interview on Wednesday and said
that every officer had undergone training to
discourage race-based discrimination, as well as de-
escalation training. Though he said he could not
discuss the case, he acknowledged: “Race
permeates everything we do in our country. To think
anything else would be naïve.”

41
42
43
In Sacramento and elsewhere, unarmed black men
continue to die at the hands of law enforcement
officers:

In the space of 10 days, two more unarmed black men

died at the hands of police — one in Sacramento,
another in Houston — and two Baton Rouge police
officers escaped being charged in the 2016 shooting
death of another black man.

The incidents have revived outrage over an issue that

nationwide protests shined a spotlight on in 2014:
the disproportionate number of unarmed black men
killed by police.

The earlier shootings energized the Black Lives Matter

movement. President Obama and his Justice
Department helped defuse tensions by investigating
some of the shootings and finding systemic racial bias
in police departments in cities from Ferguson, Mo., to
Baltimore to Chicago. And for a time, Americans sat
up and paid attention.

But promises made back then have mostly fallen by

the wayside. And it is as tragic as it is inexcusable that
so little has changed.
44
Only there was no gun — just a cellphone found by
the body of the father of two, who was killed in his
grandmother’s backyard. Timothy Davis, president of
the Sacramento Police Officers Association, asserted
that “the shooting was legally justified” and that Clark
“took a shooting stance and pointed an object at the
police officers.”
Actually, the shooting is still under investigation, and
no conclusions have been reached. One of the
officers commented minutes after the shooting
that Clark “kind of approached us hands out and then
fell down.” Nothing about a “shooting stance.”
45
Another question: Why did body cam audio
go mute minutes after the shooting?

Clark’s death is no singular event. Days later in

Houston, another unarmed black man, who’d been
standing in a busy intersection with his pants down,
was shot by an officer seconds later. No body cam
this time. But the man's family reported that he’d
been depressed since his two children drowned.
46
Police Shot & Killed Nearly 1,000 People in 2017

For the third year in a row, police nationwide shot

and killed nearly 1,000 people, a grim annual tally
that has persisted despite widespread public
scrutiny of officers’ use of fatal force.
Police fatally shot 987 people last year, or two
dozen more than they killed in 2016, according to an
ongoing Washington Post database project that
tracks the fatal shootings. Since 2015, The Post has
logged the details of 2,945 shooting deaths, culled
from local news coverage, public records and
social-media reports. 47
While many of the year-to-year patterns remain
consistent, the number of unarmed black males killed
in 2017 declined from two years ago. Last year, police
killed 19, a figure tracking closely with the 17 killed in
2016. In 2015, police shot and killed 36 unarmed black
males.

Experts said they are uncertain why the annual total

shows little fluctuation — the number for 2017 is
almost identical to the 995 killed by police in 2015.

48
Some believe the tally may correspond to the number
of times police encounter people, an outcome of
statistical probability. Other experts are exploring
whether the number tracks with overall violence in
American society.
“The numbers indicate that this is not a trend, but a
robust measure of these shootings,” said Geoff
Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South
Carolina who studies police use of force. “We now
have information on almost 3,000 shootings, and we
can start looking to provide the public with a better
understanding of fatal officer-involved shootings.” 49
National scrutiny of shootings by police began after
an unarmed black teenager from a suburb of St.
Louis was fatally shot by a white police officer in
August 2014. The death of 18-year-old Michael
Brown sparked widespread protests, prompted a
White House commission to call for reforms,
galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and
led many police agencies across the nation to
examine their use of deadly force.

The attention may have helped police reduce the

number of unarmed people shot and killed each
year, according to interviews with experts and
police departments. Officers fatally shot 94
unarmed people in 2015, but that number has been
lower in the past two years, with 51 killed in 2016
and 68 in 2017.

“The national spotlight on this issue has made

officers more cautious in unarmed situations,” said
Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police
Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based
think tank. Wexler also said the training that his
group developed for dozens of departments to de-
escalate police encounters with civilians may be
having an impact.
50
“We are giving officers more options like slowing the
situation down and using time and distance to gain a
tactical advantage,” he said.

While the number of black males — armed and

unarmed — who have been killed has fallen, black
males continue to be shot at disproportionately high
rates, the data shows.

51
Black males accounted for 22 percent of all people
shot and killed in 2017, yet they are 6 percent of the
total population. White males accounted for
44 percent of all fatal police shootings, and Hispanic
males accounted for 18 percent.
Other patterns also held steady in 2017, according
to The Post database.
Police again most frequently used fatal force after
encountering people armed with knives or guns,
killing 735, a number nearly identical to the 734
armed people killed in 2015. The number was
slightly lower in 2016, with 693 killed while armed
with either type of weapon.
White males continued to account for the largest
group of people killed while armed with guns or
knives, at 330 of those killed. Black males armed
with guns or knives were fatally shot in 160 cases
last year.
Mental health again played an outsize role in the
shootings: 236 people, or nearly 1 in 4 of those shot,
were described as experiencing some form of
mental distress at the time of the encounter with
police.
In the vast majority of those cases, 88 percent, the
deceased people had wielded firearms or other
weapons, including a machete, a sledge ax and a
pitchfork. 52
In November, Oklahoma City resident Dustin
Pigeon, 29, threatened to set himself ablaze. A
police officer shot Pigeon five times after he refused
to drop a lighter and lighter fluid, according to
prosecutors.

In an unusual outcome, prosecutors charged the

officer with second-degree murder in the death of
Pigeon, saying that Pigeon was unarmed and had
posed no threat to the officer.

53
Of all the people shot and killed by police in 2017,
one of the youngest was 14-year-old Jason Pero
from the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior
Chippewa Tribe. In November, Jason called 911
to report a man with a knife and then gave a
description of himself. Holding a knife, Jason
lunged at a sheriff’s deputy, who shot and killed
him, according to news reports.

The oldest person killed by police was 91-year-

old Frank Wratny of Union Township, Pa., who
was shot in March after he confronted police with
a gun at his home. Police were responding to a
911 call from a woman who said Wratny had fired
at her, according to news reports.

Meanwhile, the number of police officers

feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2017 stood
at 46, a decline from the 66 recorded in 2016,
according to the FBI.

Since the shooting of Brown, some police

departments said they have made headway in
efforts to reduce the number of people they fatally
shoot.

54
For a third consecutive year, The Post
documented more than twice the number of
deadly shootings by police that were recorded on
average annually by the FBI.

In response to the shooting data compiled by The

Post and others, the FBI in 2015 promised to start
better information gathering about all police
encounters that lead to deaths. This month, the
agency said it will launch the new nationwide data
collection system.

But the new system will have some of the same

limitations that has led the government to annually
undercount by half the number of fatal shootings
by police. As before, data submissions under the
new program will be voluntary.

55
Key Findings:
27% of U.S. police killings between January 2013 -
December 2017 were committed by police
departments of the 100 largest U.S. cities.

Black people were 39% of people killed by these

100 police departments despite being only 21% of
the population in their jurisdictions.

Only 1 of the 100 largest city police departments

did not kill anyone from Jan 2013 - Dec 2017
(Irvine, CA).

48% of unarmed people killed by the 100 largest

city police departments were black. These police
departments killed unarmed black people at a rate
4 times higher than unarmed white people.

Rates of violent crime in cities did not make it any

more or less likely for police departments to kill
people. For example, Buffalo and Newark police
departments had low rates of police violence
despite high crime rates while Spokane and
Bakersfield had relatively low crime rates and high
rates of police violence.
56
 Homicide in America

The collective homicide toll for America’s 50 biggest

cities dipped slightly in 2017, a USA TODAY analysis
of crime data found.

The FBI won’t publish its annual comprehensive

crime report until later this year, but an early review of
police department crime data shows that killings
decreased by at least 1% in large
jurisdictions compared with 2016.

57
The modest decrease in killings comes after FBI data
showed back-to-back years in which homicides rose
sharply in large cities. (Homicides in cities with
250,000 or more residents rose by about 15.2%
from 2014 to 2015, and 8.2% from 2015 to 2016.)
There were 5,738 homicides in the nation’s 50 biggest
cities in 2017 compared with 5,863 homicides in 2016,
a roughly 2.3% reduction.

Las Vegas Police reported 141 homicides for 2017 in

its official tally but did not include the Oct. 1 mass
shooting at an outdoor country music concert that left
58 dead. If those deaths were included in the
department's tally, the national big city homicide toll
fell by 1.1%, the USA TODAY review found.
Even with the sharp rise in homicides in the two years
prior to 2017, the national murder toll continued to
hover near historic lows.
The national decrease in killings in 2017 was largely
driven by double-digit percentage dips in some of the
nation’s biggest cities, including Chicago (14.7%),
New York City (13.4%) and Houston (11%). In fact,
the New York Police Department reported that its
annual murder tally fell below 300 for the first time and
the city notched its lowest per capita murder rate in
nearly 70 years.
58
59
New York, which hit its nadir in the midst of the
crack-cocaine epidemic when it tallied more than
2,200 murders in 1990, boasts that the nation’s
largest city is now the safest it’s been since the
Dodgers played in Brooklyn and a pizza slice set
you back 15 cents.

While New York and others boasted of significant

progress, other large cities saw a big surge in
killings in 2017.

Baltimore is the big city with the highest per capita

murder rate in the nation, with nearly 56 murders per
100,000 people. At 343 murders in 2017, the city
tallied the highest per capita rate in its history.

Columbus tallied 143 murders — 37 more than 2016

and the most the city has seen in a single year.
In both cities, officials blamed the rise in homicides
on gangs and drug activity.

60
“In New York, they concentrated on the right
neighborhoods, they’ve invested well in predictive
analytics and technology,” said Peter Scharf, a
criminologist at the LSU School of Public Health and
Justice.

“The other part of what we’re seeing nationally might

be a story of haves and have-nots. While some
departments have made the investments, other police
departments are still in the backwater of policing.”

61
Chicago saw its murder tally dip to 650 in 2017 from
762 in the prior year. The murder toll remains high in
the Windy City — near levels of violence the city
endured in the late 1990s — but police officials there
say they believe investments in technology are
beginning to help officers stem the violence.

Dozens of chiefs and senior police officials from

departments across the country gathered in Chicago
late last month to trade notes on how to best use
technology in the crime fight.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said

investments in technology are undoubtedly paying
off. But his city’s department, like many others, will
also have to continue to focus on improving relations
with residents to further reduce the homicide toll, he
said.

Chicago is one of many big departments that

has seen its relationship strained in poor and
minority communities in the aftermath of a series of
controversial police-involved shootings across the
country in recent years.

62
Some crime experts and law enforcement
officials believe the fractured relationships could have
had some impact on driving homicide rates in
jurisdictions, such as Chicago and Baltimore, in
recent years.

63
Baltimore Shootings Leave Black Students
Asking Why Their School Shooting Didn’t
Receive the Same Awareness as White
School Shootings.

64
Imani Holt was just 10 when she saw a neighbor get
fatally shot by a triggerman riding a bicycle. The
African-American girl from a gritty section of
Baltimore was so traumatized by the drug-fueled
bloodshed she refused to leave her family’s
apartment for weeks.
In the eight years since, Holt has seen the chaotic
aftermath of two more deadly shootings and has lost
seven high school classmates to the daily drip of gun
violence.

Like many black teenagers in neighborhoods

hobbled by generational poverty, she is scrutinizing
the national gun control debate intensely, frustrated
because her community feels ignored but also
cautiously hopeful that the massacre in Florida may
bring about change closer to home.

“I feel really bad that they lost those kids in Florida.

But, like, we go through shootings all the time. It’s
just that our shootings happen day by day. Because
it happens on the regular up here, the world says it’s
really not that important,” said the 18-year-old Holt, a
junior at Excel Academy, an alternative high school
across the street from a cluster of West Baltimore’s
boarded-up row houses.
65
Christina Martin, a 17-year-old who lost two
schoolmates to gun violence this year at Thurgood
Marshall Academy in Washington, noted that the
victims in the affluent Parkland community were
mostly white and Latino. None were African-
American.
“We should have got the same attention in return,”
said Martin, who is black.
The gun violence toll is unrelenting in parts of
Baltimore — a city that reached a grim milestone last
year when the per-capita homicide rate rose to 56
killings per 100,000 people. That’s the highest rate
among the country’s 30 biggest cities.
66
Philadelphia Police Investigates Arrest
of Two Black Men in Starbucks

The Philadelphia Police Department is

investigating an incident captured on widely
circulated videos this week in which officers
arrested two black men as they sat in a Starbucks
coffee shop and other patrons objected that the
men were doing nothing wrong and appeared to be
targeted merely for their race.

67
Cell phone footage that onlookers filmed of
Thursday’s incident shows the two men sitting quietly
at a table and talking for several minutes to police
officers who have apparently been called to the
store. They are then put in handcuffs and marched
out.

Other customers, including a middle-aged white

man, try to intervene. The white man tells police the
pair have done nothing wrong, that they are allowed
to be there, and that the officers are only trying to
remove them because they are black, which an
officer denies.
68
“Does anyone else in this place think this is
ridiculous?” the white man asks. Other customers can
be heard agreeing with him.

The Philadelphia Police Department said on Friday

evening that an internal investigation was underway
and it would not comment until that was complete.

Starbucks Corp said in a post on Twitter that it was

aware police removed two “guests” from one of its
Philadelphia stores and that it was also investigating,
with the help of police and customers, what led to this
“unfortunate result.”

69
Melissa DePino, an author who posted video of the
arrest, said she was told later on Thursday that the
two men, both real estate brokers, were released
without charge.

She said staff at the Starbucks called police

because the two men had not ordered anything
while waiting for a friend to arrive. She said white
customers were “wondering why it’s never
happened to us when we do the same thing.”

70
The identity of the two arrested men was not
immediately clear and they could not be reached for
comment.

Police departments across the United States have

come under criticism for repeated instances of killing
unarmed black men in recent years, which activists
blame on racial biases in the criminal justice system.

71
On January 24, the New York Times published an
opinion piece by Angus Deaton, a Nobel Memorial
Prize-winning economist, in which he claimed that
millions of Americans — specifically, 3.2 million to
5.4 million, depending on the poverty line used —
“are as destitute as the world’s poorest people.” This
is simply wrong.

72
To the extent that this empirical claim, by an
esteemed Princeton scholar, leads policymakers to
reduce international aid, or causes charitable donors
to redirect their money away from the world’s most
impoverished people, it is also dangerous.

Deaton flirts with the idea of redirecting money in his

piece. “In my own giving, I have prioritized the
faraway poor over the poor at home,” he writes. But
recently, as the result of “insightful new data,” he has
“come to doubt both the reasoning and the empirical
support” for that view. He similarly questions why the
World Bank, USAID, and Oxfam prioritize
non-Americans (even as he also notes, “None of this
means that we should close out ‘others’ and look
after only our own”).
73
Shameful levels of poverty do exist in the United
States
It is true that America has serious problems of poverty
and inequality. These inequities have resulted in quite
shocking outcomes for America’s poorest. For
example, 34 percent of households surveyed in
Lowndes County, Alabama, recently tested positive for
hookworm. Hookworm transmission occurs by way of
feces and is easy to avoid if one has modern sanitation,
but in the same county, 42 percent of the sampled
households were exposed to raw sewage within their
home. This is a national disgrace, and it highlights the
dire plight of America’s poor. 74
Nevertheless, it is incorrect and misleading to draw
an equivalence between poverty in America and
poverty in low-income countries. It is only through the
misinterpretation of poverty statistics that one can
equate the two. Let me explain how Deaton is
misusing data here (and he is not the only one to
make this error).

Let’s start with the purely economic side of poverty.

In order to measure poverty, we need to survey
people and record how much they “earn.” There are
two main ways of doing this. The first, common in
low-income countries, is to ask people about their
consumption and then derive a dollar figure from
their answers. The second approach, more common
in high-income countries, is to simply ask people
about their income.

There are many problems in comparing data across

these different types of surveys. The largest is that
poor people in rich countries often receive many non-
cash benefits that boost consumption without
boosting income — for instance, in the US, the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

75
In one analysis, the non-cash benefits provided to
American households with near-zero income
increase their household consumption by an
average of about $20 a day.

A very well-regarded book on the analysis of

household surveys notes that “survey-based
measures of income are often substantially less
than survey-based measures of consumption [4]
even in industrialized countries.”

76
The World Bank, which runs many of these surveys,
has noted the dangers in comparing income and
consumption-based poverty figures. In one report, its
experts observe that many of the people who
“declare zero income on a survey” have “a
consumption level that is not zero.”

Nevertheless, people keep making this mistake. For

example, Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, of Johns
Hopkins and the University of Michigan, have
claimed that millions of Americans live on less than
$2 a day, the threshold used by many international
agencies for determining extreme poverty.

They use income-based surveys to measure poverty

and ignore programs like SNAP. (When Laurence
Chandy, now of UNICEF, and Cory Smith, now an
MIT PhD student, redid Edin and Shaefer’s
calculations using a more comparable consumption
survey, they found that almost nobody in the United
States lives on $2 a day.)

77
Even if the extreme poverty level in America is set
at $4 a day, Deaton’s claim doesn’t hold up
Deaton makes the same fundamental error: His
American poverty figures measure income, but the
poverty figures for poor countries measure
consumption. Citing the Oxford economist Robert Allen,
Deaton also argues that the extreme poverty line for
Americans should be higher than $2 a day, perhaps
even as high as $4 a day, because “[t]here are
necessities of life in rich, cold, urban and individualistic
countries that are less needed in poor countries.” For
instance, people in warm countries may not need
housing, he says, and “a poor agricultural laborer in the
tropics can get by with little clothing and transportation.”
78
These are debatable claims (and Allen’s work on the
subject has come under a lot of scrutiny), but even if
we grant a higher $4 a day poverty line for Americans
but use apples-to-apples consumption-based poverty
measures, then it turns out that America still has only
a tiny fraction of its population in extreme poverty.

The fact that anyone in the US lives on less than $4

day is a genuine tragedy, but Deaton’s count of 3
million to 5 million Americans in extreme poverty is off
by an order of magnitude.

There are also problems with Deaton’s claims

regarding the health of Americans. Anne Case (also
of Princeton) and Deaton have claimed to find “a
marked increase in the all-cause mortality of
middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in
the United States between 1999 and 2013.” Deaton
repeats this claim in the new op-ed. But a closer look
at the data reveals that rising mortality rates appear to
be confined to middle-aged, white, non-Hispanic
women, especially those in the American South.

79
It’s a bit curious why we talk so much about the
health problems of non-Hispanic white people,
and so little about the fact that African
Americans still have lower life expectancy than
whites, despite making major health gains.
Regardless, America could do much better on
health, and Case and Deaton’s results are
worthy of serious attention. Still, Deaton
generalizes these issues in misleading ways.

80
Economic measures — even the accurate ones
don’t capture every aspect of poverty

Finally, the very act of living in America provides

many benefits that are not generally captured in
poverty measures but that enable one to live a better
life. America is not experiencing civil war.

The American political system is highly imperfect and

under stress, but it is considerably better at protecting
liberties, providing services, and enabling
representation than the political systems in many
low-income countries. These often intangible benefits
help people lead fuller lives, even if they are often not
considered when discussing poverty, and they
overwhelmingly lean in America’s favor.

America’s wealth also means that it can help the poor

within its own borders without cutting foreign
development aid — an idea Deaton seems to put on
the table — which only amounts to about 1 percent of
the federal budget in any case. It can do so by
reorienting some of the remaining 99 percent of the
federal budget to better help the poor, by reorienting
portions of state and local resources, and by raising
revenue in ways that lean relatively more on the rich.
81
Immigration May Be on Hold in Congress,
but the Trump Administration Continues to
Restrict Legal Immigration

Over a year ago, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated and

set out to make good on campaign promises that would
deport illegal immigrants and seek funds4

By Charles C. Foster

82
Over a year ago, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated
and set out to make good on campaign promises
that would deport illegal immigrants and seek funds
to construct a wall on the southern border. Now,
after a year of presidential action on immigration,
details of the president’s restrictive agenda have
emerged.

Even as both sides of the aisle, and indeed

President Trump himself, have expressed broad-
based support for legal immigration and Dreamers,
and a majority of the country seems to support more
ameliorative immigration policies, the Trump
Administration continues its heavy-handed approach
to legal immigration, treating immigration as a
zero-sum game.

Over the past year, the immigration bar has

experienced a number of unexpected onslaughts on
legal immigration, each of which might and should
be reversed by thoughtful, bi-partisan Congressional
action.

83
Travel Ban:

The Trump Administration’s initial travel ban,

banning the entry of all citizens from six
predominantly Islamic countries, was enjoined in
several U.S. District Court proceedings, including
President Trump’s new proclamation of Sept. 24,
2017. On Nov. 13, the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals allowed the travel ban to be enforced
except with respect to aliens with a “bona fide
relationship with a person or entity in the United
States.”

84
Dec. 4, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the
injunction completely, upholding the ban on
nationals from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea,
Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and Somalia from being
issued immigrant or non-immigrant visas. Exempt
are existing Permanent Residents or anyone
already admitted into the United States, dual
nationals and those already granted asylum or
admitted as refugees, Iranians coming to the U.S.
to study or for training on F, M and J non-
immigrant visas and certain Venezuelan
government officials and their families.

“Extreme Vetting.” As promised, the Trump

Administration has taken significant steps to
implement so-called “extreme vetting,” implying
that existing vetting was not already extreme. In
reality, all visa applicants are already subject to
multiple vetting procedures through every state,
local, national and foreign database.

85
Another Trump Administration Memorandum, which
eventually led to a new regulation, required that visa
applicants provide far more information, including
travel, employment and address history for the last 15
years, sources of funding for the travel, and social
media platforms and handles for the last five years.
Such “extreme vetting” will undoubtedly create longer
delays for applicants.

“Buy American, Hire American.” President Trump

issued Executive Order “Buy American, Hire
American” dated April 18, 2017, stating his intention
to reform the H-1B visa program. While legislative
action is required to substantively change the H-1B
law, the Department of Labor (DOL), in response to
the directive, announced that it would strenuously
increase H-1B audits and investigations for violations
of the H-1B visa program. It is also likely that prior to
the next so-called “H-1B visa lottery” starting on April
1, 2018, the Trump Administration will prioritize which
H-1Bs are given the opportunity to be adjudicated for
one of the limited 65,000 H-1B visa numbers plus an
additional 20,000 for advance degree graduates of
U.S. universities.

86
On Dec. 14, 2017, DHS announced that it intends
to abolish the 2015 provision that allows spouses of
H-1B high-skilled visa holders waiting for green
cards to obtain an Employment Authorization
Document (EAD) as H-4 dependents. Worse, this
executive order has made the Citizenship and
Immigration Service (CIS) far more prone to
challenge visa petitions in general on highly
technical grounds and to issue unnecessary
Requests for Evidence (RFE).

No Deference to Prior Decisions. The CIS also

announced that it was rescinding its long-standing
deference policy whereby CIS adjudicators give
deference in deciding petitions extending temporary
work visa status to the prior approval of the original
petition in cases covering the same position and
employer. As a result, H-1B and L-1 extension
petitions will be treated like de novo petitions, thus
requiring extensive documentation, again often
resulting in repeated RFEs.

87
International Entrepreneur Rule. On Dec. 1, 2017,
the U.S. District Court ordered DHS to implement the
Obama administration’s International Entrepreneur
Rule, which gives the DHS discretion to grant an
initial stay up to 30 months to facilitate a qualified
entrepreneur’s ability to enter the U.S. to oversee
start-up entities.

88
Potential Discrimination and Fraud Action. The
DOJ announced on Oct. 10, 2017, that pursuant to a
Memorandum of Understanding between the DOJ
Civil Rights Division and the Bureau of Consular
Affairs of the U.S. Department of State (DOS) to
protect U.S. workers from discrimination, information
on employers that may engage in unlawful
discrimination through employment-based visas such
H-1B, H-2A and H-2B visas may be shared.
Enforcement would be through the
anti-discrimination provisions of the Immigration and
Nationality Act, which prohibits citizenship and
national origin discrimination. Furthermore, in
February 2017, the DHS Employees’ Rights Section
(IER) launched its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative
aimed at bringing enforcement action against
companies that discriminate against U.S. workers in
favor of foreign visa workers.

89
The 90 Day Rule regarding misrepresentations
based on conduct in the U.S.
On Sept. 1, 2017, the DOS provided new guidance
to U.S. Consular officers providing that if an alien
engaged in conduct inconsistent with his or her non-
immigrant status within 90 days of entry, the
Consular Officer or CIS may presume that the
applicant’s representations were willful
misrepresentations. Such conduct includes engaging
in unauthorized employment, enrolling in a course of
academic study and marrying a U.S. citizen or Lawful
Permanent Resident. The presumption applies even
though a nonimmigrant’s plans may have changed or
evolved after original admission.
90
Unfortunately, these highly restrictive developments
are just a preview of coming attractions, which will
bring less certainty and more instability to businesses
and foreign national employeesand their families. At
every juncture the Trump administration is taking
action to further restrict legal immigration under the
premise of the Buy American/Hire American
executive order that presumes legal immigration, is a
zero-sum game.

Given the high-level influence of well-known

immigration restrictionists that have been appointed
to key policy positions within the White House and the
three immigration agencies, these broad-based
attacks through regulatory changes and informal
policy changes are accelerating.

Congress will need to take up the immigration debate

again and see it through to its proper conclusion to
achieve sensible, fair-minded immigration reform that
considers the economic needs of our growing
economy.

91
The US is the world leader in incarceration, but
not all Americans are incarcerated equally. Here
are some staggering statistics about just who’s
in prison in America.

92
A staggering 2.3 million people are incarcerated in
the US – a 500% increase over the last 40 years.
The boom doesn’t come from rising crime but rather
changes in law and policy, initiated by President
Nixon, which led to a dramatic increase in the number
of people punished with prison time.

As the number of incarcerations soared, prison

industrialists saw an opportunity to capitalize and
started bidding for the right to incarcerate Americans,
leading to a ‘profit before welfare’ attitude to inmate
populations that often include the mentally ill and
vulnerable.

The prison industrial complex, which is in part

operated and funded by public companies (and the
public), could very well keep growing under the
auspices of a pro-incarceration and pro-private
prisons administration.

93
Here are some fast facts about incarcerated
AmericansJ
1) Many people shouldn’t be in prisons
A rapid increase in inmates has resulted in
overcrowding in prisons, fiscal burdens on states, and
the rise of private prisons where abuse and neglect
are shockingly prevalent. Yet growing evidence
suggests mass incarceration does not prevent crime.
Indeed, a 2016 report by the Brennan Center for
Justice at NYU School of Law, concluded that 40% of
the US prison population – 576,000 people – are
behind bars with no compelling public safety reason.

94
2) Race plays a huge part
People of color account for 37% of the US
population, yet they represent 67% of the prison
population. Black men are nearly six times as likely
to be incarcerated as white men, and federal courts
imposed prison sentences on black men that were
19% longer than those imposed on similarly situated
white men between 2011 and 2016.2 Meanwhile
Hispanic men are more than twice as likely to be
incarcerated as non-Hispanic white men and face
sentences 5% longer than white counterparts
according to the same report.
These racial disparities are also prevalent in youth
facilities. As of October 2015, there were 48,043
youth being held in juvenile facilities and 44% of
these were African American. Work to cut the
number of teenagers sent to juvenile facilities in favor
of intervention and rehabilitation has resulted in a
successful 50% drop in the last decade, with no
negative impact on public safety.
3) Most felony convictions happen without a trial
Many serious convictions don’t get heard in court
because proceedings stop when the accused agrees
to make a guilty plea, usually in return for a reduced
sentence.
95
Plea bargains make up 94% of state felony
convictions, and some 97% of federal ones,
according to a report by The Atlantic. Estimates for
misdemeanor convictions are even higher, prompting
widespread concerns that too often the accused are
coerced into pleading guilty or not told their full
options.

96
4) Almost half a million people are locked up for
drug offenses
Almost 1 in 5 incarcerated people were locked up for
drug offenses according to a 2017 report. Yet
research shows sending drug offenders to prison
doesn’t affect use. With marijuana now legalized in
California, the city of San Francisco plans to impart
change by wiping out cannabis convictions dating
back decades, enabling formerly convicted felons to
vote, apply for some jobs, and regain a variety of
other rights.
5) Immigrants in federal prison make up 22% of
inmates
The population of foreign-born people in the US is
around 13.5%, yet, as of June last year, 22% of
inmates in federal prison were non US citizens. Such
inmates were either deemed to be in the country
illegally or facing upcoming deportation proceedings.
6) Many women in prison are mothers or domestic
abuse victims
There are 219,000 women behind bars in America –
many of whom are mothers and victims of domestic
abuse.

97
As many as 90% of women in jail for killing men had
been battered by those men, yet women who have
committed such crimes typically average 15 year
sentences. In contrast, their male counterparts (who
are less likely to use a weapon) are given more
lenient sentences of between two and six years.
80% of women in jails are mothers, and
incarceration can lead to isolation and trauma for
children left behind. Even worse, many states still
shackle women during labor and even while giving
birth.

98
In 2016 the Obama administration vowed to phase
out the use of private contractors to run federal
prisons, but in February of last year the US Justice
Department reversed this order, prompting renewed
concerns about the human rights of inmates when
the driving factor is profit.

99
100