The Problem of Mass Incarceration

Trauma

Violence causes trauma.  It undermines trust and growth as well as the ability to progress through normal human development stages.  Not only are our students traumatized, their parents, relatives, and neighbors are too, which leaves them without the many safeguards available to youth who do not live in violent communities.  Students need to understand that trauma has detrimental effects.  Students need to learn what they can do to ameliorate those effects in order to increase their chances of realizing their great potential.  They can also develop the ability to identify the effects of trauma in their neighborhoods and work to increase awareness and understanding.

The word “trauma” comes from 17^th Century Greek and it literally means “wound.” The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following current definition:

“1a. A deeply distressing or disturbing experience; 

1b. Emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may lead to long term neurosis;

2. Physical injury.

When it comes to trauma as it relates to behavior and thinking, two kinds are generally acknowledged.  The first is simple trauma which is usually a singular event or short occurrence that may cause (or threaten to cause) physical or emotional injury.  Simple trauma is often immediately followed by a social response of caring from an individual, family, social group, or civic organization where the victim’s needs for healing and help are recognized and tended. The second is complex trauma which describes physical or emotional injury which has a longer duration or involves multiple events of violence (or threats of violence), ongoing abuse or neglect, and/or repeated harmful acts.  Complex trauma is often not immediately followed by a caring response and, in fact, the victim may be considered somehow complicit in or deserving of the trauma.⁴

Personal Consequences of Trauma

The American Psychological Association advises that experiencing, witnessing, or learning about a traumatic event can lead to debilitating and long lasting conditions such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).  Kids and adolescents with PTSD can have problems: regulating both their emotions and physical responses; and can struggle with maintaining or focusing attention, level of aggression, dissociation, as well as experience physical and motor problems.  A child with PTSD may have an unnecessary and debilitating acute reaction of alarm triggered which activates physical stress responses repeatedly, eventually damaging important psychological and neurological systems.  This damage causes disadvantages for the child in all settings and leads to behavioral issues, developmental and language delays, lower academic achievement, and higher rates of failing and suspension.⁵

Complex Trauma can be thought of as a disorder impeding both current and later development.  Traumatic events trigger the disorder and cause traumatic stress reactions like depression, difficulty attaching in relationships, dissociation, chronic hyperarousal, and inability to regulate emotions.  The younger the person is when complex trauma exposure began, the more severe and chronic the impairment can be.⁶

Complex trauma exposure causes structural changes as well as functional changes in the developing brain.  The hippocampal, prefrontal cortex, and amygdala show decrease in size and result in impairment of the stress response system.  These changes form the base of symptoms like emotional and behavior dysregulation, hyperarousal, reexperiencing or flashback, attention difficulties, dissociation, numbing, and deficits in executive function.  The brain shifts to survival mode instead of focusing on learning.  In addition, depression, anxiety, and aggression alter a person’s ability to cope with emotions and regulate impulses.  Young people who experience complex trauma often have quickly changing moods and unnecessarily extreme responses triggered by what seems to others as minor incidents or even zero antecedent.  On the other end of the spectrum, young people exposed to complex trauma can also experience impaired attention and consciousness and can seem disassociated from emotions, lack sustained curiosity, and have difficulty planning, remembering, and engaging.  These symptoms of trauma can make even simple tasks challenging, producing yet more stress that retriggers additional trauma response.  Young people in the grips of trauma symptoms and reactions make poor and impulsive choices, perform poorly on academic tasks, have problems with semantic, episodic, and procedural memory, and are at a higher risk of substance abuse.⁷

Violence causes substantial consequences in the areas of health and economics.  The physical and mental health of children and adolescents are compromised when they perpetrate, experience, or witness violence.  These consequences can be both serious and longstanding.  Acts of violence cause over half a million physical injuries requiring medical intervention annually and are a leading cause of death for youth.  Beyond the physical consequences, young people who experience, cause, or witness violence often develop behavioral difficulties and struggle with mental health.  Some of these difficulties include: substance use, smoking, high-risk sexual behaviors, academic difficulties, depression, suicide, school dropout, obesity, and future violence perpetration or victimization.

Economic Cost of Trauma

It is estimated that youth violence costs over eighteen billion dollars annually just in medical bills and lost time/productivity.  The cost added by the criminal justice system’s expenses for arrest, incarceration, prosecution, and re-entry services combined with the cost of psychological damage and social consequence for victims and their families proves that we cannot afford our current level of violence to continue.  There is an enormous cost to the communities where the violence occurred when it comes to funding healthcare systems and social services systems, not to mention drastically reduced property values as a result of crime.  All these costs add up to a deficit in the availability of funding for communities to fund other needs.  There is a finite amount of funding, and even less in low socioeconomic areas where property taxes and spending are lower than in wealthy areas.   Massive requirements for money to fund incarceration means that there is less or no money available for other needs that might prevent or inhibit incarceration rates, such as: school funding, improved community design, mental health support, parenting classes, etc.⁸

Inequities by Race, Sex, and Socioeconomic Level

99% of our students are African American.  The 1% are mixed race and Hispanic.  This is relevant because the cost of violence varies greatly by race.  There is a disproportionate risk of violence for African American youth than for white youth.  In fact, the 2011 homicide rate for African American youth (28.8 per 100,000) was more than thirteen times higher than white youth (28.8).  Among white youth, homicide is the fourth leading cause of death, but among African American youth, it is the first leading cause of death.  There is also a large difference in homicide rates between sexes.  Youth homicide rate for males (12.3 per 100,000) was much higher than that of females (2.1).

When looking at physical fighting among high school aged teens in the United States, 35% of African Americans reported being involved in at least one fight in the last year compared to only 21% of white students.  Again, physical fighting among high school students also varies by sex, 30% to 19% by males to females, respectively.

Though males clearly report more instances of violence, data show that females between the ages of ten and twenty-four are also involved with violence.  In fact, among young females, homicide is the fourth leading cause of death in 2012 and that same year 221,900 females were treated for injuries acquired by physical assault.  In 2012, 30,830 young females were charged with violent crimes and represented 19% of all violent crime arrests, including aggravated assault, robbery, and murder. ⁹

Race and sex are not the only factors that show disproportionate exposure to violence.  Another indicator is low socioeconomic level.  Across all personal crimes, rates of victimization are much higher for those living in poverty.  100% of our students meet the guidelines for living in poverty in the United States. This is important because victimization rates for people with family earnings at $15,000 or less are more than three times the victimization rates for people with incomes of at least $75,000.  Violence and attempted violence hurt the poor much more frequently than those who earn more.  Though the rates for drug use between low and high income families is nearly equal, the rate of violence and other crimes are much higher.¹³

Since 99% of our students are African Americans living in poverty, it is imperative that we use every legitimate means in order to both shield and heal them from the violence they frequently experience while offering the tools and justification for using the tools needed to develop their personal power to succeed.