Criminalization of Young Black Males

ABSTRACT This paper examines the historical, social, cultural and political factors that contribute to the criminalization of a disproportionate number of young Black males. In doing so, it provides greater clarity for the reasons we are “walking in circles” to find a solution to why these youth are facing a future that is indisputably bleak. In framing this pronouncement, it will show how these factors have been institutionalized to create a system of racial oppression that targets young Black males to be both its victims and victimizers. As the result of this system, many young Black males are portrayed in the media, visual and print, as predators and social outcasts who are products of a subculture that is wreaked in violence and antisocial behavior. To address these factors, the paper provides a number of preventative strategies and processes that can help ameliorate those factors which unobtrusively program young Black males to become the fodder for America’s expanding Criminal Justice Industrial Complex. Included in these strategies will be specific guidelines to divert young Black males from being the victims of the “school to prison pipeline” which serves as the incubator for the Criminal Justice System. Additionally, it will provide a rites of passage paradigm to enhance the social development of young Black males