Black men survive longer in prison than out: study

(Reuters Health) - Black men are half as likely to die at any given time if they're in prison than if they aren't, suggests a new study of North Carolina inmates.

The black prisoners seemed to be especially protected against alcohol- and drug-related deaths, as well as lethal accidents and certain chronic diseases.

Black inmates, by contrast, were between 30 and 40 percent less likely to die of those causes than those who weren't incarcerated. They were also less likely to die of diabetes, alcohol- and drug-related causes, airway diseases, accidents, suicide and murder than black men not in prison.

www.reuters.com...

This story is disturbing on many levels. Certainly high death rates of any population within the society is a problem and needs to be understood, however when you read the article fully, you see that the authors suggest that it is the institutionalization that makes it healthier for Black men. In other words, it exempts choice and personal responsibility from the outcomes. It does also not even attempt to correlate location to the outcomes.

The article further does not expand into diffences between urban and rural populations. I would like to see the differences between inner city whites and inner city blacks and would guess that they are about the same. The causes are not differences between the races, but rather causes between the places these folks live, making the thesis racist, in my opinion. Rural people of every stripe live longer than urban folks of every stripe. What is the difference between a rural black person and a urban white person? I would guess that the black person lives longer. We have very dangerous neighborhoods that are majority Latino. What are the statistics surrounding them? I would guess they are the same as the Blacks. Why? Because they come from similar environments.

Why is the racial component injected into this? Because race is inflamatory. It is a cop out of legitimate scholarship and race is the topic that generally makes folks look past real underlying causes to problems. It grabs headlines. It gets more readership and garners the issue more sympathy.

Newsflash to folks of every demographic - "don't play with guns, don't join gangs and don't do dangerous illegal drugs"?

This is a problem with modern inner city life and has nothing what so ever to do with race.

reply to post by dolphinfan


With the hesitation mounting as I am sure the Racist term will be flying in this story.

I can't agree with your ending statement.

It does have to do with race-and their enviroment-where they reside.

From there it goes to showing what a welfare related country we have become. We, the gov't, have made these people almost totatlly dependent on the Gov't. Instead of giving HAND UPs, the Gov't policy- HANDS OUT.
Now there, race doesn't play into it.

That is where/when the fail parenting and community fall apart and there you go.

If we could, lets take all the news stories of violence we can find across the country for a week and tally up the Victims race and the Bad Guys Race. We'll see what shakes out. I am ready to place my bet.....

A friend of mine asked why more black people show up to getting out of prison parties than graduation parties. He has a good point .. and he's black.

Oh great!.
I can already see Reverands Jackson and Sharpton speaking out against whitie and blaming him for letting the black man out of prison.

reply to post by dolphinfan


This is an interesting study...I think it is incomplete...but that is just me being critical. I did find this statement from the article interesting and I have to ponder it a little:

"For some populations, being in prison likely provides benefits in regards to access to healthcare and life expectancy," said study author Dr. David Rosen, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Same Article...

I think if a study is done that is all inclusive...taking into account all of the factors of society in and out of prison...we might very well be looking at different results and a different outcome (again...me being critical).

Interesting none the less...thanks for sharing it OP...I will curiously stand by and see what other think about it.

reply to post by anon72


The issue has to do with the urban environment, not who lives in it and the answer is not to "institutionalize" the environment and make it more like prison, it is to do the reverse and create more freedom and allow folks to make positive choices for themselves

Tax free enterprise zones encouraging business into these neighborhoods
School choice
Micro loans to small business owners

Take a vast majority of the welfare state spending and spend it on things that will facilitate freedom and choice and the problem would largely be eliminated.

Were these neighborhoods to be vacated by blacks and populated by SE Asians, the SE Asians would have the same problems.

Again it has nothing to do with race, only the article, in an attempt to be inflamatory attempts to make it about race

Originally posted by Alxandro
Oh great!.
I can already see Reverands Jackson and Sharpton speaking out against whitie and blaming him for letting the black man out of prison.

Its not cool you should let the intelligence in the thread be shared its a sapiens sapiens issue...

Color blind my friend

Read "Lies My Teacher Told ME" and "Freakanomics"...for some interesting facts....
Otherwise, its all a combination of past mistakes, and present failure to address these issues. A welfare system IS needed in this country and you HAVE to have public housing. There are people who abuse it, but your always going to have that. Other times, its just too damn hard to rise up out of a situation. Some people fit stereotypes, others demolish them. Its half and half.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Poverty. End poverty.

Poverty kills people and breeds misery, hatred and violence.

People in poverty are hopelessly uneducated.
We have a third world country within this one.
We need to bring it up to the level of education and health as at least the rest of us. (at least the rest of us prescription pill poppers)
And then we need to bring THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE up to a level of confidence and ability with health care and weaning people off drugs and address their self-medicating psychiatric issues.

It is a sad commentary that black men live longer in prison than on the streets. Very sad indeed. I wonder what the life expectancy is of say a white man in Sudan? Just curious.

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13

Originally posted by Alxandro
Oh great!.
I can already see Reverands Jackson and Sharpton speaking out against whitie and blaming him for letting the black man out of prison.

Its not cool you should let the intelligence in the thread be shared its a sapiens sapiens issue...

Color blind my friend

I totally agree with you every time you make that point.

However, In this day and age.

That's one tall order.

Originally posted by JustinSee
Read "Lies My Teacher Told ME" and "Freakanomics"...for some interesting facts....
Otherwise, its all a combination of past mistakes, and present failure to address these issues. A welfare system IS needed in this country and you HAVE to have public housing. There are people who abuse it, but your always going to have that. Other times, its just too damn hard to rise up out of a situation. Some people fit stereotypes, others demolish them. Its half and half.

edit on 15-7-2011 by JustinSee because: (no reason given)

Well balanced, sensible and probably true as well.
The QUALITY, END RESULT and long term commitment and not the cost of the social program makes all the difference in the world. Throwing money at a problem does not fix it in this case. Tired and true methods (teach a man to fish) however do.

It's cultural diet. The prison food is atrocious, so they don't eat all the rich foods common in African American culture.

So the government can now justify imprisoning blacks because its safer or healthier for them to be locked up???

Seriously?

This is a setup.

Blacks and Freedom?

Ahhhhhh nevermind.

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13

Originally posted by Alxandro
Oh great!.
I can already see Reverands Jackson and Sharpton speaking out against whitie and blaming him for letting the black man out of prison.

Its not cool you should let the intelligence in the thread be shared its a sapiens sapiens issue...

Color blind my friend

Why anyone would be so quick to defend Jesse and Al is beyond me.especially since it is they that could stand to learn a lot.about "color blindness".
Those two would coin a phrase such as Afro-Sapien if they could. Hell, I'm sure they've already thought about it.

Something wrong with our prison system when people benefit more in than out.

People complained about Gitmo, yet members of Al Qaeda, Taliban and other factions of
Muslim extremists/terrorists all called Guantanamo the luxury resort of all prison camps.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Two words that make a huge socio-economic impact to black people in prison: HEALTH CARE. I hate these kind of studies because they shouldn't be looking at black people or white people or whatever. They should be looking at poor vs middle-class.

I bet if they took a cross section of poor people in prison, they'd have the same exact results. It's not a race issue, it's economic issue.

reply to post by newcovenant


We've tried to end poverty through government intervention - remember Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty"? By every meaning statistic, not only has the condition of the black community worsened, they, unlike the inhabitants of the inner cities before, have remained in those communities.

The reason? Programs need to help people get out of poverty, not make living in impoverished conditions more palatable. By increasing the welfare state, we have reduced the incentives to exit the impoverished conditions of the inner cities. Slowly decrease the level of social programs and provide incentives for businesses to create jobs in those communities as well as more options regarding schooling and folks will exit the environment.

With the bundle of programs, if you are essentially making the equivalent of the minimum wage, there is no incentive to work. When you make it easier to remain unmarried by compensating people for having children, you get more children and fewer intact families.

The social programs today have done exactly the opposite of what they were ultimately intended to correct. There will always be an inner city filled with crime and people in poverty, the objective of competently designed social programs should be shrink the size of that community. Our programs have enlarged these areas. Detroit is the textbook example. The entire city is a wasteland because the dependency programs of the welfare state caused poverty creep.

Its always easier to stay home and not go to work

reply to post by dolphinfan


If we had much stricter gun laws these figures would be different. Many people think things like lax gun control and the justice systems differentiation between coc aine and crack is a deliberate attempt to round up and incarcerate minorities or have them kill each other in drug wars.

As long as it's black on black crime it will never get attention. It's like missing hookers.
Who cares? Nobody does. To my way of thinking - THIS ITSELF IS A SOCIAL PROGRAM but a corrupt and ineffective one that encourages the worst outcomes instead of improving the society.

It only isolates the rich from the poor so the rich does not have to look at them. If they had to look at them everyday you would soon see the sorts of programs in place that worked and got people back in the game in a good way.

I do not agree with handing money to people. Helping is not about handing money. In inner cities it is necessary to teach other skills and offer other opportunities to make money besides selling drugs to addicts. How about teaching them to be corporate raiders or hedge fund operators or cigarette mfg? So you see every job is not a good job or a benefit to the society.
Can you think of any social programs or incentives that do not encourage laziness and would help the individual who is misdirected or handicapped either socially or academically and has little skills... find and keep a job? A program that enables the poorest or least desirable people to contribute something valuable and or necessary, and does something to improve the society as well?
What chance does an abused child from an impoverished neighborhood have for success? If you move him early you have a chance but the longer you allow failure to reign the more ingrained in his behavior failure and hopelessness will be.
Yet it only takes one caring individual to change the life of a child, to turn it around. If there is not a "program" that helps give each child a chance at normalcy none of them will ever have a chance. Though many will fail it is worth it to save the few that you can.

And you have to ask yourself what is more important to teach - integrity or success?
They do not necessarily go together.

I think that the people who were helped by the social programs in those cities you speak of moved away. You cannot see the "program" in place succeeded because the evidence move to bigger and better things after getting a good start and a "leg up," What is left are the abject failures, people with no hope and no help.

Just remember, whatever they do to black people they will do to all people in the future. If its healthy to have your rights stripped away and imprisoned for them then surely it could benefit all of us? We could create a new measurement like the nightmare BMI values - how about PLI - the Prison Life Index - and anyone over an index of 30 has an unhealthy lack of prison time?

reply to post by newcovenant


People segregate themselves. They always have and they always will, regardless of the economic structure of a society or its political foundation. Members of the communist party in China have a very different life than the average Chinese. They live in different quarters, eat separately, they live a different life.

As far as programs go, there are a number of them. Firstly, school is a program. We have dropped the bar so low in many inner cities that not only do the kids have a poor education, but they don't learn job skills like showing up on time, handing in assignments on time and of acceptable quality, etc. Why is this? One of the reasons is that school has become inclusive and those who want an education are forced to share their education space with those who do not. It may be unfortunate, but there are a lot of kids who just need to be thrown out of school. I grew up in an inner city in the 70s and a lot of kids were tossed out. What happens to these kids? Don't know, but I do know that in order to break the cycle of poverty, getting them out of the way of preventing kids who want to learn is more important. I'd rather educate 10 kids properly if it meant breaking the cycle even if that meant that 20 went to jail. I received a quality education in an inner city public school. Where were the delinquents, don't know. The cops used to constantly harrass them and sweep them out of school areas, parks, librarys. They pushed them to a few square blocks where they hung out. They went home to eat, but they did not "hang out" in any of the common areas we used as kids, even on the streets where they lived. Today, the legal and racial pressure groups don't allow that which is why a kid in the inner city can't go to a park or library.

There are easily envisioned programs. The trades for example. Right now we have a city, Joplin, MO that has essentially been wiped off the map. Why not take a bunch of gents from the inner city and have them apprentice in Joplin and rebuild that city. Live in temporary housing, zero drug tolerance, put 6 hours in on the job, two in class, reading/writing/basic math and have them come out in a year or two with a union membership and a set of tools? How many people could still be working to build New Orleans were we to have a program like that? We spent over $40bn in Katrina relief and you can count the positive results on one hand. That is the kind of stimulus program that makes sense. Two things are built, the physical infrastructure and the human infrastructure of the country. Before we jump on the "George Bush failed in Katrina" keep in mind that he did allocate $40bn, much of it was wasted on the ground by local officials and that the primary group preventing that kind of program would be the trade unions.

There are things that can be done to help, but with all of them, removing the hardend criminal element, regardless of the cause of that criminal behavior out of the environment to make it an acceptable place for folks to acquire life skills is an absolute requirement. If that means tossing them in jail, so be it. If that means building more jails, so be it. Sorry, but the 25 year old who has been carrying a gun and in the gang scene for 10 years is lost. For every $1 we spend on trying to rehabilitate him we are wasting a $1 on someone who is not lost. Tough, but that community is not uniform and it needs to be further segmented and the criminal/drug element further isolated.