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DEFENDERS
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Au t umn&wi n t e r
2 0 1 4 & 2 0 1 5
hundreds of thousands of minority voters
to cast a ballot.
60- Ethnic minorities inAmerica do not
enjoy equal political, social and economic
rights. One example can be seen in the
voting system, in such way that the right
to vote for different races in America is
limited.
61- In the November 2012 presidential
elections in America, some Asian-
Americans were prevented from casting
votes. The UN Human Rights Council
special report strongly criticizes the
United States for failing to guarantee the
right to vote for African and Hispanic
Americans of the country.
62-Disenfranchisement of individuals
with
prior
criminal
convictions
affects millions of people who are
disproportionately people of color. It is
estimated that 5.85millionpotential voters
in the United States are disenfranchised
due to prior criminal convictions.
Almost 7% of all individuals with prior
convictions are African American (as
compared with 1.8% of the rest of the
country) andalthoughit isknownthat laws
disenfranchising individuals with prior
criminal convictions disproportionately
affect Latinos, reliable data on this issue
is not readily available. The fact that
one of every 13 African Americans has
lost the right to vote due to state bans
on ex-prisoner voting makes the failure
of the United States to act on this issue
problematic in the face of its national and
international obligations.
JUSTICE
63- On average whites, African
Americans and Native Americans use
similar amounts of drugs, but are arrested
very differently, tired and imprisoned.
For example Four times more African
Americans get arrested for the use of
marijuana than white Americans, even if
they have used lesser amount than whites.
This is while only 13 percent ofAmerica’s
population is African American but 41
percent of the prison population is made
up of African Americans.
64-More than 60% of prisoners are
racial and ethnic minorities. Due to a
variety of factors, such as drug sentencing
disparities, pretext searches, racial
profiling, an increasing amount ofmilitary
policing, combined with mandatory drug
sentences, prosecutorial overcharging,
predatory plea-bargains, disproportional
crime/drug arrest rates , long-term social
and economic disenfranchisement, and
the school-to-prison pipe-41 line, African
Americans today are incarcerated at
nearly six times the rate of whites and
constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3
million incarcerated population
65-The number of “women in prison
increased by 646% between 1980 and
2010, rising from 15,118 to 112,797.
Including women in local jails, more than
205,000 women are now incarcerated”
and “Black females had an imprisonment
rate nearly three times that of white
females.”
66-Black women are victims of sexual
assault, “the political dynamics of a
prison nation interact with racial and
other stigmas in such a way that women
of col-or are more likely to be treated as
criminal than as victims when they are
abused.” A contemporary example of
this criminalization of victims is Marissa
Alexander, a Black woman in Florida
who received a 20 year prison sentence
for firing warning shots in the air (in
self-defense) to ward off her physically
abusive husband . In September 2013,
an appeals court granted Alexander a
new trial , and after being denied bail in