Is A White Prisoner Experience Valid?

By, Charles N. Diorio, inmateauthorproject.org June 14, 2025

American prisons remain disproportionately home to people of color. In fact, prisons developed just after the Civil War, a direct result of the 13th Amendment of the U.S.Constitution. The "punishment" clause of the 13th Amendment put America on the path of mass incarceration.

Demographics of prison populations shifted dramatically in the 1960's. Several attempts at Civil Rights legislation culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The tumultuous 1960's produced a laser focus on inner city crime. Black crime. Crime committed by a growing "minority" of "colored" populations.

Prison populations remained majority White in Northern and Western states deep into the 1980's. But, with the African-American diaspora of the 1950's, America's jails and prisons began filling with people of color.

America's social revolution in the 1960's through the turn of the last century witnessed a massive shift from majority White prison populations to majority Black and Hispanic populations. We are living with this demographic shift today.

Prison populations shifted dramatically from White to people of color in the 1980's.

Many scholars of Corrections point to several factors that contributed to this dramatic increase in Black and Brown jail and prison populations. Mass incarceration during the so called "Broken Windows" policing of inner cities during the 1980's exploded prison populations in New York, Los Angeles and most major American cities. "Broken Windows" is a community based policing practice that arrest and incarcerate low level criminal offenders who commit quality of life crimes, like burglary, street level drug sales, property and violent crimes.

A second wave of mass incarceration in the 1990's disproportionately turned American jails from White majority to African-American and Hispanic.

America's war on drugs further fueled prison capacity. Crack cocaine was responsible for exploding prison and jail populations and contributed to waves of mass incarceration deep into the 1990's. The United States established the "Omnibus Crime Bill of 1998" commonly called the "Biden Crime Bill" because he pushed it through the Senate and the massive crime bill was signed into law by President William Jefferson Clinton.

Immediately, jail and prison demographics shifted dramatically from White majority to Black and Brown. Crime and punishment immediately became a major part of grievance used by civil rights groups to exploit the inequality between races in America.

Suddenly, civil rights organizations captured the disproportionately African-American and Hispanic prison populations as their own. White people behind bars were all but ignored. And, the face of America's jail and prison population became Black and Brown exclusively.

Organizations, like The Marshal Project and Pen America, exploited this dramatic shift in Corrections' to amplify and exploit grievances, stories, articles, reporting and focus entirely on inequities of race in America pointing to inequality in U.S. jail's and prison populations. White experiences and voices have been all but excluded.

Race division behind bars is stark, dramatic and divisive. Races self segregate. In most American prisons a tacit separate-but-equal policy is part of prison politics. In California prisons, for example, there are White, Black and Hispanic telephones, showers, and exercise areas. Races don't mix. Prisoners eat at tables reserved for their own particular race. And, there are violent sanctions enforcing strict segregation behind bars.

Massachusetts prisons don't practice such strict prison politics. But, self segregation among races is tacitly accepted and practiced. Gang culture in Massachusetts prisons, as an example, is growing more sectarian. Gang segregation by race and ethnicity is growing. Drug culture behind bars is almost always driven by race and ethnic identity.

White voices have become less valid than experiences voiced by African-American or Hispanic incarcerated individuals. The point of view of America's prison experience has shifted dramatically.

Organizations seeking authentic jailhouse reporting rely on prisoners of color for their point of view. Media project American jails and prisons as exclusively Black. And, American justice targeting people of color exclusively. In America's prisons', African-American and Latin prisoners dismiss their convictions as racially motivated prosecutions.

A culture of dismissing crime committed by minority groups as government oppressing Black and Brown populations exploded. News reports of African-American's exonerated have become a common trope on television and movies. Exoneration projects target Black and Brown prisoners exclusively, White prisoner's continue to go ignored.

A national attitude developed that African-American's convicted of crime deserve a benefit of the doubt, while convictions of White American's are well deserved is amplified in the national consciousness.

Sadly, White voices find it more difficult to escape our nations jails and prisons. America's prison experience has become a Black and Brown experience. Civil rights groups use this current demographic to shape their agenda: America is a racist nation. White people behind bars languish in their own truth.

Media organizations like the Marshal Project, Pen America and National Public Radio amplify voices of color when exploring modern American culture. Voices from a vast White prison population are treated as "other" and no longer valid.

American demographics are shifting dramatically. And prison populations illustrate this evolution of culture. And so does the shift in attention to all Americans.