Human rights violations in southern U.S. prisons severely affect Black communities: report

NEW YORK, July 19 (Xinhua) -- A new report submitted to the United Nations by the Southern Prisons Coalition, a group of civil and human rights organizations, describes the widespread, disparate harms resulting from the arrests, harsh prison sentences, and incarceration on Black communities, according to U.S. news portal The Observer based in Sacramento, California, on Monday.

"This report reveals the suffering of Black people in southern U.S. prisons, whose stories of marginalization and discrimination echo the racial subjugation of slavery and convict leasing during our country's most shameful past," said Antonio L. Ingram II, Assistant Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund.

While incarcerated, Black people are more than eight times more likely to be placed in solitary confinement, and they are 10 times more likely to be held there for exceedingly long periods of time, said the report.

In states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas, where Black communities comprise 38 percent of the total population, Black individuals account for as much as 67 percent of the total incarcerated population, according to the report.

Meanwhile, among the ongoing stark racial disparities throughout prisons in the southern United States, Black people are five times more likely to be incarcerated in state prisons, it added.