By Tashi McQueen
AFRO Staff Writer
tmcqueen@afro.com
Issues such as incarceration, unemployment, reduced life expectancy, the opioid crisis and housing instability continue to be some of the top issues impacting Black males today throughout America and particularly in Washington, D.C.
“The [opioid] crisis has had an inequitable impact with Black District residents who have been over 85 percent of our opioid overdose fatalities since 2017,” said Kenan Zamore, an epidemiological researcher with the D.C. Department of Health during a live-streamed 2023 D.C. Council hearing on combatting the opioid and fentanyl crisis. “This is particularly concentrated in Black men who are over the age of 40. Most District residents who overdose live in Wards 5, 7 or 8–we see about two-thirds of our overdoses there.”
According to recent data revealed in a report from the New York Times and the Baltimore Banner, from 2018 to 2022, an estimated 2,289 Black men between their mid-50s and mid-70s died due to opioid overdoses in D.C. They account for about 80 percent of all opioid overdoses in the District.
Homelessness is another major issue significantly impacting Black men and boys in the nation’s capital.
In 2022, around 77 percent to 80 percent of the District’s accumulative homeless population identified as African American. Of those, about 60-65 percent of single adult men experiencing homelessness were Black, according to the D.C. Department of Human Services and the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness.
Another heavy hitter is the over incarceration of Black men and boys.
“We have one of the highest incarcerations in the nation and some of the longest criminal sentences on the books,” said D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-D.C.-Ward 4) during a city council hearing in 2023. “Not only does over incarceration not work but it also has contributed to many of the public safety issues we are facing now across our communities.”
Data finds that Black people have often borne the heaviest toll of over incarceration.
According to Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives, the D.C. jail population is almost entirely Black, with 87.4 percent of male inmates and 79.6 percent of female inmates identifying as African American. Black men alone account for 94.1 percent of the total inmate population.
Though these issues are complex and significant, the city has been chipping away at them through various initiatives, community partnerships and investments.
In 2024, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) released Live.Long.D.C. 3.0, the city’s plan to reduce opioid use, misuse and related deaths. Via the updated plan, the city has increased the distribution of naloxone, a lifesaving medicine for drug overdoses, improved the integration of peers with lived experience to encourage people to get and stay in treatment and more.
Through Homeward 2.0, the mayor’s five-year plan to end homelessness in the region, the District has refined the family shelter system and enhanced family rental subsidies.
As for reform to address mass incarceration in D.C, that battle is being fought mainly via legislation. In 2022, the D.C. Council passed the Revised Criminal Code Act, which sought to modernize sentencing. They also passed the Comprehensive Youth Justice Amendment Act, which permits judicial review of sentences for persons who were under 25 at the time of the crime and have served at least 15 years, in 2016.
Great Job Tashi McQueen AFRO Staff Writer & the Team @ AFRO American Newspapers Source link for sharing this story.
