Preview

Cause And Effect Essay On Mass Incarceration

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
839 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Cause And Effect Essay On Mass Incarceration
Mass Incarceration
In our country, The United States of America, we have many issues and one of them is mass incarceration. Many people are in jail because of the bail, mental issues, and poverty as well. People are also locked up for many reasons, but, sometimes they are not even guilty for anything. It has happened to so many people that they don't want to pay bail because they are not guilty at all. Others have been locked up because of mental illness.
One of the causes of mass incarcerations is Bail. Bail is when there is a temporary release of a person waiting for trial. Sometimes the prisoner has to pay and will get their money back when they present in court. The incarceration rate in the United States is 716 of 1000,000.According to the article "The
…show more content…
Many people stay in prison because of their mental illness that they have but officers have the right to decide what to do. According to the article America’s Largest Mental Hospital from the The Atlantic “Police officers can choose to take a mentally ill person home, to the hospital, to a shelter-or to jail.”(23 Ford) If officers can choose where they could take a person with mental illness, why are many being in jail. But at the same time some people want to go to jail because they get health care and get medications for them to cure themselves. Just like Demetrio’s story, he watches how his mother was murdered and couldn't forget the image which then lead him to drugs and got caught and had to serve for these offenses in 1987 and 1993. While he was out he was going from hospital to hospital to check himself when he felt like killing himself. People like Demetrio suffered from mental illness since before he even started committing crimes and because of the health care not being able to accept them they can't get help but in

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    executed by lethal injection. Prior to being executed, Carlos had spent some time in prison,…

    • 1480 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    An article published by NPR shows how many prison systems are overcrowded with prisoners who have yet to face trial and merely face pre-trial detention, because they are unable to make bail. One such individual is Leslie Chew, who was arrested for stealing three thirty dollar blankets in december 2008, he had been in Lubbock county jail for a little over 185 days in jail six months. This only due to the fact that he was unable to pay bail, which was $3,500 dollars. Many would argue that America is one of few countries that allow bondsmen to pay bail for a small non-refundable fee. This however also proves to be way past the means of those such as Leslie Chew who by trade is a handyman who lives in his car. The bondsman would have paid for Mr. Chews bail for the fee of $350 dollars this however is well above the means of Mr. Chew. This is similar to many who face pre-trial detention while they await trial. On the reverse side many of those who are able to make bail are able to continue their daily routine while awaiting trial, while many of those who don't make bail face the consequence of losing jobs and everything they…

    • 1093 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mass incarceration started in the 1980s, when the war on drugs arose. The U.S. prison system is a failure on every level. There are a total of 2,418,352 federal and state prisons in the United States and 2.3 million people occupy them. According to California prison focus “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens”. The U.S. has more prisons than colleges. America also has private prisons owned by greedy corporate millionaires and billionaires.The more people in prison, the more money private prisons make. Tom Beasley, co-founder of the Corrections Corporation of America(CCA) stated that “you just sell prisons like you were selling cars or real estate or hamburgers”. According to CCA they have nearly 5,500 acres of land, and 2,500 acres are undeveloped for future growth projects. That means they want to keep putting people in jail. There are 4,575 private prisons in the United States. According to NYU School of Law “ since 2000, the effect on the crime rate of increasing incarceration has been zero. Even though the crime rate has not gone down, the government continues to put people in jail. Private prisons have continued because they make millions of dollars off of owning private prisons, and putting people in jail. War on drugs was the beginning of mass incarceration. In the 1990’s state and federal prisons started exploding at the seams because of the increase in drug use and possession of it. The drug that made the huge impact on society was Cocaine, known as “crack”. Cocaine was a powder, which was known to be more sophisticated than crack. Crack was used in poor black communities. The biggest surge in the use of crack was between 1980s and 1990s. Black and latino communities were hit the hardest in the drug epidemic. There was a high…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The United States accounts for 5% of the world population but has nearly 22% of world prison population. This means that nearly 2 million people are incarcerated, and 1 in 3 black men will go to prison or jail if this trend continues (Amnesty International). Mass Incarceration has been one of the major debate recently in Politics. The politician has been debating on a method to reduce the prison population, and to do that they need to find the cause of it and the different contribution. In recent year, there has been a cut in funding for many states rehabilitation, education and other programs because the costs to accommodate an inmate is escalating upward. At the same time, laws are put in place that put disadvantaged people within the criminal…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Since the 1970s the rate of incarceration in the United States has quadrupled, after having been relatively flat over the prior half-century.”-Anthony Zurcher. The rate of prison incarcerations has increased so much over the years; the government can’t afford to incarcerate that many people. Karen Thomas’s article “Time to Invest in Schools, Note Prisons” shows that United States incarcerates too many criminals violent and non-violent. Joan Petersilia said in her article “Beyond the Prison Bubble” that, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any free nation. This also supports the idea that The United States incarcerates too many people.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Our biggest problem in the United States is mass incarceration. We send more people to prison than any other nation in the world, and people of color make up more than 50% of incarcerated population. When the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, abolishing slavery it still gave leeway to some loopholes. The significant loophole in the Amendment was that, though: It stated that slavery and involuntary servitude are illegal, "except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." So this loophole means I think that people who are imprisoned are technically considered the property of the state or federal government so they do not have rights, which is similar to the slavery time period.…

    • 117 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In trials, money can help make the decision of someone being guilty or free. The United States jails have gone to a private enterprise and the more people they put in jail the more money they will make(Mathews). This makes people want to put more people in jail so they can make more money. Thirty years ago, there was 500,000 people in jail, now there is 2.2 million people in jail and this takes around 80 billion dollars a year to keep them locked up(Obama: ‘Much of Our Criminal Justice System Remains Unfair’). Jails benefit financially for the amount of people…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Benefits that were in placed to help African Americans were no longer there or they were hard to get. There were a certain amount of benefits in the African American communities that were limited to certain amount of people due to the restrictions the benefits had. Welfare was replaced with AFDC, which came with TANF, and TANF limits the amount of time you can use the benefits and restricted convicted felons with drug offenses from getting it (Alexander). This clearly is going to affect the Black communities, because if they can not get these benefits then they are going to go back on the streets to sell drugs, which is going to lead to jail. If the system wants to help people, then why put restrictions on the things they need. It seems as…

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The high rates of imprisonment among poor men reflect the effects of mass incarceration on the microlevel as well as the outcome of when law enforcement focuses on socioeconomic disadvantages in urban communities. Could it be that the criminal Justice system is deeply embedded in maintain poverty racially condense areas? Evidence shows mixed views of the social consequences of mass incarceration. This is due to the problem of invisible equality where those who are incarcerated are unavailable for social research, thus affecting statistics on severe economic disadvantage regarding mass incarceration. For one employment rates have decreased with the increase of incarceration rates. There is limited proof that mass incarceration undermines family…

    • 157 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The United States has the highest incarceration percentage in the world. Mass incarceration is the result of people breaking the laws or committing offenses. Bill Clinton and his administration was one of the presidents that led to a massive mass incarceration. He passed a bill that extended criminal offenses, and he also gave money to build new prisons. Mass incarceration is also a result of poverty and discrimination of African Americans. In the other hand, Drug law violations have been one of the main reasons why people are incarcerated.…

    • 89 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Incarceration Theory

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Are minorities continually being unfairly arrested, tried and punished as a result of racial discrimination or do minorities just commit more crimes? In order to determine if disparity or discrimination is the cause of current over representation of minorities in the criminal justice system we have to study race, ethnicity and past discriminatory judicial practices. Are the historical discriminatory practices and past laws the cause of the systematic imbalance of power in relation to race, class and discrimination within our society that leads to more crime among minorities today?…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Incarceration Problem

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The prison system in the united states has some very serious problems, some of these being the sheer number of people that we incarcerate in this country the highest percentage in the world. The incarceration rate impacts racial minorities much more that the percent of the population that these minorities make up in the population. Also the sheer cost of the mass incarceration costs taxpayers in the United states is huge. But looking at these problems for a sociological perspective can help you understand them better.…

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Every day people are entering and leaving the American Prison system. Maybe a co-worker, neighbor, family member, etc. are re-entering the world and becoming part of “civilization” again. Peter Wagner, in his article Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016, says that “Every year, 636,000 people walk out of prison gates, but people go to jail over 11 million times each year.”Where are those 10.6 million something people that vanished? That is basically the basis of mass incarceration which in other terms mean that more people are in jail then leaving which causes overpopulation. Mass incarceration must end due to its effects.…

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    America land of the free and home of the great, But in all reality is America as great is…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Unemployment In Prisons

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The United States of America locks up more people, per capita, than any other nation. But grappling with why requires us consider the many types of correctional facilities and the reasons that 2.3 million people there (Wagner). When someone get convicted of a felony they immediately lose many of their rights. One of the biggest things that they lose is the right to vote and that can decide a lot of someones life. Many people in places such as Florida don’t know that you can regain your rights to vote and not just votes but many other things that are beneficial to someone's life. When you’re looking for a job the job has the ability to decline your application so that you won't get the job and they can do so legally. Losing your rights as a convicted felon is terrible to ruin peoples lives after serving the certain time that they were given as their punishment.…

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays