The Framers of the Constitution intended the Speedy Trial Clause to serve two purposes. It was for preventing defendants from languishing in jail for an indefinite period before trial. Pre-trial incarceration is a deprivation of liberty no less serious than post-conviction imprison. In some cases pretrial incarceration may be more serious since public scrutiny is often heightened, employment is commonly interrupted, financial resources are diminished, family relations are strained, and innocent persons are forced to suffer prolonged injury to reputation.…
"An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness." This quote by suffragist and philanthropist Clara Barton so eloquently describes the issues within the United States prison system and its desperate need to for reformation. Chapter four of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander brought forth the gaspingly oppressive sector of prison (via the judicial branch). Alexander illuminated the reader to the realities of the United States prison system and the covert nuances of racism, discrimination, and the mechanisms brought forth to perpetuate 'legal slavery' in America. In regards to the major points of the chapter, the author described: the effect of prison on society, African Americans relationship in regards to prison- i.e. their chances to go and the societal influences that make African Americans disproportionately susceptible to the prison system- as well as the person's role in society after they are released from prison.…
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…
African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the nearly 2.3 million of the incarcerated population. And, according to the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites (NAACP). According to Unlocking America, “if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today’s prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%” (NAACP). These statistics show the harsh effects of mass incarceration and how the prison system is targeting minorities, specifically Blacks and…
Life, as we know it today, isn't the way it was before because of the increase in incarceration rates within our nation; especially among our minority groups. When minority groups are mentioned, it's aimed towards people that are different from the social majority. Incarceration is the state of being confined in prison; imprisoned. There are various factors that have led to this dreadful increase. The cause of this climb in numbers of people being incarcerated are prisons profiting from the number of people being imprisoned, policies and practices, and most importantly, a wide range of criminal offenders. This dilemma…
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…
“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.…
In society today, it is commonly known that crime rate has increased dramatically by the years. This is where many of us look for ways to solve such issue. It is the last place anybody would want to be in. but unfortunately we have hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions around the world. Thousands in just the United States, Those are prisons. Just hearing that word makes us think bad things right away. Murder, theft, violence, and everything bad that happens in this world. We live in a world where prisons and jail are very important and almost every country, state, county, or city must have at least one. Prisons now are much more crowded than they were 20 years ago. The number of inmates in just the United States has doubled between the years of 1992 and 2011. The question many of us should ask ourselves is why do we need prisons? Are prisons effective in any way? Are prisons causing economic issues? Are prisoners getting proper treatment while incarcerated?…
There are over millions of people incarcerated but African Americans and Latinos make up most of the prison population. To attempt to stop certain problems, the criminal justice system just put people behind bars and expects that everything will be fine, when in reality it isn’t because now the jails are becoming overcrowded. Dealing with the drug war, racial profiling, and people growing up in low-income neighborhoods and high-poverty rates, minorities have a higher inmate ratio but the drug war is the greatest cause of why the minority inmate ratio is so high.…
Your Criminal Defense attorney is there to handle the criminal case and to provide guidance and support in the event that you or your loved one is incarcerated. However, here are a few key issues that should be discussed in depth. Let's take a closer look at hose issues.…
In, “Beyond the Prison Bubble,” published in the Wilson Quarterly in the winter 2011, Joan Petersilia shows different choices about the imprisonment systems. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any free nation (para.1). The crime rate over a thirty year span had grown by five times since 1960 to 1990. There are more people of color or Hispanics in federal and state institutions then there are of any other nationality. The prison system is growing more than ever; the growth in twenty years has been about 21 new prisons. Mass imprisonment has reduced crime but, has not helped the inmate to gradually return back to society with skills or education. But the offenders leaving prison now are more likely to have fairly long criminal records, lengthy histories of alcohol and drug abuse, significant periods of unemployment and homelessness, and physical or mental disability (par.12).…
The United States Prison System has been around for hundreds of years. They house some of the United States’ worst people. This would include individuals convicted of crimes such as murder to the lowest crime of petit theft. Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. has put the spotlight on terrorism worldwide. Most people in society do not realize that the U.S. Prison System could be one of the biggest breeding grounds for terrorism and terrorism recruiting. In addition to that, the introduction of contraband has been an ongoing battle.…
Over the past twenty to thirty years the United States incarceration rate has gradually been climbing to its present day rate of 738 incarcerated citizens per 100,000 in the population. That number is 153% higher than Russia who is 2nd in line with the most imprisoned citizens and a whopping 2000% higher than countries such as Nigeria and Nepal (Hartney 2). The problem with this nations incarceration rate is not due to the amount of crime that goes on, “For some crimes, the US has higher crime rates than other countries, but not at levels that explain the high rates—and costs—of its current use of incarceration” (Hartney 5). The United States is also at fault for having the highest minority incarceration rates having three times as many women imprisoned than any other nation. The minority problem doesn’t stop at the women but Latinos composed 19% of Americas prison population while African Americans make up 41% (“More”). The other potent issue with this problem is that it is not being considered as one and the rates are continuously growing. Jails…
It can be agreed, prisons could benefit from proper rehabilitation for inmates, so they can transition into society, without becoming a reoccurring offender. There are different measures that could be taken. If the United States would adopt more of the policies overpopulation and reoccurring offenders could be an issue in the past. If more prisons in the United States could adopt the policies, prisoners would not carry such a burden of a stigma, and begin to be treated as actual members of the…
Overcrowding in prisons is one of the biggest challenges facing the American criminal justice system today. The total population of prisons and jails in the United States neared the 2.1 million mark in June 2003, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported incarceration rates of state and federal prisoners continued to rise. At midyear 2003, the number of sentenced inmates was 480 per 100,000 U.S. residents, up from 476 per 100,000 on December 31, 2002. There were 238 jail inmates for every 100,000 on June 30, 2003. Overall, one out of every 140 U.S residents was incarcerated in prison or in jail. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s state and local governments got tougher on crime by passing legislation calling for mandatory sentences for repeat offenders, such as California’s “three strikes you’re out” law and New York and other cities adopted the “Broken Windows” strategy that called for the arrest and prosecution of all crimes large and small. Because of these polices the number of violent crimes has dropped. Unfortunately, one unintended consequence of America’s new tough stance on crime is that our prison system has become dangerously overcrowded, forcing prison officials to release violent criminals after serving only a fraction of their sentences. The current system used to relieve overcrowding has created a “revolving door” criminal justice system. The recidivism rate among those released early from state and county prisons is extremely high. In fact, a Department of Justice study found that 67.5 percent of criminals released from prison were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within three years (USDOJ, 2013). A Large portion of the overcrowded conditions in the prison system is a result of the” war on drugs”. This war alone costs taxpayers a large amount of money each year because new prisons are needed to be constructed to house the ever-growing…