Mass Incarceration Sociology

Mass incarceration has many costs associated with it besides for the punishment of the offender. For many people, they have no idea how badly an incarceration can destroy someones entire life, and family. Mass incarceration affects everyone, the offender, their family, and the entire community as a whole. I believe that there are three major consequences and costs that are encored by mass incarceration, and they each effect either the offender, their family, or the seemingly unrelated community. When a husband or wife goes to prison, nearly 65% of family are then unable to pay for basic needs such as food and housing. 70% of these families have children under the age of 18 that they are caring for. Thus, with a large chunk, if not all, of their income missing, the family is no longer able to provide for themselves, or their children, let alone support there imprisoned spouse. It is clear that in the majority of families, if a spouse is imprisoned, the family itself will fall apart and be unable to survive. Another study found that one-third of family’s reported that they went in debt by paying for visitation or phone calls, which is absurd. Getting
imprisoned not only costs the offender time and money, but will likely cost his or her family even more. To individuals, mass incarceration doesn't let their punishment be just or fair, it is more of a stamp and pass on process.
For example, many individuals are serving life sentences with out the possibility or parole for non-violent drug crimes. Some of these individuals may have sold a small amount of marijuana to an undercover officer, and have been sent to prison for life. While many individuals do deserve life without parole, the drastic increase of mass incarceration has blurred the process, and these people are not treated as individuals, but as numbers. They do not always receive a fair punishment, very often they receive life without parole for a drug charge. Those who have been incarcerated, and released, earn much less then their peers and even have a 3.5 times higher mortality rate then there
peers. Society and communities as a whole also pay a large price for mass incarceration. Children of incarcerated people are 5 times more likely to go to prison then their peers. The annual cost of America’s prisons to tax payers is 39 billion. The more people who are imprisoned the higher this number will go up. There are many social interventions that can greatly reduce mass incarceration and even other problems as well. The Nurse Family Partnership, which uses nurses to visit young, first time mothers about 20 times over the course of raising their child, greatly reduces abuse and neglect as well as arrest rates of the children and mothers. Early education, preschool, has been found to reduce CJ engagement of those who participate until age 27, and for ever $1 invested in such programs, it saves society $7.16. Functional Family Therapy works very good for 11-18 year olds who have engaged in delinquency, substance abuse, or violence. This program aims to improve functioning of the family, showing the parents that they can help provide their children with structure. The Multi-Systemic Therapy program is also family based, but focus more so on the child’s peer influences and school performance. Communities as a whole can also help to prevent crime in youth. Community participation can reduce delinquency, it allows parents to monitor and supervise teenage peer groups that can lead to an establishment of community norms. These social interventions have been proven to be effective to reducing the number of youth that enter into the criminal justice system, and many only require that the parents get more involved.