Misunderstand And Mass Incarceration Essay

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
if the system wants them to fail. The New Jim Crow states, “Washington slashed funding for public housing by $17 billion and boosted correction by $19 billion”(Alexander 57). It makes no sense to cut funding for the housing and put in funding for jail. The housing is what helps out the African American community and the jail does not help out the community. In general, things that support African Americans should get attention rather than things that do not.
It is not the only race that is affecting the criminal justice system it is the prosecutors that are affecting the system.
Prosecutors are the people who go against the defense, so they are the ones that put people in jail. The prosecutors are really hard on the people that commit a crime. In the article “How We Misunderstand And Mass Incarceration,” district attorneys have seen their political options expand, and this has encouraged them to remain tough on crime even as crime has fallen”(Gopnik). This illustrates how the system is politically influenced because if the district attorneys did not have a political agenda then they wouldn't be so hard on the punishment. The attorneys just want to make their big break and put people in jail, they do not think about the person they think about their career. This ties back to the Central Park Five case which was a very big case, where the prosecutor put harsh punishments on the five boys who didn't even commit the crime because he wanted to close this big case that would help his career. If prosecutors would just think about the person who committed a crime then there would be a lot of people without long jail. If the prosecutor in the Central Park Five case thought about those boys he would've realized he had the wrong boys. Thus, prosecutors should be so hard on the punishment of a
crime.