In “Caging of America,” written by Adam Gopnik is an outline of everything that is wrong with the mass incarceration problem in America. We have come so reliant on methods that do not work that we have become blind to the effects it has on prisoners. We believe have set up a successful model to handle mass incarceration, in addition to our miss guided belief that we have fixed a problem.…
The prison system is a topic that is widely debated. Many are either for or against how they are ran. Though I am only an observer; I have no ties to the prison system. I do agree with many points that Wilbert Rideau made in his original article.…
Although criminals should pay the consequence for their behavior, it should not mean that they should live in overcrowded prisons. An example of an overcrowded prison is shown in Angola, where the max occupancy was for 800 prisoners, yet they had 1,750 prisoners (Stern, 2006). When this happens, the lack of resources, space, and training from needed officers increases. Therefore, conditions become hazardous and prisoners and officers are at higher risk for diseases such as HIV and Tuberculosis (Stern, 2006). Although society feels safe with criminals locked up, they have to realize that a main purpose for prisons is to help reduce crime by showing prisoners that breaking the law will cause them the loss of freedom. Ultimately, leading those criminals who are able to get out, to come out with a sense of a change behavior. However, the system that puts these women, men, and young people in overcrowded prisons are not even worried about the criminal. Instead, they keep increasing the definition of “crime”, which increase the number of criminals in an ineffective prison…
In the book, A place to Stand, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Baca writes about prison and how being incarcerated can have impact on a person and their family. With the most beautiful, strong and poetic language, Baca tells us the story of all the people who faces difficult times in order to find their place in the world. Baca always felt like he had no place to stand in society because, all of his life he was put down by his family and friends. From the age of five Baca experienced his dad and uncles going in and out of jail from being addicted to alcohol. Baca knew he would eventually end up in jail sooner or later because that’s what he had experienced all of his life. Baca writes, “Whether I was approaching it or seeking escape from it, jail always defined in some way the measure of my life” (3). Baca felt that his life would always head in the wrong direction because of his family issues. Baca shows being in prison can cause a lot of emotional impact on a person’s life, as well as affect the community.…
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…
In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander examines our current criminal justice system and the mass incarceration of African Americans in the United States. She argues that the War on Drugs and drug offense convictions are the single most compelling cause for the magnitude of people of color behind bars. Prisons are used as a system of racial and social control that function in the same way as Jim Crow laws. It is no longer legal to discriminate against people based on race. By targeting black and minority communities through the War on Drugs and labeling them as felons, all the old forms of discrimination became legal. The racial caste systems of slavery and Jim Crow have not disappeared, but…
In his Republican nomination acceptance speech, Trump vowed to restore law and order. Earlier in his campaign, he denied being influenced by interests groups, earning him many supporters. However, Trump later accepted donations from lobbyists and political action committees, coming under fire recently for a donation from the GEO Group, the second biggest private prison company in the country. Although his tough-on-crime stance was thought to be a political liability during his campaign, as it challenged unprecedented bipartisan efforts for criminal justice reform in later years, Trump’s position was a windfall that ultimately appealed to a strong conservative base. Trump’s intentions for, and potential to do away with, current criminal justice reform efforts remain to be seen. Regardless, as the president he will have influence, but the power to end mass incarceration will still primarily lie with the…
In 2009, the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) requested $6.8 billion for prisoner detention, which is an increase of $136,000,000 from 2008 (USDOJ, 2008). Concurrently, a conservative estimate of the cost for one career criminal a decade ago was $1,500,000 (Cohen, 1998) and has now substantially increased to between $2,600,000 to $5,300,000 (Cohen & Piquero, 2009). Similarly, the direct cost of incarceration is approximately $20,000 to $40,000 per offender (Spelman, 2009). Tax payers, who financially support the justice system, are forced into an economic and social bind. Money like this is the reason why research is being done to see whether or not the tax payers’ dollars are really worth the spending on incarceration or other options. If the average cost of incarceration is $20,000 to $40,000 per offender then imagine separate programs that the prisoner’s will go through to cut their time down. The biggest issue here is not wasting the money on prisoner’s to just lower sentencing, but rather help fix the offender and get him/her back on the streets a better person and to not come back. In other words try and cut down recidivism rates.…
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander, is a book about the discrimination of African Americans in today 's society. One of Alexander 's main points is the War on Drugs and how young African American males are targeted and arrested due to racial profiling. Racial profiling, discrimination, and segregation is not as popular as it used to be during the Civil War, however, Michelle Alexander digs deeper, revealing the truth about our government and the racial scandal in the prison systems. She writes, "… in major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society. (Alexander pg.7)"…
In 1998 a national picture shows an indication that African Americans account for about 35% of adults on probation, about 49% of adults in prison, and about 44% of the adults on parole (Jones-Brown, 2002). Marc Mauer indicates that the prison populations has been on the rise for number decades, and continues to climb. From 2001 to 2004 Marc Mauer concludes that the prison populations have grown by two million incarcerations (Mauer, 2004). Marc Mauer breaks down his numbers like this: one in every African American male between the ages of 25-34 is put behind bars on any day, and about 32% of the African American males born today will do some time in a prison during his lifetime (Mauer, 2004).…
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).…
Throughout history, Mass Incarceration has heavily affected groups of African- Americans living in the United States. The War on Drugs launched the increase of the imprisonment of young black males across the country. Although, The War on drugs began over 30 years ago, it is a battle that we Americans continue to fight today. It is a battle, we have not yet conquered. With the launch of Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs, thousands of people have been incarcerated for crimes that are not violent, but drug- related. Every year, the United States spends an excessive amount of money to lock up criminals, and often convict people who can benefit from rehabilitation and counseling as opposed to a three year sentence. It is a substantial issue in…
Three major consequences or costs of mass incarceration is, one, sever social consequences. Another consequence is sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy. The third consequence is the ability to vote. These three consequences are severe enough where it affects America as a whole. Now, I will discuss each consequence in a little more detail. This will help in the answer of why these consequences are so detrimental to America. I will also, be summarizing the article the Sentencing Project’s (2013) policy brief which touches on major social interventions which helps with the mass incarceration problems we face…
According to the article, crime varies. In 1980, 182,000 people out of 13.4 million crimes were put into prison compared to 1998, with 615,000 people out of 12.4 million crimes sent to prison. The number of crime has decreased, but the number of people sent to jail has significantly increased. These numbers are highly due to the stricter laws against drug trade, but the number of black men who dropped out of high school prove that the penal system promotes inequality. In 1980, 15% of black males were sent to prison compared to 5% white males. Nineteen years later, 40% of black males were incarcerated compared to 10% white males. Government agencies seem to have a trend in who to arrest, and which neighborhoods to target, because it is the only explanation for the drastic increase in black males. This is a clear vision of inequality within the penal…
The use of incarceration as a system of discipline or punishment dates back to medieval times. For hundreds of years, critics and punitive experts within our society have studied, researched, and made changes to the physical punishment methods and restored it with incarceration. The passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 gave a crime control perspective that increasing arrests and punishments for drug offenses to have a profound impact on correctional populations and minorities (D.L. MacKenzie). Today, the U.S. has more jails and prisons than there are colleges and universities. In 2010, there were 2.3 million prisoners in the United States (C. Ingraham). There are simply not enough correctional officers to counter the smuggling…