Cause Of Mass Incarceration In The United States

This paper discusses three critical issues in the criminal justice system. It touches on the general issues of punishment philosophies, sentence decision making, and prison overcrowding and focused more specifically on the negative effects of each. Highlighted in this informational paper is the interrelated nature of the issues; each issue affects and is affected by the others. Data and information has been gathered from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Amnesty International, the NAACP Legal Defense

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

We can date the United States criminal justice policies all the way back to the 17th Century. Although it is nothing compared to what we have today, there have been improvements along the way. One of the major reform needed in our corrections system are the war on drugs and overcrowded prison. The history of corrections in the U.S. has been seen through four major eras known as the Penitentiary, Reformatory, Reintegration, and Retributive Era. Each era has tried to explore the best way to deal with people who have broken the law. Based on the ideas of each era, we’ll explore which reform needs to be implemented.

When you think of mass incarceration it is imperative to look at the causes that affect minorities. One major thing that produced an increase in mass incarceration is the war on drugs. The war on drugs has impacted minorities in a major way. The war on drugs pushed policymakers to structure laws that were targeting underprivileged individual mainly minorities group. In addition, “The deinstitutionalisation of people with mental illnesses, and punitive sentencing policies such as three-strike laws (mandating life imprisonment for third offences of even relatively minor felonies) and mandatory minimum sentences for specific offence, even for some first0time offenders undoubtedly helped to both launch mass incarceration and keep it going” (Wilderman, & Wang, 2017, p. 1466). The war on drugs came during a time when crack cocaine became widespread in the black community. The popularity of crack cocaine became prevalent and accessible for many low-income individuals. Therefore, the high rate of crime that was induced by the crack epidemic forced many jobs to leave the communities. However, the structuring of laws put more emphasis on crack cocaine than powder cocaine. Not to mention, crack cocaine is prevalent in minority communities, and powder cocaine is present in the majority community. According to Martensen (2012), “Not only does this deny accessible goods and services to local residents, it likewise decreases the local job opportunities available for community members” (p. 214). Consequently, many African American called on the police to take action against the same people that looked just like them. Crutchfield, & Weeks (2015) states, “Some of the changes during this period of increased incarceration that disadvantaged people of color coming into the justice system were implemented with the help and support of African American political leadership” (p. 109). Therefore, lawmakers had to come up with a solution to address the issue. Law-makers created laws that put emphasis on arresting drug dealers for selling drugs. These small-time drug dealers were becoming a hazard to the community. However, the laws begin to cause harm to all that looked brown or black whether

In, “The Caging of America”, by Adam Gopnik explains the problems in the in the American criminal justice system focusing more on the prison system. Some of the struggles that Gopnik states in his article are mass incarceration, crime rate, and judges giving long inappropriate sentencings to those with minor crimes. He demonstrates that inmates are getting treated poorly than helping them learn from their actions. Using facts and statistics, Gopnik makes his audience realize that there is an urgent need of change in the American prison system. The main idea of Gopnik’s article is that the prison system needs to improve its sentencing laws because prisons are getting over crowed. Gopnik’s argument is valid because there is a problem in the sentencing laws that has caused a malfunction in the prison system as a whole.

In his chapter on “Assessing the Prison Experiment,” he explained that the increase of crime rate is not the sole reason that mass incarceration occurs, and it was also because the courts and the legislature did indeed became “tougher” on offenders (Currie 14). Currie discussed the circumstances of the war on drugs, which was launched by President Richard Nixon. He indicates that the incarceration rate and sentence longevity were increased dramatically since the beginning of the war on drugs. Some of these offenders were given a sentence for more than ten years without the possibility of parole, which is taking away any chance of the prisoner being released before the completion of his or her sentence. Locking people up is a failed attempt to descend the crime rate, and the adoption of mandatory minimum sentencing law is the root of mass incarceration. The government should reconsider the current sentencing laws and reform the correctional system in order to solve the current mass incarceration problem. Furthermore, establishing more community-based programs for youth offenders and initiating early release programs are excellent alternatives to resolve the issue of mass incarceration from both long-term and short-term perspectives, respectively.

The Cause of Mass Incarceration mass incarceration is a big problem in the United States, it has affected our country multiple ways whether it gives our country a bad reputation with the highest number of incarcerated in the world, or it gives us a bad image and makes seem as if the United States is a dangerous and terrible place to live in. The rate of incarcerated has increased from 300,000 prisoners in the early 1970’s to 2.3 million today. Some of the causes of mass incarceration involve the war on drugs and racial discrimination. The war on drugs is a big factor in mass incarceration, as it is said in ACL.org, “Drug arrests now account for a quarter of the people locked up in America” This means that more than half a million people are in prison due to use or possession of drugs. Another big factor to consider for a cause of mass incarceration is racial discrimination according to ACL.org “One in three black men can expect to be incarcerated in his lifetime. Compare that to one in six Latino males and one in 17 white males.” This a very big difference between the three different races blacks having the highest probability of being incarcerated compared to whites. These are not the only factors of mass incarceration in our judicial system, there are many more flaws in our judicial system that has caused it to overflow prisons throughout the states. Therefore, what is the biggest flaw in our criminal justice system? That is causing the majority of incarcerations in the U.S.

The state of Washington passed the first three strikes law in 1993. Anyone convicted of three separate violent felonies must be sentenced to life in prison without a chance for parole. Then on March 8th, 1994, California followed by enacting the law that sanctioned a sentence of 25 years to life for a third felony conviction. Contrary to Washington, the California law counts nonviolent felonies, such as burglary and theft as “strike” offences; by 2001, over 50,000 criminals had been penalized under the new law, far more than any other state, with almost a quarter of the prisoners facing a minimum of 25 years

With regard to solutions, considerable attention has been paid to the federal prison system. Between 1980 and 2013, the federal prison population increased by 790% from 24,640 to 219,298. Since peaking, the number of federal prisoners has lowered to 190,452 today. The decline is the result of criminal justice reform efforts in the past few years, such as former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s modification of the Department of Justice’s charging policies in 2010 and the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s passage of Amendment 782 (“drugs minus two”) in 2014. In spite of their moderate success, such responses have failed to

The United States’ prison population is currently number one in the world. As a nation that proclaims freedom for citizens, the United States houses more than one million more persons than Russian and almost one million more persons than China. Currently, the United States makes up five percent of the world’s population and imprisons twenty-five percent of the world’s inmate population. Drug offenders who committed no act of violence make up a large portion of the inmates in the United States. County, State, and Federal prisons are so over populated that the private sector has opened up corporate facilities to house convicted persons. The cost each year to hold a person rises, placing larger financial demands on the judicial system. The Judicial System of the United States should reevaluate the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders to alleviate the high number of people in the prison system.

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past forty years, and many Americans today tend to believe that the high levels of incarceration in our country stem from factors such as racism, socioeconomic differences, and drugs. While these factors have contributed to the incarceration rate present in our country today, I argue that the most important reason our country has such a high incarceration rate is the policy changes that have occurred since the 1970s. During this time, the United States has enacted policy changes that have produced an astounding rise in the use of imprisonment for social control. These policy changes were enacted in order to achieve greater consistency, certainty, and severity and include sentencing laws such as determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes laws (National Research Council 2014). Furthermore, I argue that mandatory sentencing has had the most significant effect on the incarceration rate.

Mass incarceration has been an issue in the United States since the start of the War on Drugs, because of the political agenda attached to the “tough on crime” regimen thousands of people have suffered as a consequence. The solution to this is one that can only be possibly solved by approaching through several angles. The ten steps presented by Michael Tonry, are an innovative and have merit to some extent. However, mass incarceration results from more than unjust sentencing laws, which is his main focus. If ever we are to resolve the issue, society and the criminal justice system must come together to completely reevaluate what we consider to be “tough on crime” and redefine the purpose of prisons, strictly punishment or rehabilitation. The focus has to shift from harsh sentencing, stigma, racial discrimination to a basic form of rehabilitation and reduction of the prison system in general. The criminal justice system has to do what they are actually meant to do and focus on rehabilitation measures, and when possible completely stop interaction with the prison system all together.

Mass Incarceration is a predicament in the U.S. because in the land of the free, there are more than two million people in prison. Prisons are homes to the majority of twenty-two percent of the U.S. population. The U.S. has a massive incarceration rate, seven hundred and sixteen per every one hundred thousand. The U.S. makes five percent of the world’s population and the third country in which most people live in but number one incarcerating humans.

Today, more than 2 million Americans are incarcerated in either a state facility, federal correctional facility or a local installation (Batey,2002). Due to longer sentences, incorporating harsh sentencing guidelines, and mandatory minimum punishments (NeSmith,2015). With each inmate costing taxpayers an average of $30,000 annually. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 were increased sentences for a broad range of offenses, as well as establishing federal penalties for most murders and a large number of other crimes already subject to state law (Batey,2002). In addition to reducing the discretion of state judicial systems; as well as 85 percent of sentence satisfaction and establishing a mandatory life sentence for those convicted of three serious violent crimes or drug offenses (NeSmith,2015). .

In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the