Causes Of Mass Incarceration

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law

Mass incarceration is defined as the drastic increase of people in prison and/or jail, and the high rates of racial disparities in prison. From slavery to the Jim Crow laws, now to mass incarceration. People identify how history seems to be repeating itself, but not being as straightforward as it was in the 1800s. Because of the “war on drugs” specifically people of color have been incarcerated for minor crimes. Most of these people cannot afford a decent lawyer so they have to plead out and do their time in prison. The problem with this is that when these people get out they cannot get a job or get housing because they have been labeled as a criminal. This affects the poverty percentage because when people are incarcerated they do not have an access for education or real world skills that they need when they get out. Therefore, when they are released from prison they resort to crime as a source of income because it is so hard for them to earn a job, or they even become homeless because they cannot live in government housing and have no place to go. Because of the stereotype that America has placed on blacks and hispanics, they become more targeted for police searches than white people, which heavily influences whether they are arrested and processed.

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

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 “War on Drugs” established that the impact of incarceration would be used as a weapon to combat the illegal drug problem in this country. Unfortunately, this war against drugs has fallen disproportionately on black Americans. “Blacks constitute 62.6% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons in 1996, whereas whites constituted 36.7%. The drug offender admissions rate for black men ranges from 60 to an astonishing 1,146 per 100,000 black men. In contrast, the white rate begins at 6 and rises no higher than 139 per 100,000 white men. Drug offenses accounted for nearly two out of five of all black admissions to state prisons (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” The disproportionate rates at which black drug offenders are sent to prison originate in racially disproportionate rates of arrest.

Thomas Riggs reported inside of the Gale Encyclopedia, “Racial profiling by U.S. law enforcement agencies has resulted in higher arrest rates among African Americans.” African Americans found to be the majority inside of prisons. The problem becomes why are minorities left to serve time behind bars more often. An answer to this question would be nonviolent drug crimes are the major influence of this epidemic. From decades ago during the 80s, a new drug evolved into a popular wave that caused thousands in poverty stricken neighborhoods affected but its repercussions. The drug dealers in these neighborhoods sold the drug, crack, but soon after were arrested and sentenced to jail for unimaginable years for one incident of a crime. There are reports of African Americans being more likely to be sent to jail on the account of drugs than Caucasians. You find out that white people produce and sell the same drugs as the minority, but results from facing the judicial system one race of people will have leanen consequences than the other. Systems from centuries ago are continually being implemented, whether from being written or simply just because of history repeating itself with its social

For the issue of Mass Incarceration, addressing certain policies that allow for systematic racial inequalities to happen would be a first step in the right direction for this nation. The Obama administration has been working on reforming these injustice policies over his term, with the most recently successful one in 2010, The Fair Sentencing Act. The 2010 Act would eliminate minimum sentencing for those caught with crack, “Eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and cutting back on excessively lengthy sentences; for example, by imposing a 20-year maximum on prison terms.” (Sentencing Project). Minority population are more likely to possess and use crack cocaine than whites. Crack tends to be cheaper, so it's found more in poor, undereducated,

IT has been said that ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’. This maxim known in some form around the world has stood for a relatively simple meaning, that, regardless of the ‘intent’ behind an action, it is the result of that action that matters. Now, this can be applied directly to the problem that has plagued the United States of America since the mid-1970s, that of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is the ‘high rate of incarceration in the United States… that is markedly above the historical and comparative norm for societies this type’(Western 28). This produces a ‘systematic imprisonment of whole groups of the population’(Western 29), specifically the black and brown communities found

Marie Gottschalk’s article, “The Third Reconstruction,” explains that mass incarceration is inflated by the fact that many people are in prison for many years for nonviolent and petty offenses, especially nonviolent drug offenses. A significant majority of nonviolent cases involve poor people and black people convicted of drug related crimes. In of 2013, out of the “853,215 people on parole in the U.S, 32%, (approximately 273,029 people), had a drug charge as their most serious offense.” A young adult convicted of a nonviolent drug offense involving a substance as normalized as marijuana could be imprisoned and return to society with their rights as a citizen taken from them. Race and class both play substantial roles in determining the demographics of the population being punished and stripped of their rights. Police will often go looking around low income neighborhoods where people of color make up the majority of the population when searching for possible drug offenders, but they’ll rarely ever visit an upper middle class or upper class predominantly white college dormitory to do the same thing; chances are, the cops would find a whole lot of drugs and illegal substances in these dorms. The disturbing fact that a disproportionate number of Blacks and Latinos are heavily criminalized for nonviolent and petty

The United States currently over-incarcerates its citizens, and it is not morally justified because it is unsustainable, inhumane, and the product of unethical policies. Approximately 2.3 million people are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons, juvenile correctional facilities, and jails (Wagner & Rabuy, 2015). Before continuing a practice that affects such a large number of our citizens (not just those in prison, but their families and communities as well), we need to ask the question: Is this working? Is it ethical to continue a practice that may be doing more harm than good?

The war on drugs is also apart of the mass incarceration problem. Laws on drugs, such as Crack and Cocaine, are written to be somewhat “color blind,” but is often times not the case. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act instituted a 5 year, without parole,

Mass incarceration has been disguised to look like a safety measure to get the “bad guys” off the street when in reality it is just a warehouse for African Americans. Once labeled as a criminal all of ones rights are stripped of them, reflecting the same principles that we saw during slavery, expect now that person becomes a slave of the state instead of to another person. This label makes going to school, getting a job, and voting, almost impossible, and without proper programs to rehabilitate these individuals into society, they will never become a productive part of society again. Rios (2011) showed how mass incarceration played a role in the everyday lives of these boys, all of them were asked to write the names of people, friends or family, that were incarcerated they all knew at least six. These boys watched their friends and family get locked up for petty crimes, do their crime and get thrown back into society without a way to improve their situation. Many tried to change but fighting against constant criminalization is hard and many fall back into the cycle of crime and mass incarceration. These young boys see no other option, the idea of college is a goal but it’s extremely foreign and the role models that these boys have to look up to are usually the men that just got out

Demographics have also been an extended complication to mass incarceration for instances when compared to ethnicity and upbringings. The probabilities of being incarcerated between blacks and Hispanics is much larger than whites and they could receive longer convictions. “It does not make sense for a nonviolent drug offender to be getting 20 years, 30 years, in some cases life, in prison,” “That’s not serving anybody” (Washington Post). President Obama mentioned this while he spoke to ex-offenders and listened to their stories. Although it seemed President Obama was touched by these ex-offenders who were given

(1) The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 which congress passed was a remedy that would end the on slot of crime and Violence which was becoming ramped in city streets and spilling over to urban neighborhoods. The enacting of these laws were the direct results of the mass prosecution of American Minorities with African Americans defendants being charged with crack offences, while white offenders were usually indicted on powder cocaine possession, Because making the sentencing for African Americans harsher than that of their white counterparts. (1) The sentencing disparities were broken up in tiers between crack cocaine and powder cocaine the inequality of sentencing was for example If an African American is arrested for possession of 5 grams of crack his sentence is will start at a mandatory minimum sentence of (5, 10, 15) years in prison where as their counterparts 500 grams of powder (5, 10, 15) years in prison. The difference is astronomical and would the main contributor to the pandemic of mass incarceration of minorities. Judicial Racial bias keeps more people of color in prisons and on probation than ever before a direct result of

I googled how some of the incarceration centers in Norway look and they are nice. One of the pictures also had a caption stating part of the reason why the prisoners get different treatment is because they will eventually reconnect with society because a murder charge only gets them 21 years in prison. For here in the states maybe just getting rid of solitary confinement would be good because life sentences do exist