Incarceration: Flip or Flop African Americans make up almost 15% of the population in the United States, yet they make up 40% of the population of incarcerated individuals. This is only one of several features that produces the corruption and failure of our system of punishment. According to a survey conducted in Grand Rapids, out of 25 people surveyed 20 of them knew someone who had been incarcerated (Poeder). One of the people surveyed that also was incarcerated themselves, replied that the system was “setup to fail” (Poeder). The United States has only about 5% of the population of the world yet we have a quarter of the world's ratio of people in cages. During this essay I will prove that our system of imprisonment is a disturbing, silent …show more content…
According to NAACP (National Association for the Advancement for Colored People) “Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population.” (Criminal Justice Fact). These inappropriate numbers of ethnicity is a disturbing, racist failure that we live in every single day. The next feature is the overpopulation of incarcerated individuals inside prisons. Ever since the “War on Drugs” the population of people behind bars has skyrocketed to the point where prisons are becoming overcrowded. According to AFSC;
“But beginning in the 1970s, a number of political and economic factors gave rise to the prison boom, which was to bring the nation to the age of mass incarceration, which in turn would have far reaching and sometimes devastating impacts on those affected… According to the Bureau for Justice Statistics, the number of adult federal and state prison inmates increased from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 502 per 100,000 in 2009 — an increase of 261 percent.” (The Growing Problems).
This increase is also bad for citizens, having more individuals serving their sentences costs more to taxpayers. According to American Legislative Exchange
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Government Accountability Office (GAO), warned that the growing population of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) threatens to result in increasingly negative effects for prisoners, staff and the prison system’s infrastructure.” (Gilna). Overcrowding in prisons is becoming more common and less unacceptable.
Another reason why our system is failing, is that we have private prisons that profit from crime by housing prisoners. Private prison systems like the CCA actually spend money corrupting the government so they can have more profit. Here is what ThinkProgress found out about this corruption;
“According to JPI, the private prison industry uses three strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and networking. The three main companies have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts. CCA has spent over $900,000 on federal lobbying and GEO spent anywhere from $120,000 to $199,992 in Florida alone during a short three-month span this year.”
According to statistical data found in the Bureau for Justice Records, there are a number of problems that most prisons in the country face. The records indicate that the number of adult federal and state inmates increased from `139% in `1980 to 260% (Walker, 1999). As a natural default, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This in itself brings about one of the major problems that are faced in modern incarceration which is overcrowding in most prison facilities. The number of offenders in the country has increased rapidly over time while the country prison system has not really been able to cope with this rapid increase. Prisons intended for one or two inmates are now crowded with more than fifty individuals. Because of this most prisons are overcrowded and most of the facilities available are unable to cater for the needs of all the prisoners (Siegel, 2009).
The U.S prison population rose by 700% from 1970 to 2005. A rate far outpacing that of general population growth and crime rates.
An organization known as ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, is a group that is known for the inclusion of corporations into the drafting of laws. Laws such as “Three strikes and you’re out” and “Mandatory minimum sentence” have greatly affected the American prison system. By creating these laws, prisons stay full for longer. This is beneficial to many corporations involved in ALEC, like the CCA, because it profits off of the success of their private prisons. This idea messes up the prison system because it encourages prisons to bring in more inmates and keep the prisons full. In fact, the prison labor industry has got so large that it is too late to try and stop it because there are so many businesses that depend on the cheap labor.
As of 2015, 2.7% of adults in the United States were under correctional control, the lowest rate since 1994, however that is still roughly 6.7 million adults (Kaeble & Glaze, 2016). While the correctional population has declined, correctional facilities in the United States are still grossly overcrowded, with many facilities at or surpassing capacity. A report in 2010 by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation showed that on average, facilities were at 175% capacity (Brown, 2010). However, as of midnight on October 31st, 2017 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported that their facilities, on average, were 132% occupied (Brown, 2017). Not only is prison overcrowding a burden on the facilities themselves, but also on the inmates. Prison overcrowding, that is, housing more inmates than the facility can humanely facilitate (Haney, 2006), places a strain on all resources throughout the correctional facility, including on the healthcare that’s offered, educational programs, and most dramatically on the physical space available to house inmates (Ekland-Olson, 1983).
Although we would like to believe the world is not as racially charged in 2013 as it was in the 1960s, a look in our penal system would show that minorities are still arrested and incarcerated at a higher rate than whites. The United States has experienced a rise in its prison population over the last 40 years and our incarceration rate is nearly 5 times higher than any other country. Even though 13% of the US population are African American males, they make up 38% of the prison population. Contributing factors to these numbers are mandatory minimum sentences, high crime and poverty areas, and lack of rehabilitative resources within our system (p.77-78).
Throughout history into today, there have been many problems with our prison system. Prisons are overcrowded, underfunded, rape rates are off the charts, and we as Americans have no idea how to fix it. We need to have shorter sentences and try to rehabilitate prisoners back to where they can function in society. Many prisoners barely have a high school education and do not receive further education in jail. Guards need to pay more attention to the well being of the inmates and start to notice signs of abuse and address them. These are just a few of the many problems in our prison systems that need to be addressed.
Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a huge surge in the number of individuals in jail and in prison. Evidence suggests the mass imprisonment policy from the last 40 years was a horrible catastrophe. Putting more people in prison not only ruined lives, it disrupted families, prevented ex-prisoners to find housing, to get an education, or even a good job. Regrettably, the United States has a higher percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is increasing exponentially. The expense produced by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. Although people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. By researching mass incarceration, I hope to get society to understand that incarcerating an individual not only effects the family, but we will look at the long term consequences on society and how the United States can remain safe and, at the same time, undo much of the damage that results from large-scale imprisonment.
Mass Incarceration in the United States has been a large topic of choice because rapid growth in the prison and jail populations, the long sentences the inmates face, and the inability for some inmates to incorporate themselves back into society. Since the 1970’s the U.S. prison population quadrupled from 158 to 635 people per 100,000, causing the U.S. to gain the title of country with the highest incarceration rate. (Massoglia, Firebaugh, & Warner, 2013, p. 142; Muller, 2012) As the growth of the U.S prison and jail population rapidly increased, so did the growth of the three major contributors to that population – African Americans, Hispanics, and whites – with African American and
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
“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison” (Alexander, 2012). The numbers tell the story better than words can: black people are more likely to go to prison than any other race in the United States, shown by the fact that more than 60% of the prison population is composed of people of color (The Sentencing Project, 2016). These statistics can be traced back to several different cause, including the Era of Jim Crow and the War on Drugs, both of which led to higher policing in minority areas.
As we all know – there are tons of social issues within the entire world that Criminal Justice Practitioners deal with, most likely, on a daily basis. One of the many social issues I’ve chosen is Prison Overcrowding.
The Unites States of America’s prison system is a flawed mess. To open the eyes of our government we must first take a stand against unlawful government decisions, and show support for the greater good of society. What are our own tax-dollars paying for, what are the flaws in the justice/prison system, why is overcrowding in prisons causing tension, and what are ways our society and government can rebuild the system that has been destroyed over the years? Most criminals in prisons are not a danger to our society because they commit crimes just to use jail as a shelter, causing the overcrowding of prisons and wasting away of what we really should be paying for.
Currently, many prisons are beginning to be run by private corporations. If a company is running a prison then they need prisoners to stay in business. Around 1 in every 107 Americans is currently being housed in a prison. The United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population yet 25 percent of its prisoners(ACA, 2008). This is the easiest way to maintain a large prison population is by maintaining the current drug war. The largest private prison company in the United States is Corrections Corp. of America(ACA, 2008). In the last twenty years, CCA has donated nearly $5 million dollars to certain political
These measures were taken to ensure public safety but are now posing a problem for our correctional facilities. Overcrowding and budgets are among the problems brought about by these measures. Both the state and federal correctional population throughout the United States have steadily seen significant increases in their population, every year for the past decades. Based on the census found on the Bureau of Justice website, the data collected between June 30th 2000 to December 30th 2005 showed that prisoners held in custody between federal and state prisons increased by 10%. (“Bureau of Justice Statistics”, p.1 -2)
Privatizing prisons may be one way for the prison population to get back under control. Prisons are overcrowded and need extra money to house inmates or to build a new prison. The issue of a serious need for space needs to be addressed. “As a national average, it costs roughly $20,000 per year to keep an inmate in prison. There are approximately 650,000 inmates in state and local prisons, double the number five years ago. This costs taxpayers an estimated $18 billion each year. More than two thirds of the states are facing serious overcrowding problems, and many are operating at least 50 percent over capacity. (Joel, 1988)” Private prisons may be for profit, but if they can solve the issue of cost then it may be a