Incarceration Of The United States

women has increased significantly, increasing at a rate double to the rate of male incarceration since 1980 (Covington & Bloom, 2006). Braithwaite, Treadwell and Arriola note that incarcerated women have historically been a forgotten population, and despite the rapid growth of the population, their needs have continued to be ignored (2005). In addition to the stigma that comes with being or having been incarcerated,

Once upon a time, Americans could proudly say that America was the land of freedom and opportunity. As the Pledge of Allegiance states, “One nation under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” However, under the current criminal justice system, more and more people lose their liberties because of the crimes they have committed. According to Roy Walmsley, a consultant of the United Nations and Associate of the International Center for prison studies, “In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represent about 4.4 percent of the world 's population, it houses

Mass Incarceration is a huge problem in United States culture. No other country in the world incarcerates its population the way that America does. “The U.S. incarcerates more people than any country in the world – both per capita and in terms of total people behind bars. The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet it has almost 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population.” Worse yet the majority of the incarcerated individuals belong to a minority group despite not participating in illegal activity any more frequently than their white counterparts. Is the United States criminal justice system racist and if so what is the cause behind this racism. After the end of slavery, many southern black Americans traveled to the north to escape endless violence and discrimination. In the south they could only find low paying field jobs whereas in the northern cities there were steady factory jobs promised as well as the hope that discrimination could be escaped. The northerners while against slavery were not egalitarian and were not in favor of hoards of black Americans surging into their cities and taking jobs away from the white working poor. The need for social control by white Americans only grew with the population of black Americans living in the cities and working in the factories. The rhetoric of “law and order” first came about in the late 1950s as white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was encouraged by southern governors and law enforcement.

The vast societal effects from mass incarceration have caused an increasingly alienated population to form in the U.S., which can be broadly classified in the dual areas of lasting effects and impacts to the family unit. First, the lasting effects of high incarceration rates are that they impact the rights of the convict, particularly African Americans. For example, noted civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander posits that the long term effects of mass incarceration operate to deny black Americans the future right to volte, the ability to obtain public benefits, the possibility to sit on juries, and ultimately the opportunity to secure gainful employment (Steiker, 2011), Moreover, professor Alexander argues that this mass incarceration together with the prior Jim Crow laws and the past practice of slaery in the U.S. operate to ensure that black Americans remain s subordinate class of citizens defined primarily by their race (Steiker, 2011).

The United States of America is phrased by many, as being “the land of the free.” Yet, the Unites States currently has the highest per capita prison population than any other country. The United States makes up only 5% of the world’s population and of that 5%, 25% of our overall nation’s population is currently incarcerated. A few factors that attribute to our high rates of incarceration include, sentencing laws: such as mandatory- minimum sentencing, lack of initial deterrence from crime, the war on drugs and the presence of recidivism. With our ever growing incarceration rates and the cost of housing individual offenders averaging $22,000 a criminal justice agenda. Recidivism refers to a person 's relapse into criminal behavior resulting in rearrests, reconviction or return to prison with or without a new sentence during a three-year period following the prisoner 's release (National Institute of Justice.) Many programs have been implemented in our prison system to help reduce the recidivism rates. Programs such as educational/ vocational programming, reentry programs, substance abuse programs and subsidized employment are among many programs in which have been proven effective. Yet, due to costs deficits, the clock is ticking to find evidence based programs to invest in. So, the question currently being sought after is, which method is most effective in reducing recidivism rates?

Mass incarceration has recently become a major problem within the United States. Although crime rates have dropped since the 1990s, incarceration rates have soared. This trend is largely associated with increased enforcement of drug-related crimes. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, this problem involves racial discrepancies when regarding these mass incarcerations. Incarcerations appear to be the most prominent throughout urban areas and the south, which happen to be the areas where African American males often reside or where racial politics are known to be apparent. In turn, this leads to disproportionate imprisonments. This problem requires immediate attention, but aspects of state and local politics have intensified incarcerations due a variety of factors, which include the state’s focus on the financial incentives that the federal war on drugs has created, the “tough on crime” stance that many politicians posses (largely republican), and the lack of rehabilitation services.

In the U.S. there has been a rise in incarcerations, the numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago despite the fact that crime is at historic lows. So what are we to make of the leap in time typically served for crimes in America’s society? Either the justice system was too lenient in the past, or the justice system is too strict now. Have we just now realized the real gravity of murder, or are we now overreacting? The United States currently over-incarcerates its citizens, prisoners have become part of the economy, manufacturing and assembling products for major corporations. Based on the research, it would be unethical to continue a trend of mass incarceration when the conditions are unsustainable, inhumane, and the product of unethical polices.

The United States has the highest prison population in the world, with over two million incarcerated (World Prison Brief, 2016), of whom many are juveniles. It is well documented that youths who enter this system are more likely to suffer a host of negative health and lifestyle outcomes, such as alcohol/drug abuse, high school dropout, and mental health problems. Such phenomena occur in stark contrast with the aims of the US juvenile justice system, which supposedly intends to help offending youths re-assimilate back into society as productive citizens. As previously mentioned, incarceration often leads to poor mental health, which when combined with the conditions of confinement significantly raises the rates of suicide and

Mass incarceration alludes to the investigation which ought to be clarified as exceedingly elevated pace of imprisonment among African Americans men and Latino males from troubling neighborhoods. Many will say it’s from poor families and when they take the males, it weakens the family even more. One of the main reasons for mass incarceration is to have control of the system and African American’s after slavery was annihilated. One main issue about mass incarceration would be that if an African American student drops out of high school they are more likely to end up in prison rather than a white individual.

Some of the children become dependent on the government sustenance. Incarcerated women often find that their actions hurt their family “especially of women, destroys the family network. When the men got to prison, potential role models are lost. When women go to prison, families most often fall apart” (Hotelling) while in an institution they might never see their children. As statistics continuously provides that children lived with and cared for by their

America was founded on the idea of a social caste system. From the start of this nation, African Americans were placed at the bottom of this system. After Jim Crow, the criminal justice system took the place of this overt social separation. Minorities are wrongfully convicted day after day as perpetrators who do not abided by the American founding principles. From hundreds of years ago, African Americans were the backbone or the labor behind the masterpiece of this nation. Social status of this country truly separates the wealthy from the impoverished.

In Trump’s America, it is difficult not to be distracted by the shiny objects presented, and look at real problems that face American society. One such problem is the history and ongoing effects of poverty in the United States. Even though it has been at the forefront of political discussion since Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty during his 1964 State of the Union address, poverty has yet to be successfully eradicated. Using the three parts of the Sociological Imagination, linking past to present, linking microsociology to macrosociology, and recognizing the role of power, research can explain why one of the richest nations to exist has such a deeply troubling issue so ingrained in its history.

There are over 2million people incarcerated today in the United States and Statistics show that the rates every

The United States incarceration system is a structural foundation of punishment in which is formed by robust authoritarian power. The United States criminal justice system is not an institution to be underestimated, as it represents the highest incarceration rate of all world nations at a staggering 700 inmates per 100 thousand citizens (Krisberg, 7). Based on the social and political structure of democracy in the United States, it is argued that incarceration systems should follow the same roots of equality and freedom; however, the current format demonstrates otherwise. Currently, the United States criminal justice system faces issues of inhumane treatment due to the sheer overcrowding, which restrict inmates from just treatment within penitentiaries. This lack of equality standards was argued in the 2011 court case, Brown v. Plata, which California prison systems were forced to decrease prisons overcapacity rate from 175% to 137.5% due to the overwhelming amount of inmate mistreatment (Koehler, 3). In the decision of Brown v. Plata (2011), supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy argued dignity should be an organizing principle in the United States justice system and demonstrated in all correctional facilities. Anthony Kennedy, along with guest lecturer, Jonathan Simon characterize dignity as a fundamental piece to the incarceration system, and without it, inmates are victimized to cruel and inhumane treatment. Dignity does not consist of domination and unequal treatment of

Have you ever questioned about the justice in the United States? Stevenson states that, “Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today” (15). United States is a modern country that doesn’t serve justice to her citizen? 2.3 million prisoners are just embarrassing the whole country. You might want to know how bad the justice system is and how the heck cause 2.3 million prisoners to be in prison. Our system is defined by an error; which serve justice to the rich and injustice to the poor. It’s common to know that poor and color people are more likely to be convicted if they commit a small crime. We created a system like “Three strikes and you’re out” to show how strong we can be, and as the result of that, we have created the mass incarceration that no other countries can’t do. We are no better than a beast. We condemned the poor because we know they are helpless and we condemned the color people because of racial bias. What does justice really stand for? The justice should be changed in order to prevent mass incarceration in the future and focus on a fairness when it comes to trial.