Mass Incarceration Analysis

There is no question that mass incarceration is a worldwide epidemic that needs to be discussed and addressed. America has five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prison population (Just Leadership USA, 2017) Various policies dated back centuries helped to create this problem of mass incarceration (Just Leadership USA, 2017). Today there are 2.3 million Americans incarcerated throughout the state, local, and federal jails (Just Leadership USA, 2017). New York City (NYC) houses approximately 10,000 inmates per year; 43.7% of these inmates are diagnosed with having a mental health disability (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). 54% of the inmates on Rikers Island are arrested for a minor offense and should be able to fight their cases from home; however, in many instances the family members are of low socio-economic status and unable to post bail (New York City Department of Corrections, 2017). Minor offenses include loitering, jumping the turnstiles, unnecessary Parole / Probation violations, and trespassing. In many instances, it is the mentally ill and homeless individuals who are arrested for trespassing as they elect to sleep in the subways instead of taking residency in a shelter. Moreover, many of these offenses does not have to result in an arrest. Police officers have the autonym to let some of these individuals go with a warning, desk ticket, and/or summons.

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.

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.

Mass incarceration is a term used by historians and sociologists to describe the substantial increase in the number of incarcerated people in the United States' prisons over the past forty years. Mass incarceration comparatively and historically have extreme rates of imprisonment among young African Americans. The united states imprisons more of its people than any of its country in the world. It has became a giant industry in the US. Mass incarceration has has been going on for decades amongst blacks and Latinos. People like rapper Meek Mill, and Kalief Browder are just a few that were arrested for petty crimes and sent to solitary confinement and or/sent to prison for petty crimes.

There are over one hundred twenty correctional facilities within America continuously growing over time. Within these facilities, more than two million prisoners are kept for committing various crimes during their lifetime. Out of the many people detained in these prisons, African Americans make up a significant portion of this population. Specifically, African American males contribute to its high number of inhabitants. From this information, it can be inferred that many families are left without providers and support. With this in mind, many poor neighborhoods and African American families lacking one or more providers struggle to maintain stability with jobs, financial dependency and

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness written by Michelle Alexander, presents the evidence of mass incarceration as a racial caste system. Alexander indicated that in the prison system, it is legal to discriminate against criminals practically in similar ways it was legal to discriminate against African Americans in the past. After being characterized as a felon, the previous ways of discrimination become legal, such as being denied numerous rights and are relegated to second-class status for the rest of their lives, permanently losing their right to vote, all the while, legally being denied work and not being able to engage in social programs in order to recover and restore what they have lost while in prison. In

Mass incarceration is a barrier effecting many minorities and communities. The growth in incarceration rates in the United States over the past 40 years is historically reoccurring. According to statistics the war on drugs is the number one drive into our prisons. It took a toll on how diligently police enforcement do their jobs, communities, citizens and our 14th amendment rights which addresses equal protection under the law to all citizens, the amendment also addresses what is called "due process", which prevents citizens from being illegally deprived of life, liberty, or property. Marijuana and Narcotics are the most common drug when it comes to distributing and possession. Drug use and abuse is an expensive problem in the United States, both financially and socially. Another factor that contribute to mass incarnation rates

In the world because some crimes are more severe than others, human beings decided that deprivation of liberty was the best form of punishment. The idea was to make prison a system for corrections, rather than detention alone. These ideas soon manifested in schools of philosophy and criminology were the notion was defended that punishment should be more lenient only at the cost of the greater good and aimed to change the behavior itself. Eventually these ideas gave birth to a new form of incarcerations designed to deter both rise in crime and to reform, based on self-reflection over the prisoner’s choices. Well then why are the incarcerations in the United States so high one might ask? In the United States

In our society, there are many stereotypes for every race and ethnicity, but one of the most prevalent throughout most cultures, even among African Americans, is that most black men are criminals. This is something that, although I understand is not true, has become so ingrained in our society that it made me act differently unintentionally. Even if only in insignificant situation, such as keeping a watchful eye on my belongings when a black person was around or by simply being fearful when a black man was walking behind me, I knew my actions were prejudiced. It’s difficult to break a stereotype when statistics seem to prove it correct. The documentary The 13th and Michelle Alexander describe how mass incarceration, partly resulting from the

Over time, policies have been changed and implemented into our government system to enforce change in our society. Implementation of policies is meant to create a boundary line to minimize crime and maintain safety in communities. Most of the times, those policies are strictly enforced to disproportionately target certain ethnic groups under actions of racism and stereotyping. But the consequences of crossing that line to go against government policies cost you more than a bailout fine, resulting in a variety of punishments in which the government and the public see fit for the given crime. To show a deep understanding of the concept, Melinda Anderson explains in “How Mass Incarceration Pushes Black Children Further Behind School,” how the

Mass incarceration has had a huge impact in the United States on a multitude of levels. The costs of many people in jail has had a huge impact on the U.S. economy. Using taxpayers money for funding mass incarceration has left less money for other programs much needed in our society, such as higher education and health care. Mass incarceration has broken up families and led to the decay of communities. Without a doubt, mass incarceration has impacted the lives of African Americans. This group of people has been the most affected by this phenomenon. (Human Rights Watch & Golvin, 2008).

America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, surpassing countries like China, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Though the United States is home to roughly a small percent of the global population, it holds at least a quarter of prison inmates. And the decreasing rate of incarceration appears to be underwhelming in the circumstances of the last few decades. In his book, Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and The Future of Prisons in America, Jonathan Simon, who is a professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, explores the policies that led to the mass imprisonments rates through the stories of prison conditions in California. Simon examines California court decisions by using Brown vs

While reading the How to End Mass Incarceration article and just thinking about the general conversations surrounding prison abolition, I thought a lot about why we tend to compare the United States to Scandinavian countries. Lancaster states at the end of the article that, “We should strive not for pie-in-the-sky imaginings but for working models already achieved in Scandinavian and other social democracies.” The author continues to argue that prison abolitionists are “out on a limb” and that their arguments are “implausible.” The author even goes as far to say that “abolitionism promises a heaven-on-earth that will never come to pass.” As a solution, the author suggests that we as the United States, need to look at examples of more effective and more progressive alternatives that have been successful elsewhere, like Scandinavia.

2 million people fill the prisons and jails in the U.S. The U.S. locks up more people than any other nation and 2.3 million people are confined in a correctional facility. This is what mass incarceration is. After slavery ended the system began to support the guilty and rich rather than the innocent and poor. African Americans were also arrested for minor crimes as simple as looking at white men or women in the eyes could led them to getting arrested. Plea bargains created a frightening sigma in regard to fighting for their innocence. The lasting effect of mass incarceration begins with the idea with war on drugs. A rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s led to President Nixon’s focus on targeting substance abuse. After he declared the

America is experiencing a social phenomenon commonly referred to as mass incarceration, in which the rate of incarceration has increased by, “...has grown by 700 percent.(Goffman)” in the last 40 years. Mass incarceration is difficult to digest in totality due to its immense nature, nuance and variety of answers with the essence of ‘could be right’. In order to decipher the complex puzzle of mass incarceration, we must establish borders to manifest clarifying order in the overwhelming clutter of data. Theory will assist in demonstrating how the general and specific facts of issues, in this case mass incarceration, relate by essentially declaring the philosophical frame of the interpretation. In order to gain a nuanced understanding of America’s mass incarceration, three relatively distinct theories will be applied: conflict theory, structural functionalism and symbolic interactionism. These theories are categorized by two approaches of sociological investigation- macrosociological, which emphasizes the analysis of social systems and populations on a large scale, and micro sociological, which emphasizes the impact individuals have on social structure.