Prison Incarceration

The prison population in the United states has increased 500% in thirty years. Since the 1970s social inequality has impacted the American prison system. America has 2.3 million people in prison which is “five times more than England and twelve times more than Japan.” We want to know why our prison population is growing and what are the core reasons. Has our society caused mass incarceration? Is it based on conflict theory or social stratification? Our research will include a comprehensive analysis of sentencing guidelines from the war on drugs , race, and poverty and respectively its impact on mass incarceration. “The United States has the dubious distinction of leading every other nation in both the largest total

The United States accounts for 5% of the world population, but our prison population makes up 25% of the world’s (Nagin, 2014). African Americans account for the largest percent of our prison population because they have the highest incarceration rate compared to other races. This essay will argue that African Americans are incarcerated at a higher rate than Caucasians. Proven by statistical data, there are grounds to establish that the racial disparity in incarceration rates is a social problem. To address this social problem, public policy should be implemented by the Federal Government.

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).

Mass incarceration became a public policy issue in the United States in the early 2010s. Now in 2016, there is still much debate over the country’s incarcerated population and incarceration rate. The nation has the highest incarcerated population in the world, with 2,217,947 inmates, in front of China with 1,649,804. America incarcerates 693 inmates per 100,000 residents, only the African island nation Seychelles incarcerates at a higher rate, with 799 for every 100,000 residents. The problem of mass incarceration continues to be assessed in various contexts. Recent analyses are historian Elizabeth Hinton’s From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and criminologist Dr. Elizabeth Brown’s “Toward Refining the Criminology of Mass Incarceration: Group-Based Trajectories of U.S. States, 1977—2010.”

Current trends show that incarceration numbers continue to grow higher each year. The United States rate of incarceration is the leading nation in rates of incarceration. Other countries have much lower percentages than the U.S. does. There a implications because of inmates reentering the prison system within three years after being released. In 1994 51.8% of inmates that had been released were back in the prison system (U.S. prison populations: Trends and implications, n.d.). Other implications

In his book “Punishment and Inequality in America” Western discusses the underlying racial disparities that have lead to a mass incarceration in the United States. He states that incarceration rates have increased by a substantial amount. The race and class disparities viewed in impromesment are very large and class disparities have grown by a dramatic amount. In his book he argues that an increase in mass incarceration occured due to a significant increase in crime. The increase in mass incarceration can also be correlated with urban street crime that proliferated as joblessness in inner-city communities increased (Western, 2006). He also states that an increase in incarceration rates may be due to the changes in politics and policy which have intensified criminal punishment even though criminal offending did not increase. Although these are substantial reasons as to why incarceration has increased significantly in the US there are many underlying issues. The incarceration rates amongst young black men have increased the most in the United states, black men are more likely to go to prison than white and Hispanic men (Western, 2006). This may be largely due to factors such as unemployment, family instability, and neighborhood disorder which combine to produce especially high rates of violence among young black men in the United States (Western, 2006). A rise in incarceration rates may also be largely due to to increased drug arrests which represent the racial disparity.

In any given year now, incarceration rates has tripled with approximately 13 million people introduced to American jails in any given year. This increase in the prison population far outpaced the crime rate and the US population growth. Today, America has around 5% of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prison population.

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

The U.S. prison system is one of many great controversies when compared to other correctional systems. America’s prison population has increased by 700% (2.4 million current inmates) since the start of the war on drugs in 1971. As a result of this “war”, people that fall into the racial minority have suffered as a direct consequence of unjust legislation. Our prison system is known for its overrepresentation of minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics. This unfortunately gives these groups of people a perennial negative stigma as a result. I argue that the U.S. prison industrial-complex emphatically displays signs of prejudice and racism and disproportionately incarcerates people of color at a rate higher than whites. Yes, there are skeptics who think “the left’s prison-complex” is wrong about their theory of mass incarceration but the statistical data and concrete facts in support of my argument are very compelling.

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.

Mass incarceration is a large-scale problem that has emerged in recent decades. The reason for this lies in new laws and policies that crackdown on drug-related offenses. Since these policies have taken effect, the percent of people in prisons and jails has grown by 500% (The Sentencing Project). The 2015 population of inmates in either prison or jail was 2,173,800, this makes the United States the world leader in number of incarcerated people (The Sentencing Project). However, the rise in jail and prison populations has not spanned equally among races. The population of prisoners in 2015 was 1,476,847, with 523,000 of those prisoners being African American (The Sentencing Project). African Americans make up 13% of the population in the United

“Beginning in the 1970s, the prison population began swelling, climbing steadily through 2009. Now, this nation imprisons more of its residents, 2.2 million, than any other.The United States jails a quarter of the world 's prisoners, although it contains only 5 percent of the world 's population. The statistics are sobering for a republic that celebrates justice, fairness and equality as the granite pillars of its democracy. (Walsh, 2016).” The underlying foundations of America 's mass-imprisonment arrangements are tangled ever, legislative issues, social clash and imbalance. It 's a pretzel-rationale maze, and to fathom it or even disentangle it, investigators say, will require clearing, head-on changes. However, those early endeavors in the long run exploded backward, Hinton said, throwing “ "low-income youth — whose families are on welfare, who live in public housing projects, who attend urban public schools, and who have family members with arrest records — as potentially delinquent." ( Walsh, 2016). With regards to the criminal equity framework, examiners say that lessening imbalance essentially would require an update of the country 's sentencing framework, better preoccupation and avoidance programs, jail changes, more successful policing arrangements and preparing, and complete support for previous detainees attempting to shape stable lives. The prison system is unfair because of the mass incarceration of blacks, the war on drugs, the population and the prison

Members of the immigrant and juvenile population also find themselves being classified in this group, but this section focuses on how the incarceration rates disproportionately affect members of the African American community. Many Americans are serving time in prison on non-violent offense charges. As the rates of incarceration rise, so too has the number of private prisons increased from holding 7000 inmates in 1990 to holding 126,000 in 2010 (Brickner and Diaz). African Americans make up half of the state and federal prison population, “There are currently more black people under correctional control–either in prison or jail or on probation or parole–than were in slavery in 1850” (Jackson et al.). Because of the aforementioned war on drugs, blacks are targeted, arrested, and incarcerated on drug possession charges at higher rates than any other demographic “… there were 193 white American prison inmates per 100,000 whites, 688 Hispanic prison inmates per 100,000 Hispanic, and 1,571 African American prison inmates per 100,000 African American” (Irwin, Schiraldi and Ziedenberg 137). The ones who benefited from this disproportion were the private prison industries who took advantage of the influx of prisoners being supplied to the public sector prison because of the war on drugs. The members of the black community become the

Currently there are over 1.5 million individuals in the United States that are behind bars. The highest population of incarcerated individuals in the world. Since the passing of the War on Drugs and Crime under President Nixon the rate at which individuals especially African Americans are incarcerated has dramatically increased. 1 in 3 African American males are expected to be incarcerated at sometime within their lifetime. With the War on Drugs and different acts such as mandatory minimums and three strike policies in place the rate at which people are incarcerated will continue increasing at alarming rates. This paper will further explore these issues and ways in which this issue can be solved.