Sociological Effects Of Incarceration In America

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

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated; that is 60% of 30% of the African American population. African Americas are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. “Between 6.6% and 7.5% of all black males ages 25 to 39 were imprisoned in 2011, which were the highest imprisonment rates among the measured sex, race, Hispanic origin, and age groups." (Carson, E. Ann, and Sabol, William J. 2011.) Stated on Americanprogram.org “ The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison.” Hispanics and African Americans make up 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. (Henderson 2000). Slightly 15% of the inmate population is made up of 283,000 Hispanic prisoners.

Addressing Racial Disparities in Incarceration by Marc Mauer describes the current trends and impact of mass incarceration on colored communities. He precisely focuses on how the criminal justice system contributes to racial disparity within these communities and what changes need to be made to terminate the problem. Mauer explains that communities have very skewed ideas of how their criminal justice system works and that continues to divide the country based on race (2011, p. 88S). Mauer provides examples of racial bias in the three main pit stops of the criminal justice system starting with the officer who makes the arrest, followed by prosecution and finally the sentencing. Law enforcement officers frequently include implicit bias in regards to arrests and public policy decision, especially drug arrests, systematically

The United States is less the 5% of the world population but has almost 25% of the world’s prison population (Coates, 2015; Waldman, 2016). In the last 40 years, the number of American civilians imprisoned by the United States has increased 500%. (Mauer, 2011). However, this explosion in incarceration rates has not been evenly distributed throughout the American population (Waldman, 2016). While one in seventeen White men will be imprisoned in their lifetime, one in sixteen Latino men will face this fate and for Black men, the number is one in three (Mauer,2011). Neither the racial disparity in incarceration nor its scale was accidental (Coates, 2015). The mass incarceration of Black men in the United States was a direct result of the “War

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).

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).

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.

African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004)

In the prison system today, there has been an explosion of minorities being incarcerated for offenses that may not have gotten jail time if they had not been of a certain race. Although the overall numbers of incarcerations may have dropped just slightly for the first time in over 35 years, the amount of inmates

There are large racial disparities in incarceration and related detainments for African Americans. They are more likely to be under the supervision of the Department of Corrections than any other racial or ethnic group (H.West, Sabol, & Greenman, 2010). Institutional racism is believed to be the reason why African Americans, especially males, are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. On balance, the public believes that discrimination against black people is based on the prejudice of the individual person, correlates to the discrimination built into the nation’s laws and institutions (Pew’s Research Center, 2017). This belief is actually supported through several experimental studies that provide evidence that African Americans are to be seen as more criminal and threatening than others thus more likely to be arrested or even shot (Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003). Racism within the criminal justice system very much exists and is still relevant.

“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.

Incarceration rates are a definite proof that racial discrimination occurs. “Incarceration rates in the United States have risen sharply since 1980”, stated Filip Spagnoli, “the racial distribution of inmates in the U.S. is highly negative for black Americans. Whereas they only make up 12% of the total U.S. population, they represent more than 40% of inmates”

The Mass Incarceration in the United States is a major topic of discussion in our society and has raised many questions about our criminal justice system. There are few topics disputed as much in criminal justice as the relationship between race, ethnicity, and criminal outcomes. Specifically, the large disparities that minorities face regarding incarceration in our country. Minorities such as Hispanics and African Americans are sentenced at far higher rates than their white counterparts. There are multiple factors that influence this such as the judicial system, racial profiling by law enforcement, and historical biases (Kamula, Clark-Coulson, Kamula, 2010). Additionally, the defendants race was found to be highly associated with either a jail or prison sentence; with the “odds increasing 29 percent for black defendants, and 44 percent for Hispanic defendants” (King, Johnson, McGeever, 2010).

It may seem that incarceration rates are high for minorities at the federal level, but the rates are even higher at the state levels. African Americans are 5.6 times, and Hispanics are 1.8 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. Young African American and Hispanic males are leading incarceration rates for robbery, drug offenses, followed by murder and nonnegligent manslaughter. Whites show a significant lower number than of the Hispanics and blacks for the violent crimes, but lead incarceration rates for rape and sexual abuse. Whites also exceeded minorities in property crime (108,560), compared to blacks (78,197) and Hispanics (38,264) (E. Ann Carson and Daniela Golinelli, 2013). The demographics show that young minority males are being incarcerated at higher rates for majority of the main crimes