The Importance Of Mass Incarceration

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.

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 United States’ ever-expanding prison and jail population has brought about many questions regarding the side-effects of mass incarceration, namely involving the effects on the children and families from which those incarcerated are removed. Regardless of the perspectives on the appropriate position of incarceration in the criminal justice system, imprisonment disrupts many positive and nurturing relationships between parents and their children. In fact, more than 1.7 million children have a parent who is incarcerated in a state or federal prison as of 2007 (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). These youths are at risk for developing behavior and school problems in addition to insecure attachment relationships. Parental incarceration, which may also be coupled with economic disadvantage and inconsistent living arrangements (Geller, Garfinkel, Cooper, & Mincy, 2009) can be an extremely difficult experience for children. It should come as no surprise that families with children suffer economic strain and instability when a parent is imprisoned, considering how each parent in today’s world typically needs to set aside time to earn an income to support their family, and most are unable to support their homes on one income. While it may be considered intrusive to some to intervene in the lives of children and families with incarcerated parents, research has suggested that there are positive societal benefits to intervening in the lives of incarcerated parents and their

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.

Mass incarceration is the tool of government to corporate with the capitalist to boost the economy, to discriminate the minority stealthily and to convince us to buy the propaganda.

Because the current polices on crime in society obviously do not work and fail to deter the criminal offender form committing further offenses but instead of automatically sentencing the drug offender to long prison sentences that does not serve the inmate, society, or the taxpayer. Instead the focus should be on requiring the drug addicted offender to attend mandatory substance abuse treatment as well as other rehabilitative processes that would enable the drug offender to successfully reintegrate back into society as well as

At any given time, there are approximately 2 million American citizens incarcerated and nearly 700,000 inmates returning to their communities each year. (Petitt & Western, 2004; Western, 2001). Since most prisoners are eventually released, mass incarceration has in turn produced a steep rise in the number of individuals reentering society and undergoing the process of social and economic reintegration. (Travis, 2005). During the period between 1982 and 2007, the number of Americans incarcerated in jails and prisons increased by 274% (Pew Center on the States, 2009). In addition to the increase of the individuals incarcerated, there is an even larger amount of individuals under community supervision, with a recent study finding that one in every 48 American adults are either on probation or parole on any given day (Glaze & Bonczar, 2011). Recent statistics show that the percentage of parolees re-incarcerated after release currently stands at 32% (Maruschak and Parks, 2012).

Mass incarceration is a major problem in the United States. Since the tough on crime movement that began to emphasize more punishment and creating new policies such as; three strikes law, truth-in sentencing laws, mandatory sentencing, and determinate sentencing, our prisons and jails have become overcrowded. The three strikes law increases the prison sentence of an offender convicted of three felonies or serious crime. Usually the punishment ranges from a minimum of 25 years to life in prison. The truth-in sentencing laws require the offender to serve a substantial amount of their prison sentence (usually around 85 percent) before they are eligible for release on parole. The mandatory sentencing requires a minimum period of incarceration that the offender must serve regardless of the history of the offender or the nature of the circumstance. These get tough policies have implicated longer prison and jail sentences and has reduced the amount of discretion that the judges, parole/probation officers and prison and jail administrators. These actions have consequently increased the prison and jail population, which causes an increase in money spent on jails and prisons.

At the beginning of the semester our Professor gave a speech on her personal accomplishment and to start she asked us how many of us knew someone who either was or had been incarcerated. Most of us in the class raised our hands in the affirmative, including myself. This may not seem like much in a classroom with roughly 25 students, but it does have some merit. The United States of America accounts for “5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison population” (DuVernay, 13th). Within the last year California legislators have introduced Senate Bill 10 or the Bail: pretrial release bill, which seeks to eliminate pretrial detention and bail requirements for accused individuals who meet public safety criteria ("SB-10 Bail: pretrial release", 2017-2018). I argue that SB 10 doesn’t go far enough and should include that low level non-violent first offenders be offered alternative methods to incarceration. A policy such as SB 10 would allow California to serve as a model, reducing the effects of mass incarceration, creating a fairer system and eliminating coerced plea deals.

Mass Incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates our prisons at an alarming rate. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Stanford law school. She states in her award winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million” (Alexander, 6). These young men and women are unable to afford a decent lawyer because they come from such a poverty-stricken background. Men and women are at a financial disadvantage in our justice system. Lawyers and attorneys cost a fortune and most people can just simply not afford them. Others plead to their charges because

In the book Mass Incarceration on trial, we learn about the difficulties that the country faces now with the huge amount of prisoners the United States have today. Jonathan Simon discusses several decisions including Brown v. Plata, a case that explains that California abuses the cap of the prisoner it holds and how it was ruled unconstitutional, and Madrid v. Gomez, where they find the 8th amendment being violated in the prison system. Our prison system has been a disaster throughout the last several years and our human rights have been violated for many years as well. Simon explains throughout the book that instead of putting people in jail and making more prisons we should look at ways to keep people out of jail, which could save taxpayers plenty of money over time. Our country carries the most incarcerated individuals, more people than even China whose population is three times ours. The United States has been building more prisons than even schools for various years and every time they build a prison it seems to be over crowd within a few year this book also talks about how we should approach in different methods and the way we treat our inmates in our country. Inmates are also exposed to various disease and with very little options for treatment, this disease can sometimes be passed through drugs or tattoos which are very common in prisons. Prisoners have rights and they are not being treated like humans Simons defends their rights and studies the pros and cons very in

1..Use Wacquant, Simon and Barlow to discuss the reasons why the numbers of people incarcerated in the U.S. rose by over 500% in the last thirty years. What are the social consequences of mass incarceration for American society? Why is the incarceration rate now declining?

How? Political leaders using this topic as talking point to gain the minority vote has to put their money where their mouth is and be held accountable when there is a stagnation of action and policies are not implemented to rectify the prison problem. Throughout the media, there is this rhetoric that both sides of the political aisle want to do something about this issue. However, no one has pulled the trigger. States that claim mass incarceration is costly should be allocating more resources to public defenders. This would balance out the adversarial process. The money can be used to hire more public defenders to lighten the case load, and this would

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.

would agree with the statement that prisons are not working. The reason for this is