The World 's Largest Incarceration Rate

Glen Loury argues in his essay called “A Nation of Jailer” that the United States is a nation that follows a society that has been affected by racial bias. Loury claims that the people who are targeted by law are racial discriminated. Loury mainly talks about the “poorly educated black and Hispanic men who reside in large numbers in our great urban centers.” (1) Loury has made a clear and strong point. Loury shows his points in three main ways. Loury emphasizes his points by using ethos, logos, and pathos. Loury uses many well-known characters in his writing, and Loury uses strong phrases that impact the reader emotionally and questions to make sure the reader has some sort of connection to Loury’s evidence. Furthermore, Loury gives a lot

Throughout American history, relationships between racial and ethnic groups have been marked by antagonism, inequality, and violence. In today’s complex and fast-paced society, historians, social theorists and anthropologists have been known to devote significant amounts of time examining and interrogating not only the interior climate of the institutions that shape human behavior and personalities, but also relations between race and culture. It is difficult to tolerate the notion; America has won its victory over racism. Even though many maintain America is a “color blind nation,” racism and racial conflict remain to be prevalent in the social fabric of American institutions. As a result, one may question if issues and challenges

Coates provides readers with a lesson in American history and explains to his son that race is not reality, but that “Americans believe in the reality of ‘race’ as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world” (Coates 2015; 7) He brings the reader inside the America in which he lives. He argues that “America’s problem is not its betrayal of ‘government of the people,’ but the means by which ‘the people’ acquired their names,” meaning that America has only ever represented and supported white people, that America was founded on a system of racial bias (6). He draws attention to the struggles that peoples of color, especially black people, have faced. Those struggles generate fear, which is one of the main ideas in the

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

Racism in the United States has not remained the same over time since its creation. Racism has shifted, changed, and shaped into unrecognizable ways that fit into the fabric of the American society to render it nearly invisible to the majority of Americans. Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness shatters this dominantly held belief. The New Jim Crow makes a reader profoundly question whether the high rates of incarceration in the United States is an attempt to maintain blacks as an underclass. Michelle Alexander makes the assertion that “[w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” using the criminal justice system and colorblind rhetoric. (Alexander 2). The result is a population of Black and Latino men who face barriers and deprivation of rights as did Blacks during the Jim Crow era. Therefore, mass incarceration has become the new Jim Crow.

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.

The idea of racism has evolved and has become less prevalent throughout the last century. Schools and public areas are unsegregated, voting rights, racial slurs being considered as unacceptable behavior etc. American sociologist and race theorist, Howard Winant states that’s “The ensuing approaches increased recognition of racial injustice and inequality, but did not overcome the discriminatory processes” (Winant,2000)Although the United states has come a long way to try to end racism, one cannot ignore the fact that it still exists. It is something that may seem invisible in society, but everybody knows that it still thrives and that it’s racial attitudes affect the way our society functions. One of these invisible forms of

Americans think they live in a colorblind society and do not discriminate based on race. The fact is Americans have Barack Obama as their president. Some might argue as long as there are exceptional blacks there are no excuses for all blacks to succeed. Although, Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, challenges American’s colorblindness by bringing to light the mass incarceration of African Americans. Jim Crow laws are no longer legal, but there is a new way to segregate: mass incarceration. The mass incarceration of blacks has created a racial underclass; a population with second-class status based on their criminal records (Alexander, 2012).

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

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Does this mean that we have more crime and that our nation is more dangerous than other countries, or is this even an issue? Maybe we are just better at keeping our criminal off the streets. Although, by keeping those criminals locked away, are we creating other issues?

Incarceration rates in the United States, and closer to home – in Ohio, have been rising at astonishing rates over the last 20 years. Rising incarceration rates stem from increased sentencing of non-violent crimes, little attention to rehabilitation within most prison walls, and extremely high recidivism rates. The problem of the increasing prison population touches many areas of our society – from reduced workforce to increased state funding for prisons to the adverse effects on children growing up in single-parent households – but has received little public or political attention. Looking at this issue from a social capital standpoint it is important to understand that “social capital keeps bad things from happening to good kids” and then applying this to communities with many families affected by having a member in the penal system (Putnam 296). The rate of recidivism is also increasingly high and an area that must be addressed to move forward in a productive way to ending this problem. When looking at data provided by Ohio’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the current penal population is almost 50,000 individuals (49,789 as of 11/13/2012) (DRC). The average cost of keeping a non-violent offender in prison is approximately $26,000 per year (CEPR). Calculations based on these estimates show that incarceration is costing Ohio approximately $1.3 billion each year. With such a financial burden on Ohio, it is time that this issue was taken seriously and actively

Racism in America silently remains as a pre-eminent reality, even though white America denies the facts. Many white people restrain the importance of race in our society, but like to maintain the power under the false myth of the melting pot. In the short story “Theories and Constructs of Race,” of Rereading America, the authors mention how race is made up socially, culturally, politically, and economically, but many have been forced to change, because of

As we go about our daily lives and interact with all kinds of people, from all kinds of backgrounds and different races, we often do not always stop to think of their skin color and the culture they may be from. We are often too busy to really stop and take notice of what is really happening to the lives of the people around us. Two Nations Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal by Andrew Hacker is remarkable book that spells out Andrew Hackers thoughts about the race and the American people. A question one may ask is, do we simply see people and not their color, or do we see black people and white people and does that play a factor in what we do, how we act, and what we say. Hacker claims that we are a country moving toward being two nations, one white and one black. He feels like we will be “Two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy: who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different time zones, or inhabitants of different planets”(Hacker preface).

Our nation struggles with many things, including internal strife as well as external physical brawls. America is known for its ever increasing debt and housing many struggling Americans. However, there is one thing we persistently fail to change: racial injustice. Try as we might, age old sentiments have ingrained themselves into the minds of many, preventing the change we require. It is a war we have fought for many centuries, hoping to see a change that has yet to occur. As time has gone on, some ideas have never left despite the progress towards moral justice.

The United States often describes itself as a noble power, often placing itself and other countries as protectors of the modern world, and an international force. A major issue arises in this model theory when a certain statistic is mentioned, and that is the fact that the U.S. only has 4.4 percent of the total world population, but accounts for 22 percent of the world’s prisoners (Tsai, “U.S. Has World’s Highest Incarceration Rate”). The self-proclaimed U.S. model, actually consists of injustice and inequality, and a diversion from true rehabilitation and fair punishment, that is all distracted by the prison industrial complex, politics, and profits. This mass incarceration, and the “prison-industrial complex” causes the U.S. to