We Should Not Be Tolerating Rape In Prison Analysis

Attention Getter: Nelson Mandela once said: “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

There have been various studies conducted over the past few decades that show the devastating consequences of the use of solitary confinement in prisons. Studies show that the method of solitary confinement has the potential to lead to severe psychological effects on prison inmates. To address the consequences of solitary confinement in the U.S. federal prison system, President Obama directed Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch as well as the Justice Department to review and analyze the overuse of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Six months later, on January 25th, 2016, President Obama officially announced that he is adapting the recommendations proposed by the Attorney General and the Justice Department to reform the federal prison system.

The cost of living is always on the rise, so naturally the cost of maintaining our public prison systems and its inmates is also on the rise. Not only does the cost to maintain the prisoners alive and healthy rise; our draconian laws that seem to make youth and the African American community the target, keep sending more and more offenders into the prison system. Without acknowledging alternative solutions and rehabilitation programs that are readily available. We currently live in an age where old laws from eras long past still rule. This is to say that we still follow laws that were put in place decades ago that are racist and unjust. Many of these laws emerged from the turbulence of the 1960’s; when the increasingly rebellious college youth and African American civil rights movements looked to change the nation. Laws were put in place directed at mainly these two groups: laws such as having a 100 times larger

“Poverty goes up; Crime goes down; Prison population doubles. It doesn 't fit, unless some sort of alternative explanation comes into play. Maybe all those new nonviolent prisoners fit into some new national policy imperative. Maybe they all broke some new set of unwritten societal rules. But what?” – Matt Taibbi

Many people assume that racist legislation put into place in the 1960’s and 70’s led to the mass incarceration of the minority groups. Since these acts have been put into place, the United States has been named the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, by an astounding amount. Former president Barack Obama states, “The United States is home to 5 percent of the world population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Think about that.” Barack Obama is insisting that citizens of the United states need to

America has been a land for the free since it became a dream place for people to come and have a successful life. In this case, America hasn’t been as grateful to people. They have more people in jail than any other country in the world and it’s still increasing. This main cause called mass incarceration brought America to the leading country that is incarcerating people at a high rate mainly sending those of color behind bars as said in web source A.C.L.U. This brings a lot of issues into a great nation such as the U.S.A. in a place where people should be proud to live in and represent. The topic of mass incarceration hasn’t been a major issue that politician’s really talk about. As well as the politician’s the people haven’t taken much actions to change it. Mass incarceration brings many troubles for America to deal with besides the other countless issues it has as a nation. The causes of mass incarceration are many, but the main important are overcrowded prisons, discrimination to criminals after jail, and imprisoning many people for long time periods based on small offenses that they have done. The causes of mass incarceration continue to affect the nation greatly as there are more people going behind bars at a high rate. Since the 1980’s there has been an increase of incarceration. It all started with the use of cocaine in the 1980’s that made “Policies that greatly excaberated racial disperities in incarceration rates… President Ronald Reagan officially announced the

When I originally began this research some three years ago the population of bodies behind bars during Obama’s time has since, has increased beyond any other president since. However knowing the policies of Bill Clinton through influence of ALEC has led to the

In the article, “THE REAL ANSWER TO MASS INCARCERATION”, Gilad Edelman analyzes President Obama's views on the increasingly high prison population in the United States, and what his plans are to help the mass incarceration issue our country faces.The author refers to the statistics given by Obama during his speech that demonstrated the high percentage of prisoners we have in the United States compared to the rest of the world. Gilad Edelman also addresses one of Obama's main focuses which is the impact nonviolent criminals have in our prison population, and how new policies need to be implemented in efforts of shortening sentences or releasing some prisoners. Another reference the author makes is to Leon Neyfakh with regard to the topic

Americans were therefore concerned about the number of people in prison and the seemingly exponential growth of crime during this decade. This number has increased over the last 60 years; as of 2015, there are 208,118 people in federal prison and approximately 1.4 million people in state prison. I feel like in some parts of the prison system has changed but at the same time i believe that things are still the case. Now the prisons are a bit more free as they inmates can do activities and have only one person to share the cell with rather than before when inmates had to live with 3 other people in the same sized cell.but at the same time there are some things that are yet to change is that the prison are overcrowded just like before and by that i can infer that more people are being sent to prison, people are still being trapped for small positions of crimes, it's like cops are just waiting to hunt someone and put them in for years and years. Which really concerns me because our fellow people are being sentenced for just self defense or trying to save someone's life, the conditions are still the same just like before. But most

Prison Rape is no secret in today’s society. The American media has portrayed prison rape as a joke (Don’t drop the soap) in countless films, television shows, and in music, but have not realized the extent of how dangerous this crime is. Some cops even use this method as a means to get a confession from a suspect. A major obstacle in solving Prison rape is the notorious under-reporting of the crime. Only 16 percent of prison rape victims report their victimization. Reasons for under reporting are fear of consequences, shame, guilt, embarrassment, and refuse to relive painful details. This paper explores prison rape and its psychological and physical harm to not only inmates, but to society as well. It also discusses recent efforts to

Assessing the consequences of our country’s soaring imprison rates has less to do with the question of guilt versus innocence than it does with the question of who among us truly deserves to go to prison and face the restrictive and sometimes brutally repressive conditions found there. We are adding more than one thousand prisoners to our prison and jail systems every single week. The number of women in prisons and jails has reached a sad new milestone. As women become entangled with the war on drugs, the number in prison has increased if not double the rate of incarceration for men. The impact of their incarceration devastates thousands of children, who lose their primary caregiver when Mom goes to prison.

In the video of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver discusses the problem of mass incarceration in the United States. He starts by talking about the extremely large prison population in America. According to Oliver America has a larger prison population than China despite having a much smaller overall population. In fact America has the largest prison population in the entire world. He then discusses how the prison population is mostly populated with minorities and that whites are extremely underrepresented in prisons. Oliver talks about how the prison population has grown eight times larger since 1970 and of that population 50% of the people in federal prisons and 25% of people in state prisons are there for a drug related crime. Oliver continues the discussion by talking about the general lack of public concern for prisoners. He uses clips from television shows as examples of how popular culture uses prison as a joke and does not take it seriously specifically when talking about sexual assault in prisons. He then shows another clip of the Director of Federal Prisons not knowing how big a solitary confinement cell is to point out that even the people in charge of prisons seem not to care about them. Oliver’s next talking point is about prisons becoming privatized and companies like Aramark and the Geo who care more about the profit of the companies than the prisoners they take care of. He ends the segment by summarizing that the conditions

In America’s tough economic society, over population has become an exceedingly hot topic issue. However, overcrowding in America’s prison system has been a severe problem since the 1970's. The majority of the changes have come from different policies on what demographic to imprison and for what reason. The perspective of locking up criminals because they are "evil" is what spawned this (Allen, 2008). Because of this perspective the prison system in America is in need of serious reorganization. Since 1980, most states have one or more of their prisons or the entire system under orders from the federal courts to maintain minimum constitutional standards (Stewart, 2006).

One of the largest problems with the prison issue in America today is that it gets little attention. Unlike education, pollution or gun control people are usually not concerned enough to get involved with the problem until it happens to someone they love or

Austin, J., Irwin, J. (2001). “It's About Time: America's Imprisonment Binge.” Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co