Government paper The Texas prison system is a very cruel cutthroat system that has many problems And racial issues. The system is deeply embedded in the state’s budget, but also in its political, cultural, and social fabric and impacts the lives of millions of people. From the wrong the accused, actual criminal and racial profiled African Americans and hispanics to the wardens, prison guards, judges and politicians who work on or for the prisons. Through his Book “Texas Tough” Robert Perkinson shows an effective argument against how Texas is using the prison system as a way to control and unethically treat African Americans and other minorities just like they did from 1870-1965 with the jim crows laws through the criminal system by using statistical evidence, Historical evidence, and Historical pictures of african american prisoners being treated like slaves by the Texas prison system.
Alex Frost Values: Law & Society 9/23/2014 The Hollow Hope Introduction and Chapter 1 Gerald Rosenberg begins his book by posing the questions he will attempt to answer for the reader throughout the rest of the text: Under what conditions do courts produce political and social change? And how effective have the courts been in producing social change under such past decisions as Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education? He then works to define some of the principles and view points 'currently' held about the US Supreme court system.
Final Essay America, the home of the free, but how free are we really? Incarceration rates over the past 30 years have soared, and currently 25% of all inmates in the world lie behind the bars of American prisons. (Approximately 716 per 100,000 peoples). Whether justified or not, our country locks up more people per year than any other country. Cases such as that of Tamir Rice, and Steven Avery exemplify both spectrums of the exploitation of our judiciary system.
Michelle Alexander is a freelance writer, public speaker, and a consultant with advocacy organizations committed to ending mass incarceration. Alexander wrote her NAACP Image Award winning book called The New Jim Crow in 2011. Her book describes in depth details about racial justice and mass incarceration for people of color. “How could the War on Drugs operate in the discriminatory manner…when hardly anyone advocates or engages in explicit race discrimination” (Alexander, 2011, p. 102). Alexander asks this question and answers it as a whole throughout chapter 3.
In the article “Even Prisoners Must Have Hope”, Richard Stratton (the author) talks about his thoughts on the federal prison system in America. Stratton himself had served 8 years in jail for smuggling marijuana. He strongly advises not to make the prisons even worse than they already are. The harsh conditions and other peoples’ vengeful attitudes toward criminals only make the violence and crime continue. According to Stratton, instead of improving the harsh conditions and trying to rehabilitate and help prisoners that could lead to peace, our society inflicts more pain and punishment, enforcing a violent cycle.
Mass Incarceration: Transforming an Unconstitutional System. Guild Notes, 40(4), 12. Brad Broussard in his article, Mass
Over the past 40 years U.S. incarceration has grown at an extraordinary rate, with the United States’ prison population increasing from 320,000 inmates in 1980 to nearly 2.3 million inmates in 2013. The growth in prison population is in part due to society’s shift toward tough on crime policies including determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing laws, and mandatory minimums. These tough on crime policies resulted in more individuals committing less serious crimes being sentenced to serve time and longer prison sentences. The 1970s-1980s: The War on Drugs and Changes in Sentencing Policy Incarceration rates did rise above 140 persons imprisoned per 100,000 of the population until the mid 1970s.
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.
Prison reform has been an ongoing topic in the history of America, and has gone through many changes in America's past. Mixed feelings have been persevered on the status of implementing these prison reform programs, with little getting done, and whether it is the right thing to do to help those who have committed a crime. Many criminal justice experts have viewed imprisonment as a way to improve oneself and maintain that people in prison come out changed for the better (encyclopedia.com, 2007). In the colonial days, American prisons were utilized to brutally punish individuals, creating a gruesome experience for the prisoners in an attempt to make them rectify their behavior and fear a return to prison (encyclopedia.com, 2007). This practice may have worked 200 years ago, but as the world has grown more complex, time has proven that fear alone does not prevent recidivism.
Alexander argues that the practice of racial injustice and segregation is due to the existence of mass incarceration. She goes into great detail in her writing, explaining why she believes mass incarceration is the issue and how history show us that America will always find a way to separate racial communities. This book would serve as an excellent reference to anyone studying racial injustice, mass incarceration, plea bargain coercion, racial history in America, and more. The beauty of this book is not only Alexander’s fact finding revelations, is the fact that she isn’t saying anything unheard of or anything that has not been realized by member of poor black communities, she simply found a way to articulate the issue in a way the demanded consideration from readers in and outside the communities being discussed. Alexander finds a way to expose the true nature of the criminal justice system using the people’s voice and research.
In Coleman v. Brown (1990), the court ordered a reduction in California’s prison population to provide California Realignment: Assembly Bill (AB) 109 8 constitutional levels of medical and mental health care, demonstrating the court’s ability to generate a comprehensive remedial solution to prison overcrowding (Harvard Law Review, 2009). “The California governor and corrections officials have been sued by California prisoners for violating their rights under the Eighth Amendment 's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause for being deprived of adequate health care” (Spector, 2010, p. 1). The safe operation of a prison is impossible with severe overcrowding (Spector, 2010). In a similar case filed approximately a decade later in Plata v. Brown (2001), the court ruled that the CDCR failed to provide adequate medical services and consequently violated the Eight Amendment (Rogan, 2012). The outcomes of these cases led to a court-ordered reduction in overcrowding, and because of the poor level and standards of prisoner healthcare, the California prison system was forced to change prisoners’ housing.
In her book, The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander who was a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar, reveals many of America’s harsh truths regarding race within the criminal justice system. Though the Jim Crow laws have long been abolished, a new form has surfaced, a contemporary system of racial control through mass incarceration. In this book, mass incarceration not only refers to the criminal justice system, but also a bigger picture, which controls criminals both in and out of prison through laws, rules, policies and customs. The New Jim Crow that Alexander speaks of has redesigned the racial caste system, by putting millions of mainly blacks, as well as Hispanics and some whites, behind bars
Ever wondered how the court systems go about making their decisions and if they are just in doing so? There have been cases where the process of the law has been questioned. These cases can only be straightened out by the due process of law. The guarantee of due process, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, prevents the government from unfairly depriving individuals of their basic rights to life, liberty, and property. (Strasser)
Introduction A late time of mass incarceration has prompted incredible rates of detainment in the United States, especially among probably the most helpless and minimized groups. Given the rising social and financial expenses of detainment and firm open spending plans, this pattern is starting to switch (Petersilia and Cullen, 2014). Toward the commencement of the 21st century, the United States ends up confronting the huge test of decarcerating America, which is in the meantime an enormous open door. Through decarceration, the lives of a vast number of individuals can be immensely enhanced, and the country all in all can desert this limited and dishonorable time of mass detainment.
To much of the common citizen’s disbelief, the spike in the mass incarceration of citizens in America is not necessarily a result of the national increase in violence, but rather an operation fueled by the corruption within our own legal system. Although many individuals in the United States would stand to believe that there is no particular way that anyone could stand to profit from the mass incarceration of Americans–they are wrong. The standing profiteers for mass incarceration is the private prison industry. The name to their game is simple, the more that the public good suffers from mass incarceration, the more government money the companies can obtain. As a result of these efforts, the private prison industry cuts corners at the expense of public safety and prison security in order to maximize profits by obtaining government money, resulting in the mass denial of American citizen’s liberty.
