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Essay On Incarceration

555 Words3 Pages

As a result of the war on drugs, our prison population and overall cost of incarceration has increased exponentially. Nancy Reagan, former first lady and widow of President Ronald Reagan, advocated for the “Just Say No Campaign”, treating drug use as a criminal offense rather than a health issue. After Richard Nixon officially launched the drug war in 1971, the amount of incarcerated within the United States multiplied from “50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997” (A Brief History of the Drug War). People began to become full time prisoners due to small criminal offenses, such as possession of a small quantity of drugs. The exponential growth of the amount of inmates also means and exponential growth in the amount of money being spent on prisons amongst other programs. The cost of incarceration is, “up to at least $51 billion per year. Over four decades... American taxpayers have dished out $1 trillion on the drug war,” states the Huffington Post (Sledge, ). The money spent to keep non-violent offenders are costing taxpayers at time when the country is $19 trillion in debt. When it comes to the drug war, cutting corrections not …show more content…

A large amount of money would be saved, having less money focusing on organized crime and law enforcement. As of 2013, in Obama’s administration, “he requested $25.6 billion in federal spending on the drug war. Of that, $15 billion would go to law enforcement, interdiction and international efforts” (Sledge, Apr. 2013, 1). Additionally, users supporting their drug habit will no longer turn to crimes, such as robbery and burglary, as a means of obtaining money. As people begin to obtain their drugs from legal sources, black market suppliers - gangs, foreign cartels, organized criminals - will fade

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The Pros And Cons Of Proposition 64

1220 Words | 5 Pages

The war on drugs has been an ongoing battle for decades. Too many people are wrongfully filling our jails and prisons at a cost of wasted taxpayer dollars. Shouldn’t it depend on the drug? Shouldn’t it also depend on the individual? These are questions that tend to be overlooked based on society’s stereotypical black and white views of the government’s attempt to protect us from ourselves.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

643 Words | 3 Pages

Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

530 Words | 3 Pages

Mass Incarceration Mass Incarceration of the black male in the United States have become a rising situation. Most people would say due to high population is why there are more blacks than whites in our prison system. Well some whites have experiences high population, so why aren’t there more whites in jail? In the 2000s it shows more blacks than whites are being put in prison.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

1779 Words | 8 Pages

federal government's campaign to reduce the illegal drug trade but in this case we are focusing on The War on Drugs that mainly happened in 1968 during President Nixon presidency where many tactics were created, where the Fourth Amendment played a big role and where the SWAT was created as a response as a way to fight The War on Drugs. The War on Drugs plays a big part on of the mass incarceration that we have today. “The focus on War on Drugs is simple, Convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000.1 Approximately a half-million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980—an increase of 1,100 percent.2 Drug arrests have tripled since 1980” (Alexander, 60). This is important to class because we can see how The War on Drugs was suddenly implemented and how suddenly it took over black and brown neighborhoods which created many criminals, specially people of color from impoverished neighborhoods.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

465 Words | 2 Pages

Just like any national crisis experienced by a Country, America as a whole needs to unite to fix our racial hierarchy and cease the mass incarceration. The main issue of mass incarceration is overcriminalization based on race. As shown in The New Jim Crow “Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino”. The first step in solving mass incarceration is changing the view on the “War on Drugs”; the “war on Drugs” is seen as a black problem, and blaming the black community for being the root of drugs while the white race is the biggest drug user in America. So in order to fix this we need to let the supreme justice system do its job, and give people convicted of crime a fair trial.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

492 Words | 2 Pages

For this purpose, victims of mass incarceration represent parts of the system, with mass incarceration being the whole system. Furthermore, these incarcerated individuals often have families that they leave behind when they become incarcerated, which represent another system. Lastly, the system of mass incarceration and the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, namely families effected by it, become a different system. All these systems must be evaluated together and a part from one another.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

432 Words | 2 Pages

It is so easy for minorities to take on the stance of a victim, it is equally as easy for them to take on the stance of the aggressor. With everything going on in this Country, and in the World today, it isn't hard to understand the reasoning behind some of the situations that have been going on. Cops are getting away with Murder, Literally, and the war on poverty is seeming to turn into something like a war on the poor people themselves. Mass Incarceration is becoming so frequent that people seem to graze over the realities that are plaguing our very existence.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

712 Words | 3 Pages

The amount of mass incarceration in the United States as reached an all time high over the years. Mass Incarceration is the incarceration of a person or race based off of them being different and can be identified as a trend among law enforcements. These tensions have reached a certain extent and has received the attention of American citizens and the nation’s government. The laws of the United States seems fair, however with the enforcement of these laws, specific groups are targeted and abused by them daily.

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2228 Words | 9 Pages

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Our country has only 5% of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate 25% of the world’s prisoners. In real numbers, that statistic translates into 2.3 million people behind bars. There are currently five times as many people incarcerated now than there were in 1970. (CILENTI, 2015)

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707 Words | 3 Pages

In 1972, former President Richard Nixon made his infamous statements regarding crime and drug abuse. In this speech, he declared a war on crime and drugs and intended to decrease the number of people using drugs and the amount of crimes that were committed. Since this declaration, incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up by 500%, even though the amount of crime happening has gone down. One of the reasons why I feel our rates have risen, is because sometimes, we put people in jail when they don’t need to be there in the first place.

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Essay On Mass Incarceration

637 Words | 3 Pages

In fact, the United states holds 25% of the worlds prisoners, despite only housing 5% of the worlds population.   Since the war on drugs, over 45 million arrests have been made, and over 1 trillion dollars have been spent. This has had no positive effect on the American society. Retributive approach has only led to mass incarceration.

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The Decriminalization Of Drugs In The United States

1077 Words | 5 Pages

Essentially, the war on drugs has demonstrated to be an exorbitant expense. The federal government in 2002 alone spent $18.822 billion in the form of expenditures such as treatment, prevention, and domestic law enforcement (CSDP, 2007, p. 54). However, given that the drug war has garnered meager results, this investment may be interpreted as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Alternatively, the money that has been allocated to arrest and detain drug offenders may also be a source of contention. CSDP (2007) “Of the 1,846,351 arrests for drug law violations in 2005, 81.7% (1,508,469) were for possession of a controlled substance.

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Essay On Mandatory Minimum Law

662 Words | 3 Pages

The rising population in prisons became a major concern. In 2010, a prison reform expert explained that putting drug addicts to incarceration cost too much estimating eighty billion of dollars a year (Childress, 2014). Thus, congress's proposal is to shorten the sentencing of nonviolent offender. Some report explained that "there are many people serving time for violent offenses who haven’t actually committed violent acts and might be good candidates for reduced sentences." (Neyfakh, 2015).

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Argumentative Essay On Incarceration In America

874 Words | 4 Pages

isn’t the only thing people believe needs to change; the reasons for arrests have been criticized by many. America incarcerates more citizens for drug related crimes than any other place in the world. Of the roughly 200,000 in federal prison, 52% are being held for drug crimes and only 8% are for violent crimes, such as: murder, assault, and robbery (Waldman, 2013). Many believe that the “War on Drugs” must become less aggressive because of its large contribution to the prison population. The distribution of prisoners by race has also raised concern among Americans.

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865 Words | 4 Pages

As of recent, the war on drugs has been a very often discussed topic due to many controversial issues. Some people believe the War on Drugs has been quite successful due to the amount of drugs seized and the amount of drug kingpins arrested. I believe this to be the wrong mindset when it comes to the war on drugs. The war on drugs isn’t a winnable one so we must do all that is possible to assist those who struggle with drug addiction and decriminalize small amounts of drugs. These minor changes in the way we combat drugs will create significant change and have lasting effects.

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