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Essay On Mass Incarceration

440 Words2 Pages

In the Time Magazine article titled “39% of Prisoners Should Not Be in Prison” written by Lauren-Brooke Eisen and Inimai Chettiar, they examine the issue of mass incarceration and give two practical solutions that they believe could work. The issue of mass incarceration is the greatest racial and ethical issue in the U.S. Many people are put in prison for a sustainable amount of time for non-violent crimes. With Trump’s campaign being focus on being tough on crime, there is some uncertainty on how the issue of mass incarceration will be seen from Republicans and nationwide. Previously there has been trans partisan agreement that the issue of mass incarceration need to be address. At the state level, some states have made short term fixes to …show more content…

As a nation, we imprison more people than any other nation. The disproportion between crime committed and time serve in prison is alarming. A drug offense should never lead to more time in prison than rape or equal to the crime of murder. Because of our fear getting in the way of rational thinking, we have policies in place that lead to unproportionable sentencing. I believe that the article makes great suggestions that may work in practice, however we must change public perception on the issue of mass incarceration until the majority of the nation sees this as an issue. Many people still believe that mass incarceration is a good thing, because they are violent criminals. Many people believe that majority of people in jail have done violent crimes. However, data has shown that most of the people incarcerated have done non-violent drugs. We must stop letting fear cloud our judgement and analyze an issue objectively and with proof and data on what works. Until we change the way we think, I don’t believe any reform to mass incarceration will work, because we would still be attempting to prove that mass incarceration is an issue instead of focusing on how to fix the

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In the article, Unwinding Mass Incarceration by Stefan Lobuglio and Anne Piehl, they argue that unwinding the mass incarceration “well neither be cheap nor easy, and to be done responsibly will require a new infrastructure of coordinated community-based facilities and services that can meet evidence-based incarceration needs while also ensuring public safety.” Hence, their argument is clean-cut with evidence in the article to back up their argument of unwinding the mass incarceration. Similarly, a solid fill of a concluding statement upon the unwinding of the mass incarceration as stated in the article, “requires much more than stopping current practices or reversing course by mass commutations and early release programs.” Subsequently, from this article, there are numerous interesting key points, and perspective of unwinding the mass incarceration.

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There has to be a lot of reform to undo the prejudice’s that have taken over the criminal justice system. Despite this, this is the best solution to solve mass incarceration because it brings back what jails and prisons were supposed to be in the first place, a place for

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Australia is experiencing a rise in the use of incarceration in all states and territories, with the national imprisonment rate increased by 6 percent from 196 prisoners per 100,000 adult population in 2015 to 208 prisoners per 100,000 adult population in 2016 (Australian Bureau of Statics, 2016). While, the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate about 608,300 populations in 2005, decreased 2.3 percent from 2014 (The New York Times, 2016). The reason why this happens is that the American federal prison system is in crisis that caused by too many people are sent to prison. In this case, the prison system released thousands of nonviolent drug offenders to relieve stress and save money. According to these data, I begin

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The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

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Mass incarceration is a product of our nations century long historical process that began with a group of people defined by race. Slavery was the economic backbone of the South and after the South’s economic system was destroyed by the ratification of the 13th amendment, they needed to rebuild. But what was consequently seen was a transition from slavery to incarceration. By labeling newly freed slaves as criminals we saw the government legally restricting their freedoms leaving them held back socially, politically, and economically. The thirteenth amendment did in fact abolish slavery and involuntary servitude but it did in a way with the exception as Through this blacks were criminalized through legislations made by former slave states ranging from absence of work, loitering, possession of firearms, public display of intoxication etc.

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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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However, we are far from that being a viable solution. Mass incarceration in the United States has ruined lives. It has ruined the lives of the people who are put into prison and the lives of those around them. There is also a racial component to this. African American men are disproportionately incarcerated above any other racial group.

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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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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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In general, the United States has 2.3 million people imprisoned in over 6,000 correctional facilities, with over 1,000,000 drug arrests made every year (Wagner, 2017). Washington state alone has 36,000 people jailed (Wagner, 2017). Although our rate is lower than the national average, there is still progress to be made. I, for one, do not believe that mass incarceration is the way to fix our country. President Nixon

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Thesis: It is very important for the sake of Americans tax dollars that we change the way that prisons are run and increase the productivity of inmates so when they are released from jail they are ready to be a productive member in society and have the confidence to achieve new goals. Introduction: Day after day, millions of inmates sit in jail doing nothing productive with their lives. We are paying to house inmates that may not even have a good reason to be there. For example, drug offenders are being kept with murderers and other violent offenders.

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Although everyone can recognize mass incarceration is a problem, they are different ways people think it should be dealt with. The size of prisons in the United States can be shown though numbers. From 1970-2012, the total prison population grew from 174,000 to 1.5 million. Along with the large number of inmates, there is a large amount

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502 Words | 3 Pages

America makes up a total of five percent of the world’s population, but our incarcerated population makes up twenty-five percent of the world’s incarcerated population. I learned this statistic one day prior to our lecture on drugs in my pre-law class while discussing criminal law. The War on Drugs agenda pushed by President Nixon has created barriers for people who are incarcerated because of mandatory minimums in prisons and then the difficulty of rebuilding your life once out. This means that because of a minor drug offense someone can be in prison for a lengthy time leading to overcrowding in prisons and more money for outsourced prison companies who make a profit off of prison labor and the system itself. Before this lecture, I had the very simple view of “Do not commit crimes and you will not get arrested.”

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Through each resource we have covered different perspectives and solutions for mass incarceration. There is not one finite cause of mass incarceration, but a culmination of issues like the war on drugs, prison-industrial complex, and increase felony charges. Reforming the law and looking at cases individuality can help put checks on district attorneys and prosecutors. Educating the public can be one of the best methods to reduce the rate of incarceration, but until then the issue will remain

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874 Words | 4 Pages

Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.

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