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Essay On Mass Incarceration

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While incarceration plagues the nation on a great scale, its effects are palpable in varying levels throughout different communities. For years, African Americans have been targeted in various ways, making the black race “inferior” to the white race. A period in history that greatly exemplified the targeting of this group of people is known as the War on Drugs. The span of time known as the “War on Drugs” started in the late 1970’s and unofficially ended in the early 2000’s, though many argue that it is still on ongoing problem with palpable and current ramifications. This “war” may have been justified by rhetoric like “ending the drug epidemic”, or “keeping our children safe”, when in reality, it was a notion that incarcerated people of color and damaged their communities. Due to the unfair …show more content…

Consequently, the War on Drugs helped begin an era of mass incarceration - one targeting minorities.
While the United states prides itself on being the land of the free, American prisons are full of people who are stripped of their fundamental rights that make them “free” American citizens. If you are incarcerated, the freedom of the 13th amendment does not apply to you. While the United States is home to only 5% of the world’s population, it holds 25% of the world’s prisoners (DuVernay, 13th). If a quarter of the nation is locked up, and almost half of those prisoners are black, freedom is stripped from an entire race. African Americans only make up 13% of the US population (Vera). Despite their small racial representation in the country, the lifetime likelihood of a black man going to prison is 1 in 3, while the lifetime likelihood of a white man going to prison is 1 in 17 (DuVernay, 13th). However, the United States prison industry prior to Nixon was

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Davis also notes, the growth of the penal industry within the last three decades in particular, and the last century more generally, is also related to the backlash against emancipatory movements worldwide. In the United States, the end of slavery and the growth of civil rights of African American people were clearly related to the exponential growth of the rate of imprisonment of black people in America. Again,Davis argues just as the end of slavery was once seen as unimaginable, current thinking would have us all believe that it is impossible to imagine the end of

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Over the last thirty years, the prison population in the United States has increased more than seven-fold to over two million people, including vastly disproportionate numbers of minorities and people with little education. For some racial and educational groups, incarceration has become a depressingly regular experience, and prison culture and influence pervade their communities. Almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties have spent time in prison. In Punishment and Inequality in America, sociologist Bruce Western explores the recent era of mass incarceration and the serious social and economic consequences it has wrought.

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Nixon is infamous for his proposal of the “War on Drugs”— a crisis that made drug abuse seem more like a political issue and less of a health problem. This “war” essentially targeted minorities for drug possession, and combined the already standing issue of economic inequality and hypersegregation to allow people of color to be incarcerated at rates much higher than white people. This documentary targets political figures, ultimately holding them accountable for the unjust prison system. While some may think that this is political bias, all this document is doing is bringing up what people are afraid to address: some of the roots of systemic racism lie not so far in our past. By targeting political figures and comparing them to how mass incarceration developed as they were in office, 13th demonstrates a clear, concise understanding of systemic racism that allows the viewer to grasp the truth behind how the people who ran this country really

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It has been over a decade since Michelle Alexander published “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Her book delves into the complex nuances of mass incarceration in the United States, more specifically pertaining to the criminal justice system’s deeply-ingrained racial biases. She argues, as in reference to the title of her work, that mass incarceration effectively serves as a new form of Jim Crow discrimination and calls for large-scale reform. But in the time since the book’s original release, there have been many significant developments in terms of policy, public opinion, and social movements which warrant elaboration on the themes originally discussed by Alexander. In chapter 3 of “The New Jim Crow,” the

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The documentary the “13th” had shocking statistics on how many people are incarcerated in the United States. The 1970’s was the beginning of the “mass incarceration era,” which started with 357,292 people incarcerated. From there, the prison population has continuously increased and reached a population of 2,306,200 in 2014. Many of these people incarcerated are African-Americans because the criminal justice system has always worked against them. African-Americans in the United States account for 6.5% of the population, meanwhile they account for 42% of the prison population.

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The writer projects that one-third of African-American population will be in prisons if the current trends continue. Alexander’s view that the current criminal justice system is discriminatory can be confirmed by the fact that whites are more likely to commit drug-related offenses than people of

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In this documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. One issue that was discussed in this video was a “war on drugs.” War on drugs was a war on color declared by President Nixon. The drug war produced unequal outcomes across racial groups, exhibited through racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by communities of color. I thought the issue that was discussed to be quite interesting because a lot has not changed.

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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.

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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.

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Racial Profiling, though a 300-year-old problem for Blacks, became an even bigger problem during the “War on Drugs” carried forward from President Richard Nixon’s original declaration off a war on drugs in 1971(Alexander 48). Presidents Reagan, Bush Senior and Bush Junior and President Clintons neoliberal “war on drugs” over the years saw the number of people incarcerated in U.S. prison rise from 300,000 to 3.1 million mostly minority Black and Brown people in prison or on probation. A 2010, U.S. Bureau of Justice stats report showed that during the war on drugs era black men had an imprisonment rate of close to seven times the incarceration rate of white men, with the rate of incarceration for black women nearly triple that of white women

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Although incarceration has always been a problem, and has always been a racist system, it is not affecting more people than ever before—incarceration rates have been rising steadily and will continue to increase. One of the biggest parallels between the old Jim Crow and the new is that they both have defined the meaning and significance of race in America. However, one of the biggest differences between the two is that while Jim Crow seemed overtly race-based, but did have some key politicians who were in fact colorblind, mass incarceration is

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The mass incarceration of black men serves to define the meaning and significance of race in America today. Previously, race (black) was defined as slaves; today, race (black) is defined as criminals. Thus, mass incarceration perpetuates and deepens a pre-existing pattern of racial segregation and isolation. African Americans are being sold to private prisons and are warehoused in prisons for long time and once they get out of prison, they are labeled and destined to carry a stigma that extends to the family members, friends and even to their

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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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In addition to greatly affecting the otherwise unlikely citizens of America, Tough on Crime policies have greatly affected minority groups in America; perhaps more so than of any other group of citizens. To begin, from the 1980 on through the year 1995, the incarceration rates among drug offenders increased by more than 1000 percent. Notably, by the year 1995 one out of every four inmates in any given correctional facility was a drug offender. In addition of that 1000 percent increase, drug offenders accounted for more than 80 percent of the total growth in the federal inmate population and 50 percent of the growth of the state prison population from 1985 to 1995 (Stith, web). In addition, once in the system, the probability of receiving harsher

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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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