Essay On The American Prison System

In America, we like to pride ourselves on our prison system. Many Americans believe in the philosophy of retribution, that prisoners in America deserve their sentence because of the heinous crimes they have committed. However, this belief does not hold, for many Americans. As the American Prison system is a business run on racism and greed, America has had a long history of torturing and imprisoning innocent people. The American prison system is run like a business and is not new however, to understand why the American Prison system is corrupted we need to understand convict leasing and slavery. And how these systems set a precedent for the American Prison System.

Slavery was used in America, because it was a cheap form of labor. Slaves were

Through the enforcement of these laws, acts such as standing in one area of town or walking at night, for example, became the criminal acts of “loitering” or “breaking curfew,” for which African Americans were imprisoned. As a result of the Black Codes, the percentage of African Americans in prison grew exponentially, surpassing whites for the first time.[3](Pg.49)

In The New S-Word: How Prison Labor Has Developed into Legalized Slavery Taylor Brunson analyzes and summarizes the memoir The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted

However, this did not stop similar from coming into existence in the future. After convict leasing chain gangs came chain gangs. In which groups of five convicts were chained together, while chained convicts would eat, sleep, and work. The work conditions were as brutal as the work conditions of Convict leasing. After the abolishment of the Chain-Gangs another form of convict leasing followed, this form is prevalent in today's society as the prison industrial complex. The prison is similar to convict leasing, however, unlike convict leasing the prison industrial complex was a much bigger operation. As it not only did the Prison Industrial Complex include prisoners working in harsh conditions for very little pay, and the targeting of African Americans and other People of Color. It also included the use of private prisons and the use of selling items to prison for