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Examples Of Prison Overcrowding

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Prison Overcrowding in America In our country today, we account for roughly five percent of the world’s population, yet we hold over twenty-five percent of the globe’s inmate population. According to John Irwin, we currently imprison more people for lesser crimes than any other country in the world. In 1987 alone, our prison population rested steadily at just 500,000 incarcerated inmates in the U.S. Although in the past twenty-seven years, the American prison population has actually quadruped to almost 2.4 million (Pratt, 2009). With that being said, we as a nation hold the highest recidivism rates compared to any other country. Each year, state, federal and local penitentiary’s release more than 630,000 prison inmates back into the general …show more content…

Many of the incarceration rates for African Americans are about six and a half times greater than that of Caucasians. African Americans make up close to thirteen percent of the U.S. population, yet they happen to represent thirty-eight percent of violent crime arrests. The prison population accounts for forty percent of the African Americans incarcerated. Racial disparity exists mainly due to the mass media and the emergence of crack cocaine. Poverty also goes hand and hand with racial disparity in the United States. Poverty indirectly occurs from unemployment, and social disorganization. The economic status of an offender has a significant impact on the likelihood of recidivism. At that point, law enforcement entities and society as a whole started to view African Americans as violent drug offenders (Walker, Delone, …show more content…

With the failure of the rehabilitation programs, the United States had to turn to the retribution model of punishment. Also at the turn of the decade into the 80’s, The War on Drugs kick started the epidemic of prison overcrowding, and launched America into a downward plunge of economic and political turmoil. The mandatory minimum sentencing policy that was in place did not help the situation either, giving long incarceration sentences to prisoners who didn’t deserve it. Criminals were given the minimum sentences for crimes, and judges carried them out precisely. Race and poverty were also side contributors that contributed to the bigger picture of the issue. Racial profiling in poor neighborhoods led to skyrocketing arrests of young black males, completely reversing the black to white ratio of incarcerated individuals. Prison overcrowding is a real issue in our nation, and we are five percent of the world’s population, yet house twenty-five percent of the world’s inmates (Austin, Irwin,

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The United States criminal justice system is diminishing millions of lives every day. Ironically, the amount of inequalities that the criminal justice system portrays goes against the term ‘justice’. There is a 33% chance that a black male will end up in jail in his lifetime, while white males have a 6% chance. There are 4,749 black males incarcerated while there are only 703 white males. Prisons receive revenue of 1.65 billion dollars per year which makes them willing to incarcerate anyone that they can (“Enduring Myth of Black Criminality”).

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Because of these rules that law enforcement officials have created, mass incarceration rates have sky rocketed. When the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education (1995) released their survey, the noticed that 95 percent of people described an African American person to be a typical drug user and only five percent of people described the typical drug consumer to be of another race. Nonetheless, the people in the 95 percent range showed cognitive bias as a result of only 15 percent of African Americans in 1995 were drug users. Where as, the majority of the White race consisted of drug users. Alexander responds by saying, “There is no reason to believe that the survey results would have been any different if police officers or prosecutors have been the respondents” (2011, p. 106).

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.

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Incarceration rates in the United States are extremely higher than other countries. According to Schlesinger in her article “The Failure of Race Neutral Policies: How Mandatory Terms and Sentencing Enhancements Contribute to Mass Racialized Incarceration” there are, “Currently, one and a half million people are incarcerated in either state or federal prisons” (Schlesinger). This number is very high compared to other countries. A large majority of the people incarcerated are African Americans.

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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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From an incapacitative through retributive and to what it is today, the U.S prison system has endured. This institution has for years served as a tool for coping with evil and crime through various measures such as retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. However, some major challenges still exist. The overreliance on prison as the paramount means of handling the offenders has led to a system that is overburdened. Still, the history of the U.S jail shows an institution that has gone through changes and challenged its functions and practices in the effort to achieve justification and bring order in the

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Racial profiling, poverty and high crime rates are the major contributors to high incarceration rates for African Americans compared to their percent of the general population. Besides social and economic isolation, African Americans have been marked as inherently criminal with the war on drugs and crime targeting them even when the statics shows they are less likely to be in possession of cocaine for example (Walker, Spohn, DeLone, 2012). The high number of African Americans on death row is the result of institutional racism. Majority of the judges in the United States are white and more often than not are either implicitly or explicitly biased in their rulings (Walker, Spohn, DeLone, 2012).

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The education children receive in predominantly black neighborhoods is often sub-par, with high dropout rates. Subsequently 65% of state inmates have not completed high school. Another major issue is job opportunities; in major cities with a high black population the ability to obtain and keep a decent paying job is difficult and therefore crime is one of the only solutions. More than 50% of inmates earned less than $10,000 a year, were unemployed, or part time (8E p. 17). The close correlation between black Americans and crime is explained as

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1728 Words | 7 Pages

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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Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System Introduction The United States criminal justice system is the largest in the world. In 2015, there were more than 6.7 million people under some form of correctional control within the United States, including 2.2 million incarcerated in federal, state, or local prisons and jails. By being the world leader in incarceration rates, the United States eclipses the rate of any other nation. These statistics from “The Sentencing Project” emphasize the significance of mass incarceration in America and the racial inequality that takes form in its criminal justice system.

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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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Something will always need to be fixed in society because society is a reflection of us, and we are not perfect. Recently, there’s been many issues that have caught the attention of people living all across the world. Things such as police brutality, sexual assault in the workplace, and immigration law, just to name a few, but there’s also been an underlying issue that people are becoming more informed about, and that I believe matters - prison reform. Prison reform matters because in many instances, prisoners are treated inhumanely when they are locked up, and aren’t treated as humans when they have served their time. I believe we can bring about change in the prison system by changing the way we punish people who do commit crimes and focusing more on actual rehabilitation.

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1199 Words | 5 Pages

This statistic could steam from since 1980 to present the prison system has quadrupled in population from a half of million people to roughly 2.5 million people(NAACP,2015). Some would say that this is the reason for the downward trend of violent crimes in America, Because more of the people are locked up and not on the streets in order to commit crimes. Which may be the case, but the question still remains why is the statics of race in the prison system still a overwhelmingly different. For Example African Americans are locked up 6 times more than white offenders, As of 2008 the prison system is predominantly (58%) made up of African Americans and Latinos (NAACP,2015). From these statistics, it could possibly be assumed that the socioeconomic status from where a person is from could lead to a answer as to why this is happening all over

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In the recent years, the population of Americans incarcerated has increased at extraordinary rates. In fact, the U.S has the highest incarceration rate in the world (Bureau of Justice Statistics). The majority of those incarcerated are for non-violent crimes, like for the use of drugs, possession of drugs, distribution of drugs, property crimes, and petty theft. Interestingly, the numbers of those incarcerated are higher in one ethnic group than another. Research shows that African Americans and Hispanics are often charged longer sentences and are convicted of crimes that only require mandatory minimum sentencing far more than Whites.

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874 Words | 4 Pages

The prison population rate in the U.S. is 716 per 100,000 people. Unless someone has spent time researching this rate for different countries, the statistic probably doesn’t make much sense. Of the 222 countries and territories listed in the Tenth Edition of the ICPS World Prison Population List, 54% had rates below 150 per 100,000, and the world’s average was 144 per 100,000

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